China - Kang Ding

We made it to Kang Ding today. We only got kang-dinged once on the way here. 400 Yuan for lunch! - Ouch - shouldn't have ordered the fish out of the bucket I guess. Otherwise it was just a long exhaust filled ride - about 10 hours. That included the 1 hour+ traffic jam where a truck got its faced removed. Looked pretty gnarly. Beautiful country though, very rugged. Kang Ding has about 80,000 people I guess and seems pretty cool. We had a nice Tibetan dinner where they sat us in a private room and blared a music video with traditional Chinese dance done to techno music. So this might be the last blog entry for a while (3 weeks or so). We're thinking about moving up to the next, and final, town (Lao Yuling or something like that) tomorrow where we start our climbing adventure. It's only about an hour away they say. Can't upload any pictures - I was lucky enough to even get this much uploaded...

Cool, finally got a better connect for pics. Here they are...


Tired in the Dragontown hostel:


Loading the van:


The undisputed ruler of the road:


Our expensive lunch and our driver Easy E.:


"I've been KANG-DINGED!":


Definitely not a Dong Feng:


Poor wittle piggies in the back:


Just in case you were wondering:


Dinner at the Techno Tibetan:


Gear packing:

China - Chengdu

Here we are in Chengdu! Everything so far has been incredibly smooth. No problem with the flights, got all our luggage, easy transfer to the hostel. Today (Wednesday) we met Jay's friend Eddie, who he's storing some stuff with for his future adventures in China. After that we went to the bank, got a new phone card for the cell phone, got a permit at the SMA office, purchased fuel, went food shopping, and arranged our ride for tomorrow to Kangding - all by 1:30! I think we've pretty much got this town wire. So tomorrow at 8 am we take a private van to Kangding where we will spend two nights before heading up into the mountains. Here a couple pics from the trip so far.

Loading up the car in Leavenworth:


Airport antics:


Shopping in Chengdu:


Jay in our hostel room (we got the super deluxe penthouse suite):


Sara in the duel shower head bathroom:


Michelle in the master bedroom:


Me, lounging on the private veranda:

Eldorado Peak - East Ridge

We climbed Eldorado in August. Our plan to climb the West Arete - a long technical rock climb - was foiled by the weather, so we ended up just hiking up the standard route. This blog entry is written way after the fact, so here are a few pics from the trip.

The total elevation gain is something like 6,600 feet straight up the side of the valley. Here's Michelle in the talus fields a little ways up:


The north face of Johannesburg (John and I climbed the rib on the left a few weeks later):


Getting above tree line - Mt. Torment, Mt. Boston, and Sahale Peak in the distance:






First view of Eldorado Peak - the peak in the center


Michelle climbing up the Eldorado Glacier:






Big glacier:


Cool clouds:


Looking over at the west side of Eldorado:


Mt. Forbidden


We camped up on the east shoulder of the peak, then the next morning headed down to check out the route:


Here we met our good friends Jim and Marlene (we were supposed to be camped together, but I'll spare you the details of the mistake).


We decided the weather didn't look to good so we hiked back up the the standard route on the east shoulder and continued to the top.

Mt. Baker:


Marlene and Michelle:


Nasty clouds:


Jim coming up the final summit ridge:


Marlene and Michelle




On the summit!