Class IV Beatdown

This is Lex. He had an interesting encounter while kayaking the James River in Richmond this weekend.



After successfully counting all of the fish in a nasty hole (a hole is whitewatereese for a recirculating hydraulic) he qualified for the James River Swim Team by running Hollywood Rapid (Class IV+), sans kayak. He then went on to test his new helmet against the boulders in the bottom Pipeline Rapid. Needless to say, the rocks won.
After emerging from the now bloody froth, Lex was pulled to shore by a local paddling hero who administered life saving CPR using only Duct Tape and sweaty bandanna.
After a brief stay in the Virginia College of Medicine Emergency Room, Lex was patched up and back into the swing of things with a well deserved cold beer and big bottle of Neosporin.


"If your going to be stupid, you better be tough."

Tree Sap

My friend Lex and I decided to head out to Annapolis Rocks in MD. to do some climbing yesterday. For some reason Annapolis Rocks is nowhere near Annapolis. It's on the other side of the state... go figure.
After a 2.25 mile approach hike on the Appalachian Trail we arrived to find the rocks on were on the opposite side of the mountain than we thought they were which put the climbing in the shade.
This, combined with 40mph winds and temps in the 20's, made for a cold, cold day. About the only climbing we did was some bouldering in the sun in an area out of the wind.
On the way out I shot this image of the frozen water and tree sap hanging out of the side of a tree next to the trail.
I think next time we need to double check the direction the rocks are facing before we head out on a 2 mile uphill approach with high winds blowing us off the trail and temps well below freezing.

Beer Can Stove

Not my best photo work, but I just had to post of pic of this contraption. It is an alcohol powered beer can cook stove. I got the design by looking at a similar stove and came up with my own idea for this one.
Basically it is a cut down beer can held together with high temp gasket silicone. There is an interior chamber built out of aluminum from another can can that allows the fuel vapor to feed out of the jets on the side and on the tapered part near the top.
It runs on denatured alcohol or HEET (yes, the stuff you put in your cars gas tank) Pure grain alcohol works well too, but who wants to waste that as cooking fuel?
The whole concept of this is for ultralight backpacking. Less weight on the back while in the woods equals a happier backpacker. The stove has a dry weight of less than an ounce.
Fuel is carried in an everyday 20oz plastic soda bottle. Boil times for 16oz of water seem to stay in the 4.5min range depending on air temp.
Real world tests while backpacking in the White Oak Canyon area of the Shenandoah National Forest a few weeks ago proved its durability. Several of us brought stoves for cooking and melting snow due to the temps being in the teens. The Jet Boil stoves seemed to fair very well, as did the beer can stove. The MSR Whisperlight and Pocket Rocket didn't seem to do so well for various reasons and I ended up burning more than twice the fuel I anticipated melting snow for drinking water. Snow and ice conditions seem to be the Achilles heel for this stove. It works fine, but due to an unpressurized design it is not very efficient and that shows when you are forced to spend several hours melting snow for your water supply. The extra weight you have to carry in fuel for this also offsets the ultralight concept.
Overall I am very happy with it and will continue to use it. I even sent one to my buddy in Arkansas to play with and report back on.
...and for my next trick, the solar powered spot light!

Vintage Action

For the past several days I have been trying to get Photoshop CS migrated over onto our new iMac. The Migration Assistant that comes with OS has not been working for me and, long story short, I had to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what goes where to get the program to work. Once I was able to do that I started copying the old actions over from my G4 Powerbook.
After going out and playing with the camera today I decided to try out some of the actions to make sure everything was working O.K.

Melanie and I went out to Burke Lake Park and spent an hour or so walking around and looking for interesting images. This was one of the first things I saw and after running it through the "vintage" action I got from my friend Ernie I decided to post it up. Enjoy!

Barbed Wire

Here's another one from today. There is no telling how long this barbed wire has been here, but it's runs through the center of the 16" oak tree that has grown around it.

Stream

I was out walking on some nearby trails today and came across this leaf floating in a stream with a perfect beam of light streaming though the canopy, so I figured why not.