November 18th-22.
We arrived at Pucon around 9 in the morning. We exchanged emails with these two women we met on the bus (Bridey and Katy) saying we would meet for dinner that night, and then we went in search of the cheapest hostel we could find. We found it just in time, coming in right when it started to rain outside (this became the prevalent weather on our trip throughout Chile).
After settling into our hostel, we headed out into the pouring rain to explore Pucon and make plans for our up coming days there. We did some window and food shopping, and walked along the beach of black sand (sorry, I forgot to take a picture because the weather was crappy the whole time we were there but the mountains that surrounded the lake that we could make out through the clouds were beautiful, lush and green). We were able to see Volcan Villarica the first morning we were there. It towered above the town with beauty and menace, just a short distance away. The rest of the time we were in town it was shrouded in cloud. We found out that the alarms that went off every day we were in Pucon were practice alarms for when the Volcano blew (so how do we know when the alarms are real? And what in the world do we do when it’s a real alarm?).
That night we met with Katy, Bridey, and Marcus (Katy’s new friend from her rafting trip that afternoon) for dinner. We ate at an Arabian café and Bridey got this weird Arabian dish with a variety of foods wrapped in different things. One of them was a lamb or duck intestine. She became strangely full when she finally reached that part of her dish. And after that we all headed to Mama Tapas for drinks.
Thursday, Tom and I rented mountain bikes (I learned very quick through the rattling and jarring of my arms that the shocks did not work at all, so it was more like riding a really heavy road bike) and went on a leisurely 33ish mile bike ride. Our fingers were crossed the whole time that it would not be a downpour on us. There were a number of close calls with light rain. We stopped for pictures and lunch at a beautiful waterfall, with the bluest water I had ever seen (up until I went to El Bolson). That night we went to the hot springs which lived up to their name if you went into the right pool (I was literall sweating when sitting in one), otherwise they were just warm. It was pretty nice after biking for several hours in freezing rain.
Wednesday, we signed up for canyoning at two in the afternoon, and so went to continue our multi-day planning of our climb of Villarica and for a short run on the beach.
The canyoning was fantastic, I’m sorry I don’t have pictures but I was afraid of getting the camera damaged. We were a little worried at first because they dropped us off at this random point along a small stream that was not in a canyon. But after walking for about 15 minutes we got to rappel down the first waterfall and by the second rappel, the real fun began. We were in a narrow canyon, gorgeously sculpted out by water, about 50 feet deep at points. The walls had huge bowl like chunks taken out where you can see the river once had a sharp bend. The directions and points of the bends changed at the different heights of the canyon as the river’s direction had changed over time, making it appear as though a wave traveled up the rock. Then there were more delicate looking etches in the sedimentary rock where you could see the swirl of the water marked on just the surface. Lush plant life grew over and down the edge of the canyon. We made our way slowly down the river, squeezing through very narrow points in the rock, down miniature waterfalls, through water that barely covered our feet or at other points it was up to my chest. At the end, the man who drove us to the canyon met us at a different point with hot coffee and cookies at the ready (fantastic for such a cold day).
The trip was great except for about halfway through, when Tom slipped and fell on a rock in the stream and hurt his hand. We got back into Pucon, and after an hour of Tom running around, still trying to plan our climb up the Volcano, I convinced him to go to the hospital. Within an hour of arriving at the hospital a doctor looked at his hand, had xrays done, a cast put on upon discovering that it was broken, and everything was paid for. We were out the door in no time.
The next day, instead of climbing Villarica, we explored Parque Nacional Huerquehue for the day which was gorgeous with its huge trees, pristine lakes and snow covered mountains. Upon returning from our eightish mile hike and hourish bus ride, we ate dinner, prepped for our big climb the next day, and ordered a taxi.
At 5 in the morning on Sunday, we were loading the taxi and on our way to Volcan Villarica. We were determined to beat the CONAF (chile’s rangers) to the top of the ski lifts at 7:30, otherwise they would demand to see papers or a guide. It was dark when we started but the sun began to rise as we began our trek up the snow on the Volcano (I know, it does seem rather odd to have snow on a Volcano that is one of the most active Volcanoes in Chile). The colors were beautiful, the ski was mostly clear and the view of the Andes was fantastic, becoming even better the further we hiked upward. We beat the CONAF with ease and were able to continue our trek to the summit. Taking our time as we went to take many pictures. We summated at about 10:30 am, spent a few minutes at the summit-not too many though for the sulfuric fumes coming from the crater were not that great smelling and were not really the best for us to inhale. I’m happy we decided to hike the volcano that day instead of Saturday, for the weather on Saturday didn’t really clear until afternoon, so our views would have been extremely limited.
We were back to Pucon by about three in the afternoon, by hitching a ride back with a nice family. We showered, sent our clothes to a laundry mat, and bought our bus tickets to Temuco for the first thing Monday morning. It was time to get out of there, and now that we finally were able to climb Villarica, the thrill of conquering a Volcano and really being in the Andes burned in our blood and our interest now turned to Volcan Lonquimay, two hours east of Temuco.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
In the Beginning…
Nov 14th-17th. Santiago and Around
I’ve come to the conclusion that probably the easiest thing to do for the journal entry is split them up by where we were, so not all the information is thrown you at once so that you have to suffer though a 10-page entry and you don’t have to have everything scattered in about 20-30 entries.
So in the beginning of my trip, Tom and I attempted to sleep on the floor at JFK outside the check baggage area (by the way, JFK does not have seating before the baggage check area, so if you arrive at midnight for a flight at five in the morning (check in at 3 am) as we did, you should probably bring a mattress with you, unless you can fall asleep standing up). At three in the morning we checked in for our flights and went through baggage check to find all the benches on the other side were already taken, so we found another “cozy” corner on the marble floor to catch an hour or 2 sleep.
Lets us breeze through the next 12 hours, for they were rather uneventful. We arrived in Santiago, Chile at about eight at night their time (6 o’clock our time). When we got to the subway system, we met two really friend men from the US who helped us find the subway stop we needed and gave us some tips on some adventures we should do, ie canyoning.
