of bikes and men: Out with winter and in with Spring

Two weekends ago myself, Cam and Markez ushered out Old Man Winter and had one last hurrah by doing the coveted Spearhead Traverse in a day. Cam is a far better writer than myself and clearly has a better memory so if you're interested in reading a trip report, check out his blog The Adventures of Cameron Charles. Thanks for the great and extensive write up Shaft!

When you give winter the boot out the backdoor, you better have something to replace him with. Unfortunately what showed up in Vancouver as the next act has born only a fleeting resemblance to our beloved Mrs. Springtime for the past few weeks. The weather has been less than optimal so far this spring but the days that have been nice have allowed a few great sessions of bouldering and sport climbing. The weekend before doing the Spearhead Traverse, I was lucky to get out to a new (for me) area up in Squamish known as The Hatchery with a good friend who has since returned to the motherland after a sojourn to Ontario where we met. His name is Scott Tasaka and he is a crusher of rocks...don't let him near your project as he'll likely rip off all the holds in unbridled passion. Scott is likely the best technical climber I've known personally and has the deepest bucket of psyche you'll ever dip into so needless to say I jump at the opportunity to get out on rock with him. We also met up with guidebook author extraordinaire, Marc Bourdon and his wife Pam; two more amazing climbers and very genuine people.

Marc spent most of the day shooting photos for his new edition of the Squamish Bouldering guidebook to be released, as I understand, in June of this year, while Scott, Pam and I spent most of the day wrestling pebbles. Marc was kind enough to send along a few cool photos he snapped of me and also let me post them here. Check out Marc's website Quickdraw Publications for the release of the new guidebook and to see what other exciting things he has coming out.