Climbing Mount Rainer

Mount Rainer is the highest volcano (14,411 feet or 4,392 m) and the most heavily glaciated peak in the contiguous United States. Despite being more than a 2 hour drive from Seattle, its presence dominates the area.

The Mount Rainer National Park is a common destination for outdoor loving Seattleites that come for camping, hiking, biking, skiing, climbing or just to practice the good old American tradition of shooting road signs.

This year a couple of friends and I decided to try to climb the mountain, and I hope to share some of that experience in this post. Though we were in decent general shape and were hiking in the Cascades more or less every weekend, neither of us had any experience from glacier traversal or climbing so we signed up for RMIs 4 day summit climb. In retrospect, going with a guide service was definitely the right choice - we didn't have the skills or experience to safely climb the mountain ourselves.

A four day climb may not sound like a big time commitment, but add to that hours spent gearing up at REI and many weekends of training hikes and you've got a decent size project. The four days with RMI were spent as follows:

Day one. Drove the two hours from Seattle to Ashford, a small town at the base of Rainer. We checked in and did a quick intro and gear check. This was a very short day, so we had pizza and explored the surroundings afterwards.

Day two. Traveled by bus up to the Paradise parking lot, which is a common starting point for all kinds of people, ranging from flip flop wearing tourists experiencing snow for the first time to some very accomplished mountaineers. From Paradise we hiked up half an hour and practiced basic skills like self-arrest, rest-stepping and walking in a rope team. This was useful and fun. We headed back to Ashford in the early afternoon with plenty of day light left - would have liked to stay longer and learn more, for example the basics of crevasse rescue.

Day three. Hiking to Camp Muir.

Day four. Climbing to the summit, back to Camp Muir and down to the Paradise parking lot. Meet up in Ashford and drive home.

GPS trace from our climb.

The Good
- Great guides. Experienced and professional!
- Great climb! Very good experience, perfect weather.

The Bad
- First day. Too short. Could have combined with second day.
- Second day. Also too short. Option to stay longer and learn more would have been good.

Tips
- Book early. Call the day RMI starts taking bookings for the season.
- Keep cost down. Guiding and pack list can easily add up to $5000. Borrow equipment from friends or buy second hand.
- Know your equipment before the climb, especially your boots.
- Be in good shape so you can enjoy it. This was harder than I thought it would be.
- Bring 2 friends! Rope team with 1 guide and us three friends was a lot of fun!

Hello, Mobile World

I've released my first Android application, by accident!

It all begun last weekend when I was hiking up Mt Defiance. I brought my Android G1 device to play with the awesome My Tracks application, and also used it to take some photos.

The G1 camera takes decent pictures (except it doesn't filter UV light well). Unfortunately, getting the photos off your phone and into your web album is not as easy as it should be - you either need to upload through to a computer, or go through a slow UI flow uploading the pictures one by one from the camera app.

Hopefully, the camera app will updated soon to do this better. But I started thinking about short term improvements half ways into the hike. How hard can it be? Playing with the Android platform could be fun... What if I just..? By the time I got back to the car I had convinced myself to write and Android app, and that night I did.

Turns out it's not hard at all. Setting up the development environment and getting a basic app running in the emulator took less than an hour - impressive! Learning about the programing model and limitations of the framework took a little longer. I was disappointed to find out that the built in email api only allows for one attachment per email, but decided to just make the best of it since I didn't want to spend time on a work-around.

After testing the app a little yesterday evening, I decided to see what the publication process is like so I signed up for the Android Market. After spending a hours trying to properly sign, upload and test the app I clicked 'unpublish' for the last time and gave up and went to sleep. It was just one of those nights where things kept going wrong and nothing was going to get done.

Today, this appeared in my inbox:

"Hey I downloaded your photo uploader software. Was just wondering if u guys are planning to make it possible to browse the pics u wanna send . The app is pretty sweet though fellas, good job."