We were able to find our hostel easily enough. We dropped our stuff off, signed in and then went out to dinner to relax after the long day of travel. We ended up choosing a nice looking Italian restaurant where they didn’t speak a word of English and so our struggles with language that would follow and hinder us throughout our trip, began with the ordering of our meal and drinks.
Sunday the 15tth, we explored downtown Santiago. We walk around to a couple of museums that we walked through quickly since all the signs were in Spanish. We went through a metropolitan park, a cashier man in a convenience store spent about 10 minutes with us kindly trying to explain how to say the different types of Chilean change, and to the top of a small mountain with the Virgin Mary at top. There I discovered that Chileans do not have a taste for very spicy things but very sweet things. I bought a drink that I thought would be an ice-tea but it was actually a way too sweet syrupy drink. It was interesting though-it had this fluffy rice like substance on the bottom and whole apricots floating in it, looking like little brains.
After this little adventure we made our way to the bus station to buy tickets for Pucon for Tuesday night and then headed out to dinner at a place one of our hostel hosts recommended to us. Tom got a salmon dish, and the salmon was absolutely fantastic. Our meal was only eventful because of a crazy man walking by while meowing at us, and a young boy playing on a walking multi-drum set (I was pretty impressed, I would have gotten dizzy spinning around that fast and playing some good rhythms at the same time).
Monday started off on the completely wrong foot. The plan as to go to Cajon del Maipo, catch the bus there at 7:30 in the morning, hike there for a short while, maybe do some rafting or paragliding. Then in the evening catch the bus to El Morado, the National Monument, which is suppose to be an incredibly beautiful park. Then Tuesday head back around 6 to catch our bus at 11:00
That was the plan, this was the reality: Tom and I slept though all our alarms got up about 8:30, threw things together quickly, checked out of our rooms and put luggage in storage. With the metro, we went to one stop to find out is was the wrong one and had to take the metro again back in the direction we came and past it to get to the opposite side of Santiago. When we finally got to the right stop, we had to find where the bus station was exactly, food shop, communicate what we wanted and then we finally jumped on the bus to Cajon del Maipo at about 11:30. We went to San Gabriel first, the furthest town on that bus route and the closest to the park. We got to San Gabriel which according to the maps had hiking and camping. We get there, to find a very small town, with a cop station a few houses and this little food stand. We “talked” with the two kids at the food stand who couldn’t speak a word of English and us with our like 5 words of Spanish. They were so eager though to help us as best they could. We were able to convey that we wanted to hike and camp and needed a map. They gave us a map that wasn’t very useful (turns out good maps are hard to come by everywhere we went), said there wasn’t camping here but we could climb this mountain over there (the problem was there was fenced in property all around the base, so how do we get to it without trespassing?). We went to the cops next, they spoke no ingles as well. After an hour or two of struggling to understand each other, we found out there was no bus that day to the national monument, we would have to hitch hike (problem-not many cars heading that way or back) so we gave a futile attempt to that, before catching a bus back to San Alfonso, a town a few miles back where the cops said there is rafting, hiking and camping.
Turns out all the hiking, camping, and rafting in the area was all controlled by this resort place that way overpriced everything (even by US standards it was pricy). We didn’t want to have to pay to hike and since they controlled the mountains on the far side of the river we went to attempt to hike up a mountain on our side, which we may have had to go around a gate to get to (but it seemed like a gate to keep vehicles out, not people,e because you could walk around it and this woman who lived near it said we could go up that way. So we started this long, at points grueling trek up the mountain (not that it was long and steep, but very sandy-so every step we took we’d slide half a step back). Great views though. And we had picked up some hiking companions-5 random dogs, most I think were strays, one had a collar. They were adorable and friendly, but we were a little concerned that they might have flees (the strays in Santiago were infested with them). They followed on us our whole hike, they got a little sidetracked chasing some horses we went by, but they came right back. I couldn’t believe it because there was no water or food where we went. We camped out that night about halfway, down the mountain and the dogs all stayed by our tent throughout the night. Nice to have the protection, though they were a little nerve racking. One rather bug cuddly dog tried to push into my tent in the night, which was a little startling to wake up to with the dog’s head next to my face.
Tuesday, we hiked out a different way than we came in, and we eventually found ourselves at a fence across a dirt road that was definitely suppose to keep people out (though we were not sure if we were on the inside or outside of the fence). Well we didn’t really have much choice so we found a way through and walked down the dirt road to get to the road. Our companions stuck with us the whole way, we only lost them when we reached the road and the bus came by and we hopped onto it to head back to Santiago. We wondered for the next few days what happened to our little buds. Wondering if they were still waiting for us on the side of the road.
Upon our return to our hostel, we showered and then headed out, checked out this beautiful old fort Santa Lucia and then headed to an early dinner (since we had only eaten nuts and dried fruit since the morning before. Tom and I split a drink that in English means earthquake, which is made from about 3 glasses worth of wine, a couple of shots of vodka, and lemon sorbet-I’m sure you can now deduce the origin of its name.
We next headed to the cultural center, found ourselves in a free movie which was designed like an old one, which turned out to be really boring (I’m sure if we could understand what they were saying it would still be boring, for the long static filled silences drowned out any dialogue). After about 20 min of waiting for things to get interesting, we left to stop by the alpine club whose office was conveniently across the street from our hostel. We ended up meeting two very nice men, one named Fernando who I stayed in contact with for he gave us tips on climbing and hiking, and then this other guy who couldn’t speak a word of English but let us climb their outdoor wall and was entertained with watching us. We ended up spending about an hour there, before we headed back to the hostel and then to the bus station for a 10-hour ride to Pucon.
I’ve come to the conclusion that probably the easiest thing to do for the journal entry is split them up by where we were, so not all the information is thrown you at once so that you have to suffer though a 10-page entry and you don’t have to have everything scattered in about 20-30 entries.
So in the beginning of my trip, Tom and I attempted to sleep on the floor at JFK outside the check baggage area (by the way, JFK does not have seating before the baggage check area, so if you arrive at midnight for a flight at five in the morning (check in at 3 am) as we did, you should probably bring a mattress with you, unless you can fall asleep standing up). At three in the morning we checked in for our flights and went through baggage check to find all the benches on the other side were already taken, so we found another “cozy” corner on the marble floor to catch an hour or 2 sleep.
