I just got back from another business trip to Phoenix. As usual I can't talk publicly about who we did work for or even the partners or platforms we used... which were cutting edge, expensive and freaking amazing! What I can briefly talk about is the cool Kildeer bird we saw protecting it's eggs in the back lot of the Scottsdale Cardno Office, the great people I worked with and the great views I had from our job site, both of mountains and cool critters!
With Emily gone this weekend to Waldport for a girls weekend on the coast I decided to get Leo out of the house for a bit. Leo’s getting a little creaky with age so instead of an epic 3,000 ft climb in the gorge we stuck to a couple hundred feet over 4 miles up the Wauna Viewpoint off of the Eagle Creek trailhead for some views over the Bonneville Dam and the Gorge. Read on…
Just a quick note that Emily and I had a wonderful time going to see Heiroglyphics with Conrad at the Wonder Ballroom tonight! Bad Habitat opened for them and were also amazing. It was great to see Deltron there (although he was high as hell) and Pep Love was great on stage. Their performance was short, under an hour, with no encore, but it was worth it for sure at the small venue. We had some bbq dinner at the People's Pig before heading over. Sad note of the night was hearing that Phife Dawg from the iconic Tribe Called Quest had passed away. RIP Phife.
This year Emily and I were able to get 4 weekends in at Meadows Ski Resort. First with Ian where I got stuck in a tree well taking a safety break in the woods with him. Then a couple times by ourselves where I relived my youth hitting the terrain park with a bunch of mute 360's and the half pipe where I can still boost out above the rim, although all of this was much less graceful than it was five years ago.
Our most recent day was with Eric when we met up with Porter and some others after only about 3 runs on very wet, sticky snow for a bbq in one of the parking lots. It was a short day skiing but a good time meeting good people at the BBQ, one of which, Peter, is a guide on Denali and had some good beta for me. A great connection. Not much skiing for us this year with Africa in the middle but at least the mountains got more snow this year than the last 2 combined!
This weekend Emily and I had planned on heading up to the Tilly Jane hut on Mt. Hood but after actually getting packed up and driving a bit towards it we hit a giant rainstorm in the gorge and decided to bail. There was no wood at cabin this time of year, everything was soaked, the trail would be a bog of mud and snow and I would have been hiking in my plastic ski mountaineering boots... and Leo if soaked would have been cold and stolen my sleeping bag so we decided to bail and head back to the house. 
But, we did decide to get leo out of the truck for a short walk around Latourell Falls which we hadn't been back to since our engagement photos in 2013. He enjoyed himself on the short loop hike and I got some HDR shots of the falls and historic highway bridge along with some macro shots of flowers and a really cool looking snail that we helped across the trail. Other than this short outing it was a pretty quiet weekend for the two of us after our work trips the week before.
