New hiking gear

Today i got some new hiking boots for hiking in the snow.  They claimed to be 100% waterproof so i decided to test them out.  I took them up Neffs Canyon, where the snow was all wet and about to turn into slush.  My wife and I hiked up for a little over a mile and the boots held up very well.  My feet were very dry and warm,the only reason we turned back was because there were too many rocks poking out of the snow to go sleding on.  I also got  a new par of snow pants.  They did the job ok, not as good as the boots.  The material seemed to absorb liquid almost like normal clothing would.  Of course, we were sleding in the worst possible conditions for snow (it was really wet snow).  So i think on a colder day, later in the winter, the snow pants will hold up a lot better.  I hope to break in the boots a lot more this winter and hopefully make it to the top of Neffs Canyon, which i have never done.

Neffs Canyon

So the now has finally come and I can go sleding again at my favorite spot.  Neff's Canyon is located near the base of Mt. Olympus and it leads to the top of Millcreek canyon.  Every Winter (all seasons for hiking) that i can remember, my family and I have gone up this canyon at least once a week to go sledding.  Sometimes we hike up this canyon for a couple hours before we start to sled down or just short 20-30 minute hikes.  The canyon is not too steep, but never flat enough that you will slow down.  You are able to go as fast as you dare when you go down the trail after hiking as far as you like, the only problem is avoiding the hikers coming up the canyon.  If you want to avoid the people, you will have to hike up a little more.  After about 20 minutes of hiking, most people turn around at a forking area.  If you just want to go a little further, head right.  Going right will take you about 5-10 more minutes before the sleding trail ends.  If youwant to go have a nice long walk full of solitude, go left and you can hike for hours until you reach millcreek.  I have never hiked all the way to millcreek, but I have gone really far up this trail.  This trail is where the best sleding in the world can be done.  Its just you and a narrow trail with mounds of snow off to either side that keep you going quickly down on your sled.  I just went down the canyon earlier today and it is just as good as it always has been.  I have made it a goal to reach the end of Neff's Canyon sometime this winter and sled down for about an hour straight when I am done.

Playing with TNT

I recently got a ton of TNT in the game Minecraft.  So I began to experiment with it and blow a few things up like trees, small hills and anything else.  Eventually i found a tunnel system inside of a mountain.  I dedcided that it would be a good idea to make trails of TNT in each of the branches of the tunnel system inside of this montain.  It was not long before i found that not only di the tunnel system go around the mountian, but it also went deep underground.  So I decided to link the massive TNT upper network to the lower one.  When I finally mapped out the tunnel system with TNT, i hadused about 500-700 units of TNT.  This iswhen i decided it was time to set the entire TNT network off with one big bang.  I Ignited one of the TNT and ran away as fast as the game would let me.  Eventhough i was running pretty fast, the TNT still caught up to me and i was killed.  I eventually came back to life and went over to see the damage that had been done.  The entire mountain was gone and there was a giant crater/cave where it had been.

Making Water slides in Minecraft

I recently discovered that it is possible to make a water slide in Minecraft.  If you make a boat in the game, you can ride on the water with it and it is extremely buoyant, even if you start in your boat at the bottom of a lake, it will float up at a very fast rate to the surface, at which point it jumps about 5 or 6 feet above the surface.  If you make a waterfall somewhere, boats will also shoot to the top of those as well.  Anywhere there is water, the boat will get to the top of it.
After having discovered this, i began construction of my water slide by putting water on hills and have the boat flow down with the rivers.  When i get too low, i make a waterfall that shoots me up and i can then continue downwards, following a river.  This process can be looped so the slide never ends.

Update on Minecraft

So i finished the enterprise last week and it looked awesome until the newer version of minecraft came out and we couldnt play the old one anymore. Appartently we had to create a new, untouched world to continue playing minecraft.  So now we cant get access into the old world which had the enterprise in it so i cannot post any screen shots of the massive ship.  Oh well, there are new things that come with the new patch that i can experiment with.  I doubt i will ever rebuild the enterprise due to the large amount of time it took to make it in the first place but I'l come up with something smaller to work on this coming wek if I have some time to kill.