Lets us breeze through the next 12 hours, for they were rather uneventful. We arrived in Santiago, Chile at about eight at night their time (6 o’clock our time). When we got to the subway system, we met two really friend men from the US who helped us find the subway stop we needed and gave us some tips on some adventures we should do, ie canyoning.
We were able to find our hostel easily enough. We dropped our stuff off, signed in and then went out to dinner to relax after the long day of travel. We ended up choosing a nice looking Italian restaurant where they didn’t speak a word of English and so our struggles with language that would follow and hinder us throughout our trip, began with the ordering of our meal and drinks.
Sunday the 15tth, we explored downtown Santiago. We walk around to a couple of museums that we walked through quickly since all the signs were in Spanish. We went through a metropolitan park, a cashier man in a convenience store spent about 10 minutes with us kindly trying to explain how to say the different types of Chilean change, and to the top of a small mountain with the Virgin Mary at top. There I discovered that Chileans do not have a taste for very spicy things but very sweet things. I bought a drink that I thought would be an ice-tea but it was actually a way too sweet syrupy drink. It was interesting though-it had this fluffy rice like substance on the bottom and whole apricots floating in it, looking like little brains.
After this little adventure we made our way to the bus station to buy tickets for Pucon for Tuesday night and then headed out to dinner at a place one of our hostel hosts recommended to us. Tom got a salmon dish, and the salmon was absolutely fantastic. Our meal was only eventful because of a crazy man walking by while meowing at us, and a young boy playing on a walking multi-drum set (I was pretty impressed, I would have gotten dizzy spinning around that fast and playing some good rhythms at the same time).
Monday started off on the completely wrong foot. The plan as to go to Cajon del Maipo, catch the bus there at 7:30 in the morning, hike there for a short while, maybe do some rafting or paragliding. Then in the evening catch the bus to El Morado, the National Monument, which is suppose to be an incredibly beautiful park. Then Tuesday head back around 6 to catch our bus at 11:00
That was the plan, this was the reality: Tom and I slept though all our alarms got up about 8:30, threw things together quickly, checked out of our rooms and put luggage in storage. With the metro, we went to one stop to find out is was the wrong one and had to take the metro again back in the direction we came and past it to get to the opposite side of Santiago. When we finally got to the right stop, we had to find where the bus station was exactly, food shop, communicate what we wanted and then we finally jumped on the bus to Cajon del Maipo at about 11:30. We went to San Gabriel first, the furthest town on that bus route and the closest to the park. We got to San Gabriel which according to the maps had hiking and camping. We get there, to find a very small town, with a cop station a few houses and this little food stand. We “talked” with the two kids at the food stand who couldn’t speak a word of English and us with our like 5 words of Spanish. They were so eager though to help us as best they could. We were able to convey that we wanted to hike and camp and needed a map. They gave us a map that wasn’t very useful (turns out good maps are hard to come by everywhere we went), said there wasn’t camping here but we could climb this mountain over there (the problem was there was fenced in property all around the base, so how do we get to it without trespassing?). We went to the cops next, they spoke no ingles as well. After an hour or two of struggling to understand each other, we found out there was no bus that day to the national monument, we would have to hitch hike (problem-not many cars heading that way or back) so we gave a futile attempt to that, before catching a bus back to San Alfonso, a town a few miles back where the cops said there is rafting, hiking and camping.
Turns out all the hiking, camping, and rafting in the area was all controlled by this resort place that way overpriced everything (even by US standards it was pricy). We didn’t want to have to pay to hike and since they controlled the mountains on the far side of the river we went to attempt to hike up a mountain on our side, which we may have had to go around a gate to get to (but it seemed like a gate to keep vehicles out, not people,e because you could walk around it and this woman who lived near it said we could go up that way. So we started this long, at points grueling trek up the mountain (not that it was long and steep, but very sandy-so every step we took we’d slide half a step back). Great views though. And we had picked up some hiking companions-5 random dogs, most I think were strays, one had a collar. They were adorable and friendly, but we were a little concerned that they might have flees (the strays in Santiago were infested with them). They followed on us our whole hike, they got a little sidetracked chasing some horses we went by, but they came right back. I couldn’t believe it because there was no water or food where we went. We camped out that night about halfway, down the mountain and the dogs all stayed by our tent throughout the night. Nice to have the protection, though they were a little nerve racking. One rather bug cuddly dog tried to push into my tent in the night, which was a little startling to wake up to with the dog’s head next to my face.
Tuesday, we hiked out a different way than we came in, and we eventually found ourselves at a fence across a dirt road that was definitely suppose to keep people out (though we were not sure if we were on the inside or outside of the fence). Well we didn’t really have much choice so we found a way through and walked down the dirt road to get to the road. Our companions stuck with us the whole way, we only lost them when we reached the road and the bus came by and we hopped onto it to head back to Santiago. We wondered for the next few days what happened to our little buds. Wondering if they were still waiting for us on the side of the road.
Upon our return to our hostel, we showered and then headed out, checked out this beautiful old fort Santa Lucia and then headed to an early dinner (since we had only eaten nuts and dried fruit since the morning before. Tom and I split a drink that in English means earthquake, which is made from about 3 glasses worth of wine, a couple of shots of vodka, and lemon sorbet-I’m sure you can now deduce the origin of its name.
We next headed to the cultural center, found ourselves in a free movie which was designed like an old one, which turned out to be really boring (I’m sure if we could understand what they were saying it would still be boring, for the long static filled silences drowned out any dialogue). After about 20 min of waiting for things to get interesting, we left to stop by the alpine club whose office was conveniently across the street from our hostel. We ended up meeting two very nice men, one named Fernando who I stayed in contact with for he gave us tips on climbing and hiking, and then this other guy who couldn’t speak a word of English but let us climb their outdoor wall and was entertained with watching us. We ended up spending about an hour there, before we headed back to the hostel and then to the bus station for a 10-hour ride to Pucon.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
A ¨Brief¨ Overview of my life in South America.
Friday December 4, 2009
I have no idea where to start, I´m so far behind on the blog (though not my journal, I´ve been good! Well for the most part), and I don´t have time to go over everything because I have a Jazz festival to head to tonight and the internet cost pesos.
