Leaders of a peace conference, hosted in South Africa, seem to have forgotten the whole apartheid thing...

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2009/03/2009323184228265208.html

My The North Face Met5 jacket broke again - the heated torso panels no longer worked when the batteries were fully charged. I sent the jacket back to TNF in January for warranty repair. They are no longer manufacturing the Met5 jacket - maybe the technology was too bleeding edge...

Anyways, I just received a gift card for the full price of the jacket thanks to TNF's lifetime warranty!

Burning hair

Note to self: do not put your head into a 900F annealing oven without a hat to cover your vertically-inclined hair...

Before I head back to Reno, we went for a little hike this morning. Most of the areas above 9000ft have a 10 - 15ft base.

Today was amazing - the sun was out, the wind was breezy, and the snow was soft. The steeps were in great condition - no moguls or ice!

My uncle Tom & my dad

Me trying to keep my eyes open in the sun & wind.
This was a great end to the week. Unfortunately I'm leaving the 12,000ft mountain & returning to the 700 vertical foot hills of Wisconsin.

The best part of yesterday - the hill was steep and had a couple feet of pow.

I stopped by Hot Shop Glass today to pickup a couple of pieces that I made last Tuesday. I was stoked with the results; the green bowl turned out great. When I get the pieces too large, it's difficult to control the molten glass.

64 inches of snow in the last 3 days...I can't wait to get to Mammoth.

I headed out to Tyrol Basin yesterday with James, Mark, Gabe, and Brad. Amazingly, they actually had decent snow after all of last week's rain. Here's a How To guide of what not to do:

Step 1: Jump onto the rail.

Step 2: Don't fall

Another reason why Americans do not need to leave the comforts of home for strange, foreign lands: San Diego Zoo offers a safari-like experience. You'll see some of the same animals, but I doubt you'll hear Swahili, eat indigenous African food, or experience the severe poverty. I consider these cultural items to be as important as the wildlife, but maybe I'm in the minority...

http://www.sandiegozoo.org/wap/index.html

On the bright side, a trip to Cali will be significantly less than Africa.