Paul G and I decided to do a casual stroll up Quandary, since the weather broke. A minor storm had blown through and the wind was actually less than during the storm, but still pretty significant.
I remembered my camera, but it refused to take video clips well. One was all faded into white and the other didn't record and sent my camera into an alarm I've never heard from a camera before.
Down in the trees, it was quite nice!
Then we broke treeline and it began to crank up.
On the final ridge to the summit, the wind was raging. There were about 8 people above us on the ridge and I took out my camera. I stuck it on video-mode. Then I pushed the record button. Too bad it didn't take. Picture a windy, snowy ridge and a big, vertical snow-tornado sweeping down the ridge, a rolling sideways tornado on the left edge a little lower, and a billowing cloud on the right heading up. The four top people got enveloped and disappeared from view for a bit. The whole time the mass joined forces and headed right at me. It slammed right into me and I had to stop recording to grab my poles to keep from getting blown over. But like I said, it didn't record. I was so wrapped-up, ballistic grains of snow were sand-blasting any exposed flesh, and my polarized glasses turned the camera LCD screen black. So I had a hard time operating the camera. Would've been an awesome clip! The one that got away, I guess.
It was a pretty easy day - we took our time, but still took less than 5 hours. We spent over half an hour hanging out on the summit eating and soaking up the views.
In case you can't tell who is who, I'm the fat red guy.
I may have figured out why my right foot is hurting. At work, the bathroom stall doors either won't shut at all, or you have to do something creative to get them shut. One, if you lift up on it, the latch-pin will line up with the hole in the side. But someone broke the coat hook off the door that we'd use to lift up. So I used my foot to lift up while turning the latch. This has been going on for months. So that explains why my foot was hurting worse even as I was running less, and it didn't coincide with any running injury.
Running, however, has aggravated the hell out of it. So it's going to take months for it to go away.
Meanwhile, I'm back to running less, but lifting weights, using my rowing ergometer, and doing situps, pushups, and pullups. This is causing me to bulk back up. Instead of losing weight, I'm still gaining - now 178 pounds. At least my percentage of body-fat is starting to go back down again.