Ok so here´s what I´m gonna do. I´ll give a quick briefing of the trip, mentioning things that pop in my head at the moment, so you have a basic idea of what I´ve been up to, and then when I get home, I will try to write everything in more detail. Unless of course you all respond with disgust saying you don´t want to hear (or read) another word. Oh and just to let you know, if you are going to South America, knowing Spanish makes your life 100x´s easier (I thought it would be just 10X´s but after going in circles several times, I´ve discovered I underestimated).
The flight to Chile went smoothly, though it was long, and Copa Airlines definitely doesn´t have the most luxurious flights. And by the way, JFK doesn´t have places for people to sit comfortably before the bag check in-so if you´re planning on staying in the airport overnight for an early flight in the morning, bring a mattress.
Three days were spent in Santiago/Cajon Del Maipo. We explored some of the Museums and wondered around the city, ate at a few restaurants that were pricier than I expected but very good (by the way, if you´re ever in Chile, you have to have their salmon, it´s fantastic). We split (good thing too, we may have had trouble making our way back to the hostel if we each had our own) this drink whose Spanish name means earthquake (wine+vodka+lemon sorbet/sherbert). Oh and it is true-wine is very cheap here.
We headed out to Cajon del Maipo to spend a day there, and then hopefully the national park. Long story short, the bus to the park wasn´t running that day, we went back and forth in towns, lost in translation, hiked a random mountain with stray dogs, camped, hopped a fence, and dumped our 4 legged traveling partners on the road by catching the bus. Oh, we also explored this old fort called Santa Lucia which was very impressive. Then the night before we headed out, we stopped in the alpine club office, met 2 really nice gentlemen, one who couldn´t speak a word of English but let us climb their outdoor wall for free, and the other is potentially a really important connection for future climbing trips in South America.
We caught a sleeper bus to Pucon. Unlike Santiago which was hot and sunny, little Pucon was cold and quite wet. We waited around the town for 5 days for the chance to climb Volcan Villarica. In the mean time we explored this touristy town, went on a mountain bike ride, went canyoning and Tom broke his hand unfortunately. Oh and we ran along the beach of the lake there-it had black sand by the way, but unlike San Francisco, this sand is black from the Volcano. We finally climbed Villiarica (which organizing and doing was an adventure in itself-to be explained later) and the day was perfect for it. The photos from that explain to people better than words why I wanted to come to South America.
We then headed to Temuco and Mallechuelo to climb Lonquimay Volcan. We road several buses, some more than once, and finally ended up renting a car to climb this volcano. We waited a day or two for good weather. Climbed it in ok weather, had to turn back about 100 feet from the summit thanks to a white out and strong winds. But the views when they could be seen were fantastic. We then did this long drive on a dirt road that skirted the border of Argentina and looped back around to Temuco. It had some great views.
We then caught a bus to Valdivia, and relaxed there our last couple of days and of course the weather was beautiful when we´re not trying to climb a mountain. We walked through a garden or two, went on a boat ride to these neat little town next to the pacific, explored the town, saw some sea lions, and walked through the fish market a couple of times (right next to it is where I had the amazing salmon). Oh and I almost forgot! We went to a beer brewery, had these gigantic sandwiches that were delicious, some beer samplers, and explored the beer museum, unfortunately we couldn´t do the same for the brewery.
In Valdivia Tom and I separated and I headed for El Bolson. After a day of traveling almost 14 hours, I made it to my farm and have had a fantastic week, though not with farming. In fact, there isn´t really a farm yet, they´re still trying to build they´re homes and set up the garden. But working on a green home made of hay, clay, and wood is pretty neat. And I´m helping to build a fence for the future garden. The 3 brothers who own the farm are amazingly nice and laid back, one of the wives is a fantastic cook, and I´m usually in the dark as to what´s going on because people are usually speaking French or Spanish (most of the Woofers are from France). Oh and the farm is half way up a mountain and has amazing views.
Well it´s the weekend now and I´m in town for a night and a day and then hopefully going on a hike Sunday and maybe a horseback ride? Off to enjoy some jazz. Enjoy the pictures!
Saturday, November 14, 2009
A Quick Catch Up and The Coming of a New Adventure
Thursday, November 12, 2009
I would like to apologize to my enthusiastic readers for not having written to you all in so long. My reasoning? Life for the last month and a half for me, hasn’t been filled with one adventure after another (it was actually rather normal actually, and therefore boring) and I didn’t want to waste your time. Besides, you probably needed a break from me anyways.
I’ve felt almost as though I have been wasting my year off during this period home, but the unfortunate fact of life is that adventures tend to cost money (especially when you need to still buy the gear for it). So since I have returned home from Colorado, I have been working (unfortunately not as much as I’d prefer, but then I guess I can’t complain when I have a job I can return to even if it’s not a lot of hours and some people don’t have any job), saving, and buying gear for my next adventure: Chile and Argentina. Which by the way, I leave for this Saturday morning, at 5:17 from JFK. At 8:00 pm I’ll be landing in Santiago. I thought I should give you all an update before I head out, since I’m not sure how much time I will have to type up blogs and post them while I am gone. I promise though, that I will keep a journal of my time down there, and whenever I have the place and time, I will type it up and post it. It may, unfortunately, not be until I get back (they do have Wifi Cafes down there, but I may not be able to spend much time in them). So if you don’t hear from me until around Christmas (I return Christmas eve at 1:30 am at JFK-anyone know transportation I can get from the airport to CT at that time of night?), take it as a good sign-I’m keeping busy. But I really will try to post atleast one blog when I’m down there at like the transition point of the trip.
Now I’m sure many of you are like, so where are you going in Chile and Argentina? Are you going to Patagonia? What are you doing? Well, I’ll give you our itinerary of where we’re going, which I am sure will change, but to be honest, as to what we’re doing each day, that is not known. The weather, and the words of locals and other travels will influence this, though I have sort of a checklist of things we (Tom and I) want to do.
