Seasons Greetings!

Howdy folks,

Much time has passed since my last one of these and there is much to tell. So without further ado... I find myself residing in the lovely Black Hills these days. Most time when not away for work, I can be found... (you guessed it) climbing! This first photo is of your humble narrator climbing up a famous old climb called "Threading the Needle". The climb is right over a parking lot full of rubber neck tourists. It is quite common to be sweating it out, trembling and scared, delicately balancing between success and a ghastly fall only to have some goober in the parking lot yelling up "How did you get the rope up there?" or some such thing. But every once in a while, they pull through and take a nice photo and send it to you.

The next job to come after Norway was out to this island off of the coast of CA called San Nicolas Island. It is a military island which also serves as a nature reserve. Most of the beaches were covered with hundreds of seals, sea lion, or elephant seals.  This picture to the right is of a group of female elephant seals. They may be cute, but good gravy do they stink.

I was on the island for about 3 weeks which pales in comparison to the native girl who had lived on the island by herself for 18 years. There is a book about it called "Island of the Blue Dolphins". When it was too windy to work, me and couple of the guys from work were able to rent beach cruiser bikes. We formed a gang (which we called The Dugongs) and explored as much as we could. It was pretty much like having a national park all to ourselves. Here a sea lion soaks up some sun.

 The next place I ended up was drastically less appealing. I spent a week in a very small, northern town in MT called Glasgow. It was rather uneventful, so I wont give it much more mention than that. After making a quick stop back to MN to spend Thanksgiving with the family, I packed my bags for Guam. It is in Guam that I sit composing this blog. It is 4am Saturday morning here, though it is only Friday afternoon for most of you reading this. I have been out here for three weeks and had such an amazing experience.

Here is the view from my hotel. It is literally on one of the best beaches on Guam. The snorkeling was unreal. Most days consisted of going to work, coming back to the hotel and snorkeling. The temps here stayed a pretty steady high 80's and the water was about the same. When not snorkeling, I could usually be found rummaging through the palms tree and jungle looking for coconuts. Much was learned about coconuts in the trials and tribulations of trying to open them with only sticks and stones. But I am stubborn if nothing else, and many coconuts were thoroughly enjoyed. I had to stop and laugh at myself for a moment as a pretty woman went running by me and gave me a look that made me realize how much of a primitive mad man I must have looked like down on my hands and knees smashing coconuts with rocks on the beach. C'est la vie.

Here is a picture of one of the critters that was around in hoards. They were quite fun to catch and really interesting to watch.

In my free time I was lucky enough to get a chance to do some scuba diving. Comparing the diving in Guam to the only other diving experienced in central WI (in late October in a man made lake none the less) made for drastically different experiences. Even down at 100 feet, the water temp in Guam felt like lukewarm bathwater and there were tropical fish everywhere. The most notable sightings while diving were a couple of black tipped mako sharks, and a number of sea turtles. I got to do a total of five dives, two of which were the most sought after dives on Guam called "The Blue Hole", and "The Crevasse".

Here is another critter that was around in big numbers and there is actually a good reason for this. Recently there has been a real big problem on Guam due to a large emergence of an invasive species; the brown snake. Not so long ago, the island had become almost devoid of birds. The snakes arrived with no natural predators on the island, began eating all of the birds which were the biggest consumers of the spiders. Thus, the spiders began to boom. The problem is still being worked on, but getting better. The snakes are declining, the birds are increasing, and the spiders still seem largely present, though mostly harmless.


For the of the WWII history buffs in the crowd, you might understand the significance of a place like Guam. For those who don't know, the possession of Guam was one of the most important in the war in the Pacific. Without it, America would have had no place to stop for supplies, gas, rest, etc. There was some very gruesome fighting that took place on the island, and to stand on the invasion beaches where thousands of Americans lost their lives caused for a very surreal experience.

So all in all, once again life has been quite good to me. I am actually finishing up this blog post back home in the Black Hills after 26 hours of travel. Feels nice to be home. After the holidays I will be taking a week and a half long climbing trip back to my old stomping grounds in AZ. So until the next one of these... live life in abundance!

                 And have a Merry Christmas from Santa and Danta!