I started this blog in November of 2000, over 12 years ago. Over time it became less about writing and more about updating my website with the most recent picture and video posts. I realized I was repeating what was being posted on my Google+ account, which I use as a public social media presence. Therefore, I have swapped the link on my www.erikhenne.com site from blogger to Google+ and this could be my last blogger post. Perhaps in the future if I have something to say, I will revive it, but for now I will let the posts on Google+ be my primary method of announcing new things on my webpage.

In 2012, Heather and I made the goal to ski every month of the year, aka Turns All Year. To commemorate the ski year, with no seasons, I put together this short video.

2012 was a big year for me in many ways. To better understand in perspective I have compiled some numbers from the year.

54 - the number of distinct places outside of Washington State that I visited, which is 16 more than the second highest year. The busiest month was January when I lived out of a suitcase and visited 10 separate places in 5 countries.

94 - the number of days spent doing activities in the mountains, which is 22 more days than my second highest year. 2012 included 26 days of alpine skiing, 30 days of backcountry skiing, and 38 days of hiking. Highlights included a week of skiing in Austria, a week of skiing in Chile, backpacking in Denali and the Grand Canyon, and a traverse across Mt. Olympus.

669 - the number of miles I ran in 2012, which included two of my longest runs, 17.8 miles at the Silvrettarun 3000 race in Austria and 17.9 miles on a trail run on Mt. Teneriffe.

Some smaller numbers include:

4 - books read. But in my defense I read all 54 Economist editions and the entire internet

3 - concerts attended, all artists already seen in other years.

3 - the number of bones I broke this year: right 4th metacarpal, left ulna, left trapezium.

I'm a little behind on posting pictures and videos.

For my 30th birthday, five best friends accompanied me on a three night backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon.

Pictures from hiking into the hole.
Pictures from hiking out of the hole.
Video from the trip.

In early December we braved bad weather and spent a few nights in the Methow Valley. Pictures and video.

I also posted some pictures from various small hikes this fall.

I made a few short time lapse videos this week from films I took back in July. Something to do when the sun is gone I suppose. One of the SilvrettaRun 3000 and Golm Alpine Bahn and Hidden Lake Peak Clouds.

Heather and I spent a long week in Chile last month. The plan was to ski powder, but Chile was having an epically bad snow season, so we had less powder than planned. We toured around the country and still found fun places to ski in the Andes, as well as hike.

Here are pictures from the skiing portions of the trip.
Here are pictures from the hiking portions of the trip.
Here are pictures from the city portions of the trip.
And a video of the whole trip.

For our five year anniversary, Heather and I spent a long weekend in Napa at the end of July.

In the beginning of August I went on three hikes that each featured volcanoes, flowers, and marmots.

I appear to be a bit behind on updating this blog with recent photos.

- Back in June, Heather, David, Megan and I did an overnight ski tour near Chinook Pass
- In July Heather and I visited Colorado.
- In July I did a solo overnight trip up Grindstone Mountain.
- In mid July Heather and I did an overnight ski tour and spent the night in Hidden Lake Peak Look Out
- At the end of July, Chris and I did an 18 mile trail run in Austria.

Our final set of pictures from Alaska. A day doing a boat tour of the fjords out of Seward. A day hiking near the Exit Glacier and driving around. A day fishing. And a day hiking on Bird Creek Ridge.

The highlight of our trip in Alaska was five days of backpacking cross country in Denali National Park. We didn't see a single person the entire time. Our first two days we traversed behind Thoro Mountain. The second half of the trek took us closer yet to Denali with views over the Muldrow Glacier. We had our first encounter with a bear on foot (and second and third). We circumnavigated Mt. Eielson and headed back to catch a bus on our fifth day with some of the best views of Denali of the trip.

Heather and I spent 10 days in Alaska last month. The highlight was backpacking off trail in Denali National Park for five days where we saw more grizzly bears (3) than humans (0). The first set of pictures are from our circuitous road trip to the beginning of our trek:

I have been getting out a lot lately, but haven't been taking many photos. There are only so many photos you can take of clouds. Things brightened up for a trip to the Chiwaukums last weekend. North Cascades highway opened yesterday and the weather is looking good for this weekend.