So as of now, the plan is to stay about 3 days in the Santiago area, six days around Pucon and Osorno in the Northern Lake District, and three days in and around Bariloche, Argentina. Then on Friday, November 27th, Tom will head back to Santiago for his flight at noon on Saturday back to the US. And I will head to El Bolson, Argentina to be a WWOOFer on a family farm. For those who don’t know, WWOOF is World Wide Opportunites on Organic Farms. I basically will be working on this farm 5 days a week, 6 hours a day in exchange for free room and board. Many people have asked me what is this a farm of and I couldn’t tell them exactly, because I had looked at 15 farms before I decided on this one. So, I looked back hrough my files at the farm description from the owners and for those who want to know:
City: El Bolson
Province: Rio Negro
Type of property: Organic farm and natural building center
Size (ha): 120
Cultivos: Fruits, vegetables
We speak: Spanish, english & italian
Description: We are an organic Farm, working in natural building sistems. Olso we work with bees,natural water harbing sistems and much more.
We are building a host center with sun shower, dry toilet, public kitchen, passive natural heating sistem and acomodation for 6 persons. Out door kitchen, out door dry toilet. Place for camping.
The hostel will be finish in the begining of january 2009, so it is important to bring until it is finish your tent and sleeping bag.
Accomodation: 6 beds in the host center in a common room, camping site.
We can receive 5 volunteers
Food: We have a cooking team so the food will be organiced for us with your help when it is necessary.
Vegetarian menu, very rich.
We are: We are 3 brothers, Gabriel, Gerardo and Leonardo. Gerardo is married with Paula. They have 2 childrens, Apolo and Lao. In the summer a lot of friends comes to help and enjoy the beauty of the land. We have 4 dogs and 4 cats.
We are developing a comunitary self sustainable eco village. Targeted in natural building, natural growing, renowable energy, art development and natural conscience development.
When to come: We can start receiving volunteers from december 20/ 2008.
We can receive volunteers until May.
Additional comments: Be happy and enjoy the life (I like their theory on life)
The one of the many great things about this program-I save so much money so that I can stay down there for so much longer and I still have plenty of time to go off on weekend or even afternoon adventures. Oh and of course I get to know the culture down there, and maybe, I will finally actually learn some Spanish (I’m sure you were all wondering that-no I can’t speak Spanish despite the CDs I’ve listened to the past couple of months and the 5 years of schooling in it-we just start teaching kids languages too late, if only they started me in Kindergarten and not 7th grade).
Now that you’ve heard where I’m going and what I’m doing for over half my trip, you want to know that checklist of things we want to do in that 2 week travel period. Well, some of the things on the list are to definitely climb Volcan Villarica and Osorno. Maybe sneak in a technical mountain like Cerro El Morado, or at least trek around it (really check out online pictures of these places-they’re pretty awesome pretty). Also on the things to see are some museums in Santiago (since I didn’t get to do Machu Picchu, this is my other way of seeing some ancient archeological findings in South America), and doing some other adventures in different areas like mountain biking, rafting, etc. I wont give it all away (especially since I don’t know myself exactly-sort of trying to go with the flow with this trip-and yet prepping for it still seems so stressful. Give me a break, is the first trip where I pretty much had to figure out and plan all the logistics myself, I didn’t use a travel agency-though luckily I’ve had some people who were excellent sources of info). Well wish Tom and I luck.
Ok, I suppose I should give you a rough idea of my weeks home. Unfortunately they were for the most part not as busy or eventful as the first. I wont bother telling you the details, but a brief update, since I did promise to tell you all about my “year” off (which incase I didn’t mention earlier, thanks to insurance has been reduced to a semester, but then I guess it’s better I go back, I may go insane if I spend much more time in CT, which is inevitable since jumping from one internship after another is probably not gonna happen).
My month summarized: I spent some time prepping for the trip-researching and buying gear, working with the catering business and spending the money I earn on my trips to NH (they were necessary for my sanity sake and getting things situated for next semester) and the necessary gear I bought. I visited a few friends from home and college, even making a trip to NY to visit a friend at Vassar. I was able to sneak in an afternoon at Rumney for sport climbing, some hiking in the Whites, a 65 mile bike ride in VT and some time in North Conway. Despite this though, I still had so much spare time. I even picked my clarinet back up. I did attempt to learn Spanish with the CDs from the library, but I’m afraid that was a loss cause. I do look forward to having more exciting things to share with you for the next five and a half weeks.
I would like to apologize to my enthusiastic readers for not having written to you all in so long. My reasoning? Life for the last month and a half for me, hasn’t been filled with one adventure after another (it was actually rather normal actually, and therefore boring) and I didn’t want to waste your time. Besides, you probably needed a break from me anyways.
I’ve felt almost as though I have been wasting my year off during this period home, but the unfortunate fact of life is that adventures tend to cost money (especially when you need to still buy the gear for it). So since I have returned home from Colorado, I have been working (unfortunately not as much as I’d prefer, but then I guess I can’t complain when I have a job I can return to even if it’s not a lot of hours and some people don’t have any job), saving, and buying gear for my next adventure: Chile and Argentina. Which by the way, I leave for this Saturday morning, at 5:17 from JFK. At 8:00 pm I’ll be landing in Santiago. I thought I should give you all an update before I head out, since I’m not sure how much time I will have to type up blogs and post them while I am gone. I promise though, that I will keep a journal of my time down there, and whenever I have the place and time, I will type it up and post it. It may, unfortunately, not be until I get back (they do have Wifi Cafes down there, but I may not be able to spend much time in them). So if you don’t hear from me until around Christmas (I return Christmas eve at 1:30 am at JFK-anyone know transportation I can get from the airport to CT at that time of night?), take it as a good sign-I’m keeping busy. But I really will try to post atleast one blog when I’m down there at like the transition point of the trip.
Now I’m sure many of you are like, so where are you going in Chile and Argentina? Are you going to Patagonia? What are you doing? Well, I’ll give you our itinerary of where we’re going, which I am sure will change, but to be honest, as to what we’re doing each day, that is not known. The weather, and the words of locals and other travels will influence this, though I have sort of a checklist of things we (Tom and I) want to do.