Creating the enterprise

Some friends and i are all on the same Minecraft server so we can help each other build things or destroy things.  We decided last week to start working on the Enterprise from Star Trek.  This seemed like the best idea ever at the start.  We began by clearing an area out for it because it was going to be huge, just like the one on the show.  After some thinking and planning it out, we decided to scale it down a bit because it would take 10 years to make a actual sized one.  We started by creating the giant saucer part of the Enterprise then after that was done, we could get an idea for how big we needed to make the rest of the ship.  Now as we are almost done, it is getting to be more work than fun.  The Enterprise is massive and working on any part of it requires a lot of time and planning.  We are not going to give up, we are just slowing down.  The exterior is just about done and we are working on the interior now.  The entire ship will probably be done next week and i can post some screen shots of the finished product then.  Of course the ship will not be entirely accurate, we are creating it based off of memory and pictures we find on the internet.

Minecraft

Ok, so its getting cold outside so i decided that i'm done climbing mountain for this summer and they can wait for next summer.  I have decided to start blogging about a game i am playing, called Minecraft.  Minecraft is a sandbox game in which you are in the first person view and you destroy blocks of your environment, like dirt and you can then pick up that block you destroyed and place it wherever you please.  You can make a giant crater of dirt and then build a big mountain of dirt with that dirt from the crater.  Aside from dirt, there are trees to chop down, flowers to harvest, ore to mine from gigantic natural mine shafts, and a lot of other things we see in the wilderness in real life.  With all these materials you build houses, castles, mine tracks which can be made into roller coasters, and anything else you want.  You are limited only by your imagination. 
One of the few drawbacks to the game is that the graphics look like they are 20 years old.  thats the only drawback.
Actually seeing this game will help you a ot more than reading this so i recommend this video from youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANgI2o_Jinc

It just has a guy who tells you the basics on how to play the game and i would recommend it if you want to learn more about the game or how to start playing it.

grandeur peak

This week i took things easy and hiked up grandeur peak from millcreek canyon.  grandeur peak is a little mountain that makes up the left side of Millcreek canyon.  It takes about 2 or 3 hours round trip depending on how many stops you make and how quick you go.  My friend invited me to go up with him because he is training to get up Mt. Olympus sometime before it snows.  We started pretty early around 9am, when it was still a little cold outside so we could beat the mid day heat from the sun.  The hike was really fun and it was nice to see all the leaves changing as well as other scenery.   We finished after about 2 hours and thirty minutes just before the sun made it unpleasant to hike.  This next week or sometime after i might try to do lone peak.

Albion Basin

This last weekend i got to go mountain biking up little cottonwood canyon at Albion Basin with my wife.  it was a lot of fun, we parked at the pay booth near the trail head and biked up about 3 miles. After a nice, not to steep ride up, locked out bikes up and hiked a half mile up to a lake.  We ate lunch at the lake and enjoyed the scenery and then took of back down the mountain and drove down the canyon.

Mt. Olympus

Today was a great day to go hiking, I got up early today and stated to hike up the Mt. Olympus trail head.  The air was perfect for keeping me cool as I hiked towards the top.  This is a hike i have done 2 times before and always seems to go on forever, but it is all worth it when you see the view of the entire city at the top.  Hopefully it will not snow too soon so i can try some other mountains out before winter.

Europe Trip

My wife and I spent the 2 weeks before fall semester began in Europe.  We went primarily to go through some Swiss canyons that are full of flowing water.  I have gone through these canyons before on a previous Europe trip and we had a blast.  This time was my first time taking my wife through the canyons.  We had a lot of fun rappelling through waterfalls, sliding down natural water slides into pools of water and cliff jumping.