To celebrate Leap Day, we did something crazy and drove the long way from Sandpoint, ID to Seattle via Lillooet, BC. A lot of fresh and lonely scenery was observed, a day was spent skiing in Joffre Park, two days skiing at Whistler, and witnessed the wedding of our good friends Adam and Cynnie. Here are some pictures from that trip. 

Some pictures from the ski vacation in Austria last week to go along with the video I made.

This ski season continues to get better. Heather, Chris, Manu, and I spent a week in the Montafon Valley in Austria. It snowed so much while we were there that they had to close the road due to avalanche risk. We were locked in the valley. It was no problem though, we could walk to the gondola. We skied powder all day and dreamed of it at night.

I had a lot of trains to ride last week and hacked together this video from the week.

Heather is working in Sandpoint, Idaho for a while. After my time in Germany, I spent two weeks there working from "home." We made plenty of time to ski Schweitzer while David, Megan, Adam, and Cynnie visited.

The second weekend Heather and I made a road trip to Red Mountain, British Columbia to see if the rumors of amazing terrain were true. We wrapped up my time there with a Ski Tour up Blue Mountain under bluebird skis.

I made a video of the whole time there and a photo album.

A number of hikes and ski tours last year I took interesting pictures but the trips themselves didn't warrant a dedicated album. I had some time recently and I made an album of my favorite pictures that I hadn't posted yet.

I've been traveling and skiing a fair amount.

After Thanksgiving I went to Germany for two weeks. Over the weekend I had the chance to visit Chris. No snow yet, so we went for a mountain bike tour in the Bregenzerwald.

In December David and I skied the Slot Couloir. In December Heather and I went to Summit County, Colorado to do our best to teach Will how to ski and to ski on man made snow.

Beginning with New Years, the real travel began: road trip to Whistler for four days of Canadian skiing, back to Seattle, road trip to Sandpoint, ID to move Heather in, fly to Orange County for work, back to Sandpoint for the weekend, to Seattle for two days, to Belgium, road trip to Berlin, fly to Friedrichshafen, then spent the weekend in Austria skiing, train to Nuremberg, fly back to Berlin for a day, fly to Frankfurt, train to Heidelberg. Tomorrow I head back to Sandpoint for a week, and then more travel.

Chris and I had a fantastic weekend in Austria. Not much to say other than watch this video and look at these pictures to get an idea.

I put together the best film clips from our trip to China into this compilation.

I've finished my last set of pictures from China. Our last few days were spent in Shanghai.

I became the new rep for DPS skis in the Seattle area this fall. If you are considering new skis for the upcoming season, I couldn’t recommend them more. Their designs are revolutionary and my skis instantly took my skiing to the next level. If you like them on Facebook you could win the new Spoon Ski. If you order online, I can get you free shipping. If you have any friends who are patrol or ski instructors, I can get them a pro deal. Let me know if you have any questions about DPS skis.

I finished an album of pictures from our two days at the Yellow Mountain, Huangshan.

Huangshan (the Yellow Mountain) was one of my favorite parts of our trip to China. One of the best parts were the charming, yet patronizing, signs. Below is a collection of many of the signs seen along the hiking trail:

• Salute to manners and hygiene keepers!
• Be Careful of Precipice
• With safety in mind, you have the views in eyes
• The tree is 12.8 meters high, its circumference is 1.46 meters, and its crown size is 9.6 meters times 11.7 meters. The bare five root looks like the claw of the dragon.
• Stop Climbing the Cliff
• Now-I-believe-it Peak: It's so fantastic yo don't believe your eyes; seeing with your eyes, you believe it's really fantastic
• The mountain is inspecting your behavior while you are appreciating its beauty
• Virtue is esteemed while the scenery is enchanting
• Look out for taking photos.
• Keep an eye on the views to let fly your relaxed heart.
• Let every action witness the environment protection.
• Advocate civilized sightseeing in Huangshan.
• Do not stay at the peak in storms
• Leave nothing behind but your footprints and take nothing away but your memorable experiences
• Respected visitors: The traveling path is under construction and that may bring inconvenience to you. Sorry!
• Keep away from the monkeys in case you're bothered
• Your soul joining the views, civilization goes with the mountains. 
• Mt. Huangshan is admiring your gracefulness while you are enjoying its beauty. 
• Due to the small area of the viewing platform, act of comity is encouraged. 
• Look out for your step while looking about your admiration. 
• As a smile is the prettiest language, gracefulness the best self-presentation. 
• Keep an eye on the views to let fly your relaxed heart. 
• Your soul joining the views, civilization goes with the mountains. 
• To leave with the memory, please leave behind your virtue. 