So as of now, the plan is to stay about 3 days in the Santiago area, six days around Pucon and Osorno in the Northern Lake District, and three days in and around Bariloche, Argentina. Then on Friday, November 27th, Tom will head back to Santiago for his flight at noon on Saturday back to the US. And I will head to El Bolson, Argentina to be a WWOOFer on a family farm. For those who don’t know, WWOOF is World Wide Opportunites on Organic Farms. I basically will be working on this farm 5 days a week, 6 hours a day in exchange for free room and board. Many people have asked me what is this a farm of and I couldn’t tell them exactly, because I had looked at 15 farms before I decided on this one. So, I looked back hrough my files at the farm description from the owners and for those who want to know:
City: El Bolson
Province: Rio Negro
Type of property: Organic farm and natural building center
Size (ha): 120
Cultivos: Fruits, vegetables
We speak: Spanish, english & italian
Description: We are an organic Farm, working in natural building sistems. Olso we work with bees,natural water harbing sistems and much more.
We are building a host center with sun shower, dry toilet, public kitchen, passive natural heating sistem and acomodation for 6 persons. Out door kitchen, out door dry toilet. Place for camping.
The hostel will be finish in the begining of january 2009, so it is important to bring until it is finish your tent and sleeping bag.
Accomodation: 6 beds in the host center in a common room, camping site.
We can receive 5 volunteers
Food: We have a cooking team so the food will be organiced for us with your help when it is necessary.
Vegetarian menu, very rich.
We are: We are 3 brothers, Gabriel, Gerardo and Leonardo. Gerardo is married with Paula. They have 2 childrens, Apolo and Lao. In the summer a lot of friends comes to help and enjoy the beauty of the land. We have 4 dogs and 4 cats.
We are developing a comunitary self sustainable eco village. Targeted in natural building, natural growing, renowable energy, art development and natural conscience development.
When to come: We can start receiving volunteers from december 20/ 2008.
We can receive volunteers until May.
Additional comments: Be happy and enjoy the life (I like their theory on life)
The one of the many great things about this program-I save so much money so that I can stay down there for so much longer and I still have plenty of time to go off on weekend or even afternoon adventures. Oh and of course I get to know the culture down there, and maybe, I will finally actually learn some Spanish (I’m sure you were all wondering that-no I can’t speak Spanish despite the CDs I’ve listened to the past couple of months and the 5 years of schooling in it-we just start teaching kids languages too late, if only they started me in Kindergarten and not 7th grade).
Now that you’ve heard where I’m going and what I’m doing for over half my trip, you want to know that checklist of things we want to do in that 2 week travel period. Well, some of the things on the list are to definitely climb Volcan Villarica and Osorno. Maybe sneak in a technical mountain like Cerro El Morado, or at least trek around it (really check out online pictures of these places-they’re pretty awesome pretty). Also on the things to see are some museums in Santiago (since I didn’t get to do Machu Picchu, this is my other way of seeing some ancient archeological findings in South America), and doing some other adventures in different areas like mountain biking, rafting, etc. I wont give it all away (especially since I don’t know myself exactly-sort of trying to go with the flow with this trip-and yet prepping for it still seems so stressful. Give me a break, is the first trip where I pretty much had to figure out and plan all the logistics myself, I didn’t use a travel agency-though luckily I’ve had some people who were excellent sources of info). Well wish Tom and I luck.
Ok, I suppose I should give you a rough idea of my weeks home. Unfortunately they were for the most part not as busy or eventful as the first. I wont bother telling you the details, but a brief update, since I did promise to tell you all about my “year” off (which incase I didn’t mention earlier, thanks to insurance has been reduced to a semester, but then I guess it’s better I go back, I may go insane if I spend much more time in CT, which is inevitable since jumping from one internship after another is probably not gonna happen).
My month summarized: I spent some time prepping for the trip-researching and buying gear, working with the catering business and spending the money I earn on my trips to NH (they were necessary for my sanity sake and getting things situated for next semester) and the necessary gear I bought. I visited a few friends from home and college, even making a trip to NY to visit a friend at Vassar. I was able to sneak in an afternoon at Rumney for sport climbing, some hiking in the Whites, a 65 mile bike ride in VT and some time in North Conway. Despite this though, I still had so much spare time. I even picked my clarinet back up. I did attempt to learn Spanish with the CDs from the library, but I’m afraid that was a loss cause. I do look forward to having more exciting things to share with you for the next five and a half weeks.
The First Week “Home”
October 5, 2009
Well, the weather isn’t as good as Colorado, but I guess one shouldn’t be so picky and it builds character. And I’ve had a good week despite it all. Oh and seeing the colors of New England are a real added bonus.
Mom had people over for dinner Monday and Tuesday night so that I could show some pictures and tell some stories. Wednesday I actually got to work for the Krauses (the catering company I’ve worked for since high school).
Thursday though was when the real adventures started. I caught the commuter rail to Boston, met Tom there after just a little bit of difficulty finding each other (at one point he was driving in circles around the Boston Commons, while I stood on the edge cell phone to ear, watching for a car I’d never seen before). Then Tom and I went to meet his brother for dinner (another interesting time trying to navigate through Boston. Never again. I’ll stick to walking and the subway for cities).
Friday, I went to breakfast with Katelyn Dolan at the Big Bean in Newmarket (highly recommended by the way) and then went apple picking with her. That was actually rather exciting because we got to use the long pole with a basket on the end. It was quite the challenge to catch the apples from the top branches. Some apples unfortunately decided to commit suicide, but we couldn’t let our attempts go in vain and the apples to waste, so we sampled them anyway, deciding which apple was best. Critiquing texture, flavor, crispness, etc. I would have loved to make apple pie to reap the benefits of our hard work, but unfortunately there was no time. I did have the chance to meet and catch up with Sarah Nelson, before I went for a run and made a stop at the registrar’s office. In the afternoon, I talked briefly with Mark and then met my old roommate Jill for lunch at Pauly Pockets, to hear of her adventures in Ireland. She also caught me up on how things were with the Outing Club, whicj I’m happy to find out is doing much better than last year-mainly probably because of the new SAFC funding.
After that, Tom and I left for VT to stop by his uncle’s place to see his giant legendary haunted corn maze, and his cousins. I had a blast scaring people, though I ended up sacrificing my voice. I had the chance to with talk and meet with the relatives afterwards.