Huh, what's going on?! I go to the market, and there it is. Published, working, and installed by 100 people! With no recollection of how this happened, I'm happy to see the app being used. Weird things happen when staying up too late :)

The app is called Photo Mail Uploader and is available for free in the Market and described as follows:


Crude application that provides a basic streamlined UI for sending new camera photos as emails.

Due to limitations in the Android platform, you still can only send one photo at a time, but it's faster than using built-in camera app.

Useful for sending multiple photos to a friend or to your Picasa email upload drop box.


Looking forward to feedback and hope people will find it as useful as I do!

2009-07-23 update: The app now has "1000-5000" downloads. http://www.nd.com.cn (en) wrote to say they might translate it to Chinese.

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Note: The project is hosted on http://code.google.com/p/photomailer/, including source code (license) and bug tracker. If you'd like more features, build them!

Camp Muir Hike

Playing some more with the browser plug-in for Google Earth. Below is a GPS trace that shows a hike I did today from Paradise to Camp Muir on Mt Rainer. The trace ends half on our way back because the GPS device I was using (Android phone) ran out of batteries. Too bad - glissading conditions were good, and I was hoping to find out my top speed going down the mountain.

(Raw kml file download as alternative for those with Google Earth)

McClellan Butte Hike

Last weekend, I tried this popular trail just off the I-90. There were still lots of snow, and we lost trail pretty quickly. Below is a (partial) track recorded with an Android phone showing the not so good way we took:


(Requires Google Earth plugin, or download kml file and view in Earth)

Sipadan Diving Permits

Sipadan is considered one of the worlds best dive sites (videos), made famous when diving celebrity Jacques Cousteau called it "an untouched piece of art" in 1989. It's a small island in the Malaysian province Sabah on north east coast of Borneo.

While on vacation in Borneo (pics) last week (April 2009), I spent a couple of days in the area but unfortunately did not get to dive at Sipadan because I did not get the required diving permit.

Finding information about the diving permits is a bit tricky and it is sometimes conflicting. I asked around among the staff at the Sipadan-Mabul Resort ("smart"), and though their responses were also not coherent, I'll share my experience and what I learned so far in hope that the information will benefit others.

In 2004, the Malaysian government ordered all on-site Sipadan resort operators to move their structures off the island to protect it's echo system. They also added the permit requirement for visiting Sipadan (diving or snorkeling), and there's a daily quota of 120 permits which is far less than the demand.

Permits are allocated by the local authorities using an unknown criteria. Most of the staff said that it's some form of queue, and that it's very important to apply for the permit far in advance. There are 12 resorts that can apply for permits and they should do so when you book (pay), so book in good time and make sure to give all information needed to apply for a permit.

But booking early does not guarantee permits. Those who book early and stay for 5-10 days at the resort days seemed to get about 2 or 3 days at Sipadan. For those staying only two nights, getting a Sipadan permit sounded unlikely in general.

A particularly frustrating part of this is that you wont know ahead of time whether you'll get the permit. The resort staff said they need to call the government every day to get a list of the next days permits. Luckily there's great muck diving around Mabul and Kapalai for days when you can't get a Sipadan permit.

So when do you need to book? We booked 2-3 weeks in advance and the on-site dive masters almost laughed when I asked for my chances for a Sipidan permit (although text in the booking confirmation indicated that one could expect diving at Sipadan). Common advice seemed to be booking at least 1-2 months in advance. Most dive-only tourist I talked to had booked 3-6 months before their trip.

That's my permit experience from the Sipadan-Mabul Resort, but I would recommend also looking at other resorts (good info here). I'd probably pick a different one next time as I didn't like the how the dives were organized with multiple intro dives, revisiting the same sites, and very large groups.

Nov 2009 Update: Someone with insight into this business tells me each guide service has a permit quota and that they pick who goes. Knowing the right people at the resorts allows you to dive Sipadan all days. For those who don't, the setup is a bit of a scam. The same person also tells me that the "conservation" efforts on the island is a disgrace - that island is now full of military personnel and remaining structures are falling apart.