One of the major inspirations for our trip to China was the karst topography of the Li River. It certainly didn't disappoint. We spent two and a half days in the area, a full day cycling along the Yulong River and full day hiking along the Li River. The Li and Yulong Rivers.

Heather and Manu and I spent 11 days traveling through central south China last month. I finished my first set of pictures, which are from the Longsheng Rice Terraces and Dong villages of Chengyang.

Some more silly wild flower photos from Poe Mountain two weeks ago.

I've been getting after it this month. A few weeks ago Heather and I backpacked in a new corner of of Mt. Rainier. We camped near Saint Andrews Lake and visited Emerald Ridge on the way out. Tons of flowers all over the place and an amazing sunset. Somehow we took over 1200 pictures. Understandably, it took me a while to winnow them down. The pictures are posted here.

The next day it was a bit cloudier and I went to Lake Dorothy in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.

The next weekend Heather and I hiked down to Third Beach and spent the night watching porpises (porpi?) and seals. Last weekend Tony and I checked out the abundance of wildflowers at Poe Mountain. All of those pictures are still pending.

I posted pictures from a backpacking trip David and Megan and I took to Tank Lakes in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness a week and a half ago.

Last weekend Heather and I had an amazing two days backpacking in Mt. Rainier National Park in a corner I had never been to yet. Somehow we manages to take over 1100 pictures. I am still working on going through those.

This weekend is the ocean. It is August in Seattle and we've got to make the most of it.

One year ago I increased my running volume from one commute to-and-from work per week, to two. For an entire year I have run the round trip (3.75 miles one way) twice per week as often as I could. (Work travel, holidays, and vacation prevented many runs.) I figured it was an appropriate time to put together some statistics about the commute.

• I ran to/from work work 107 times. Considering 4x52 weeks, that is a 51% success rate.
• Over the past year I ran 810 miles total, running to/from work was 51% (415 miles) of my total distance.
  

My morning runs were much more consistent. The run home from work I often modify by doing intervals, steps, or longer distance. 88 of my runs were tempo runs door-door. Of these runs:

• My average time door-to-door was 29.81 minutes
• My fastest time door-to-door was 24.85 minutes
• My slowest time door-to-door was 35.87 minutes
  

Run durations depend on timing of street lights, energy level, and construction (there have been numerous detours on my main route).

A histogram of these run durations can be seen in this image:http://imgur.com/J7hUO.png.

I uploaded pictures from our ski tour trip to Burroughs at Sunrise from a few weeks ago.

I completed post-processing the pictures from our trip to Costa Rica two weeks ago. I split the trip into two parts. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here.

We spent a week in Costa Rica last week. A few days at the beach Samara, a few days at the Monteverde Cloud Forest, and a day sloshing through the mud on volcano Tenorio to visit the turquoise Rio Celeste.

Spent a day at work and then headed back out to a different volcano, of the local variety, to ski the Burroughs out of Sunrise on Mt. Rainier and watch the sunset.

Many pictures waiting for me to go through, but first, work and then David's wedding in Ohio.

Last Saturday was the nicest day of the year so far. Eric and I seized it and made a one-day attempt to ski the Cascadian Couloir of Mt. Stuart. We thought we would have to turn around due to instability, but things worked in our favor. It was my biggest day of climbing yet: 7,700 vertical feet in 12.5 miles and 10.6 hours. Pictures from the trip are here.

I combined the best video clips from Nepal into this video montage. It is less than 6 minutes. I think that is all I have left to share from Nepal.

While on our trek in Nepal, Heather and I decided that the photos from our trip and trek in Peru really ought to be upgraded to the Picasa Web Album. I broke it into two parts: Cuzco and Machu Picchu and the Santa Cruz Trek.