Late that night we drove down to the Tuft’s cabin in Woodridge?, We ended up taking a slight detour (this seems to become the theme of our weekend), arriving there at 1:30am. We managed to drag ourselves out of bed (which was the back of Tom’s car with the back seat put down-we were far to lazy to set up the tent in the rain) at 5:00, for the big outing club relay race at 6:50. The weather was just a bit wet, windy and cold on Franklin Ridge, but the traverse was fun anyways. It’s crazy when people disappear in the fog just 100 ft in front of you, blank whiteness engulfs the surrounding scenery, and every flew steps the wind pushes your foot sideways, causing a few missteps. I like though despite the weather and wet rocks, I didn’t have any big wipeouts until the very end of the trail. In the cover of the trees and on the easy section of the trail, my back foot sneaks beneath a hidden root when I’m in almost full stride, sending me into almost a full split. Needless to say, my groin was a little sore after that.
No news yet who won, but it was a close one. I think I ended up hiking 16 miles total that day, about 12 miles actually racing (and so I fully enjoyed the donut and ice cream Sunday at the fair the next day). On our drive back from the race, we made a stop at Tom’s mom’s house and then finally made it back to Portsmouth for at least a few hours of sleep. We were up early the next morning then to head to the Berlin fair in CT. This is where the detour theme continues and we arrived maybe 45 minutes later than originally planned because we got on 395 instead of 84. Oops.
After a fun afternoon at the fair, some delicious pizza for dinner, Tom headed home and I crashed in bed. I do hope my remaining weekends can be just as exciting, though I think a little more sleep would be a nice addition.
Well, the weather isn’t as good as Colorado, but I guess one shouldn’t be so picky and it builds character. And I’ve had a good week despite it all. Oh and seeing the colors of New England are a real added bonus.
Mom had people over for dinner Monday and Tuesday night so that I could show some pictures and tell some stories. Wednesday I actually got to work for the Krauses (the catering company I’ve worked for since high school).
Thursday though was when the real adventures started. I caught the commuter rail to Boston, met Tom there after just a little bit of difficulty finding each other (at one point he was driving in circles around the Boston Commons, while I stood on the edge cell phone to ear, watching for a car I’d never seen before). Then Tom and I went to meet his brother for dinner (another interesting time trying to navigate through Boston. Never again. I’ll stick to walking and the subway for cities).
Friday, I went to breakfast with Katelyn Dolan at the Big Bean in Newmarket (highly recommended by the way) and then went apple picking with her. That was actually rather exciting because we got to use the long pole with a basket on the end. It was quite the challenge to catch the apples from the top branches. Some apples unfortunately decided to commit suicide, but we couldn’t let our attempts go in vain and the apples to waste, so we sampled them anyway, deciding which apple was best. Critiquing texture, flavor, crispness, etc. I would have loved to make apple pie to reap the benefits of our hard work, but unfortunately there was no time. I did have the chance to meet and catch up with Sarah Nelson, before I went for a run and made a stop at the registrar’s office. In the afternoon, I talked briefly with Mark and then met my old roommate Jill for lunch at Pauly Pockets, to hear of her adventures in Ireland. She also caught me up on how things were with the Outing Club, whicj I’m happy to find out is doing much better than last year-mainly probably because of the new SAFC funding.
After that, Tom and I left for VT to stop by his uncle’s place to see his giant legendary haunted corn maze, and his cousins. I had a blast scaring people, though I ended up sacrificing my voice. I had the chance to with talk and meet with the relatives afterwards.
Late that night we drove down to the Tuft’s cabin in Woodridge?, We ended up taking a slight detour (this seems to become the theme of our weekend), arriving there at 1:30am. We managed to drag ourselves out of bed (which was the back of Tom’s car with the back seat put down-we were far to lazy to set up the tent in the rain) at 5:00, for the big outing club relay race at 6:50. The weather was just a bit wet, windy and cold on Franklin Ridge, but the traverse was fun anyways. It’s crazy when people disappear in the fog just 100 ft in front of you, blank whiteness engulfs the surrounding scenery, and every flew steps the wind pushes your foot sideways, causing a few missteps. I like though despite the weather and wet rocks, I didn’t have any big wipeouts until the very end of the trail. In the cover of the trees and on the easy section of the trail, my back foot sneaks beneath a hidden root when I’m in almost full stride, sending me into almost a full split. Needless to say, my groin was a little sore after that.
No news yet who won, but it was a close one. I think I ended up hiking 16 miles total that day, about 12 miles actually racing (and so I fully enjoyed the donut and ice cream Sunday at the fair the next day). On our drive back from the race, we made a stop at Tom’s mom’s house and then finally made it back to Portsmouth for at least a few hours of sleep. We were up early the next morning then to head to the Berlin fair in CT. This is where the detour theme continues and we arrived maybe 45 minutes later than originally planned because we got on 395 instead of 84. Oops.
After a fun afternoon at the fair, some delicious pizza for dinner, Tom headed home and I crashed in bed. I do hope my remaining weekends can be just as exciting, though I think a little more sleep would be a nice addition.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
One adventure down, hopefully many more to go.
Monday, September 28, 2009
I write (ok, type), this entry on the plane from Denver to Baltimore where I will meet my connecting flight. After a long summer in the mountains, which flew by (despite spending all my time being spent on a massif, where time for it passes so slow), I’m headed home in time to see the colorful fall of New England. I have to say, it will be a nice change to see trees other than conifers and aspen (though the aspen were beautiful the last few weeks). Well, I suppose I should buckle down now and start saving for my next trip and getting some research for it done.
Last Saturday was not the most productive day. I believe I just did some cleaning, a run and workout in the morning. Then for lunch and in the afternoon I hung out with this young man Chris, who had helped me with my federal resume, which I will eventually be able to send out. We did this short, easy, off the beaten path hike. Then went to Nepal’s for some Chai tea.
Sunday, I went with Sam to Dream Canyon for some sport climbing. It’s a pretty nice area there, with a stream right next to the climbs to jump in on overwhelming hot days. The rock was solid, many of the routes we tried were fantastic. I lead my second 5.11 (b), which was this burly route with a roof. It was called something like Funky Monkeys. I didn’t even climb this one on top rope first or watch Sam do it first, though I will confess I didn’t get it clean (but I will note that Sam didn’t either). After we were finished climbing, we stopped my Walt and Sally’s for a short while since they were just up the road and it was my last chance to see them. We ended up staying for dinner. They’re working on winterizing they’re tent-which gave me an idea for the tent I ended up buying on the Internet several days later.
