Product of ND: Here's to Now

The past 20 days have been a whirlwind of office work, student programs, trad climbing training, crag clean up, and teaching improvised self rescue courses. Luckily, it is the holidays and the new year is right around the corner. As a treat to myself I am headed down to southern Thailand next week for some time on the beach, some diving, and most importantly some climbing.

We recently had the 8th annual Crazy Horse Buttress crag clean up and it was a great success. The morning consisted of splitting into groups and attacking all the crags. Mostly we just clean up trash, cleared the trails, and cleaned the routes as best as possible. We also hauled an ungodly amount of gravel to various crags to stabilize the belay areas, before the next rainy season. After a long morning of physical labor most people spent the afternoon either climbing or sleeping. I opted to explore the local area and familiarize myself with it. I ended up walking around to a temple on the back side of the crag and visiting a tourist cave. After that I ascended a long stretch of stairs to bang the gong at the top of Crazy Horse Buttress. Overall it was a pretty successful day. Check out the link below:

http://vimeo.com/34063445

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So many stairs, drunk with fatigue

Views from the top

Totally ignoring all safety measures

On one of my night time strolls I came across this gang of fixed geared riders at Tha Phae Gate. They were being very hipster and looking good. If your familiar with the movie "Stomp the Yard," it was very similar. Someone would do a trick and everyone would ooo and ahhh, then someone else had to out do it. Anyway, it was interesting to watch, though my camera didn't really get any good photos of the action.

Fixed gear gang at Pratu Tha Phae

Day practicing some gear placements

So, Christmas has turned out to be interesting here in Thailand. It's another strange Thai / Western cultural clash. The Christmas Promenade was set up at the Three Kings Monument here in Chiang Mai, it includes fish and chip stands, an ice ring, a band singing carols, a Thai Santa Clause, and of course a CMRCA climbing wall. Thought I would stop by the other night and see how everyone was getting on at the bouldering wall, which ended up being over run with kids. Below are a few pictures that may help put it into perspective.