All the months of training leads to this big day – Crevasse Rescue. I had practiced this on grass and inside a building so had some idea. However, it takes a leap of faith to trust your life to your teammates who have all been learning with you.

Crevasses are dangers in mountain climbing because they can be anywhere on a glacier and unless you mitigate risks while climbing, they can be very very bad.

I learnt how to arrest quickly if anyone on my rope falls into a crevasse. Then we do a drill of quickly setting up a z-pulley to draw the person out. See the picture below for the description and the text. But it was nice to be finally pulled over the lip and be standing on firm snow after 30 mins.

Jen and I don’t really attach much significance to days like New Years day. However, why pass on a nice extended weekend to get out and have some fun? We decided to go snow camping on Mt. Rainier. We had been to Mt. Rainier many times before but had never camped overnight, and never really built a snow cave. Got a lot of help from my good friend Brad, who helped me figure out what supplies I would need and how to use them. Also did a lot of research online on tips on building snow caves. Mt. Rainier is one of the snowiest places on earth and the hike to Camp Muir is one of the 10 most deadliest ones in the US. So I also went through all the incidents of fatalities and emergencies on Mt. Rainier over the last 30 years. Almost all involved bad luck and many were made worse because the victims and survivors hadn’t been planning on staying there long but were forced to due to bad weather. Since we had enough supplies to last us two days we felt safer.

We were a little adventurous and didn’t pick a spot to build a snow cave until the sun had set. And then we realized our main shovel had a broken handle. This put us under a lot of pressure because we had to build the cave as soon as possible before we started freezing. It took us 4 hours and by the time we were done we were very tired. But we stayed up, cooked some food, toasted at midnight and then went to bed.

The morning was gorgeous as we saw the sunlight filter through the ice inside the cave. Mt. Rainier had full visibility and we could see every detail that could be seen.

You are required to destroy the cave once you are done to leave the area pristine and to avoid accidents of people falling in. It was a little sad to do that, but then also a lot of fun to jump around.

On the way back, we hit the golden hour and the landscape was bathed in beautiful golden sunlight. It was breathtaking and I will just let the pictures do the talking!

Windows 8 proves again that Microsoft is awesome at solving for problems that don’t yet exist at the expense of nailing the ones that do.

I came across this handy chart by Anders Ramsay that calls out the differences.

via Anders Ramsay

It was $90 a night, inclusive of everything and it turned out to be just perfect. Here’s the review I wrote for it:

As expected, no surprises. Very quiet and peaceful and appreciate Trevor’s attention to detail and hospitality. It’s minimalistic, but do you really need more? It was a great sensory experience – especially since I was coming from days in a Hyatt back in Boston. Why waste time and money in a hotel when you can experience an edgier, different atmosphere? Very safe too! Very close to the subway I was able to get to it from Penn Station in 35 mins. Trevor is quick, provides good instructions and the rooftop is really something to experience! Wonder how many locals ever get to see that view.

This is when I then got confused. The price above includes a Black Touch Cover, so if I pick the Red one down here, do I end up with two covers? Is the Black Touch Cover the same accessory type as a Surface Touch Cover (Red)? That’s when I saw the link that said Touch vs. Type. Ah, too lazy too look back up, I assumed that the Red one I had selected was a Touch and the Black one I saw above has got to be the Type — only then would this one be offered as an add-on and there is really no other place on this page where the Type Cover is shown. Having accessories with long names really hurts recall and definitely affects the ability to contrast them.

No worries, I will click on that link and try to understand the difference between them and sort this out. So I clicked on the Touch vs. Type link and I ended up with the page scrolling itself down to this section below:

This page is all text and couldn’t be any more unfriendly. Check out the contents. It’s filled with marketing buzz words and nothing in these 4 paragraphs has absolutely any information that is relevant. Based on the contents here, I can conclude that the “Touch Cover is a thin and ultra-light dual keyboard cover” while the “Type Cover is a dual keyboard cover that lets you work the way you’re used to“. Wait, what? How are they different? Who wrote this copy? And how come there are no images of the two things. Am I really supposed to buy stuff without seeing what they look like? Not knowing the difference between the two is not my fault. And you have made no real attempt to apologize for and explain your confusing options.

I am not going to buy this online now because I still don’t know the difference between the two. And I refuse to look elsewhere. If your product website can’t explain it to me then you don’t deserve my money. Dear former company I worked for, try this: observe just one user walk through this website trying to buy the product; note down that user’s frustrations and fix the top 3 and you will see a 10% increase in online sales — duh!

Crazy cold and windy as it was, I managed to convince Jen to hold her camera steady as I explain this on the mountain – the highest place in Africa.