Monday for work, the whole crew was supposed to head up and around to Shadow Mountain on the West side, to have a big bonfire to burn the two privies we took down a couple of weeks earlier, but unfortunately Trail Ridge Road was closed do to snow (supposed to get 6-16 in, was getting a bit excited, but the we got almost nothing, especially down in Estes). So instead we hung out in the cache, cleaning and painting.
Tuesday, our last chance to go to Shadow Mountain, stolen from us again, because Trail Ridge Road was still closed and talk of storms still stirred. Most of the crew was then sent on the wonderful duty of hiking several loads of crap out of the composting privies at one backcountry campsite. Kevin and I however, had the worse duty of doing computer work all day-trying to sort through backcountry campsite photos for the backcountry campsite book. This was the most boring day of all our workdays this summer. I wouldn’t have volunteered if I knew everyone was doing a hike the next day no matter what job they were given Tuesday. But I thought at the time, that the people who did bookwork Tuesday would switch jobs on Wednesday with the Tuesday hikers, and just clean out a different privy. I chose Odessa privy over Upper Milner’s. That day reminded me that I would never be able to stand a desk job. I would lose what little sanity I have.
But of course, Wednesday, everyone ended up hiking. Luckily though, I got on the good hike. Three people went to hike out some waste from a different compost privy, while the other lucky three (myself included), got to join Tara on a nice long hike to inspect campsites. Starting at Longs Peak trailhead and ending at Storm Pass trailhead (about 10ish miles). We hiked through a small snowstorm over Granite Pass, and the snow coated peaks where beautiful. My pictures sadly do not do it justice.
That evening, I went to Jim’s house, split some wood, did a little research, and enjoyed dessert with Jim at Oskar Blues (the first restaurant we ate together at after our first adventure).
Thursday was my last day of work, only no work was involved. First we went to an all staff meeting, where they talked about H1N1 (noting that it’s bad to cluster a lot of people in one room together-“starting after 10:00 am today”), they gave an award to someone for something, and then the interesting part-we watched a preview about the new series on National Parks coming out on Pubic television.. After the meeting, we cleaned out our lockers, handed in our keys, signed some forms, went out to lunch at Nepal’s Café, and did some last minute cleaning. I started the sad, and tedious job of packing and cleaning.
Friday, though the weather didn’t look promising at first, it turned out to beautiful day (and I’m happy to say the two days after that were clear, warm and beautiful as well), and Sam and I got a full day of climbing in at little twin owls-a 5.6, 5.9, that brutal 5.11 a finger crack where I think I damage to my nerves in my hand a second time, and a 5.11 c (twice) with sharp painful holds in the beginning. After that, Sam wanted to go Bouldering and I thought I was up for it, until I tried a problem I did the day before and I could no longer do it because of fatigue and the pain throbbing through my raw fingertips. I gave up quickly. That night, I went to the Rock Inn to hang out with Christina, Garritt, and Brain Drew.
Saturday morning, I went for a run, packed up my bike (which took forever) and met with the Hills family in the afternoon. We dropped off my bike at the UPS store and then went to lunch, before heading for an easy, though beautiful 8ish mile hike by Emerald Lake and Lake Hayaha. It was a stunning day. After our hike, we went to eat dinner at Napel’s Café, which was unfortunately packed and short on staff (we waited a bit long for a dinner I believe we were all very hungry for, though it gave us time to talk). The food was delicious though when it finally arrived.
Sunday, I joined Kelly and Rohan climbing at the Iron Clads. It was a slow start to the morning, for we stopped at Kelly’s friend’s house, where they were waiting for some others. We spent a couple of hours there, and conveniently, Jim lived right next door, so we stopped in. Little Rohan and Phelan (find out it’s Gaelic for wolf) got to see the reptile room. They were absolutely ecstatic. Jim then joined us climbing-his first climb since surgery on his shoulder about 3 weeks before. Of course he starts off on a challenging 5.10. But he did well, shoulder was just a little soar and he was happy with his progress. He then left us to work on his book (which he’s making great progress on). Kelly and I did two more climbs together, while Phelan and Rohan had a blast playing together (a few tears hear and there, but that’s to be expected). The two of them even had a little screaming competition at one point. That night, I had dinner with Kelly and her family.
4:30 Monday morning, Terra arrived to pick me and all my luggage up, and we headed down to Denver. While driving through downtown Estes Park, I saw my first bear of Rocky Mountain National Park (figures all the time in the backcountry I would never see it). He was a big one. We watched him for a few minutes wander the streets, until he ran down a back alley, before we continued on our drive.
I write (ok, type), this entry on the plane from Denver to Baltimore where I will meet my connecting flight. After a long summer in the mountains, which flew by (despite spending all my time being spent on a massif, where time for it passes so slow), I’m headed home in time to see the colorful fall of New England. I have to say, it will be a nice change to see trees other than conifers and aspen (though the aspen were beautiful the last few weeks). Well, I suppose I should buckle down now and start saving for my next trip and getting some research for it done.
Last Saturday was not the most productive day. I believe I just did some cleaning, a run and workout in the morning. Then for lunch and in the afternoon I hung out with this young man Chris, who had helped me with my federal resume, which I will eventually be able to send out. We did this short, easy, off the beaten path hike. Then went to Nepal’s for some Chai tea.
Sunday, I went with Sam to Dream Canyon for some sport climbing. It’s a pretty nice area there, with a stream right next to the climbs to jump in on overwhelming hot days. The rock was solid, many of the routes we tried were fantastic. I lead my second 5.11 (b), which was this burly route with a roof. It was called something like Funky Monkeys. I didn’t even climb this one on top rope first or watch Sam do it first, though I will confess I didn’t get it clean (but I will note that Sam didn’t either). After we were finished climbing, we stopped my Walt and Sally’s for a short while since they were just up the road and it was my last chance to see them. We ended up staying for dinner. They’re working on winterizing they’re tent-which gave me an idea for the tent I ended up buying on the Internet several days later.
Monday for work, the whole crew was supposed to head up and around to Shadow Mountain on the West side, to have a big bonfire to burn the two privies we took down a couple of weeks earlier, but unfortunately Trail Ridge Road was closed do to snow (supposed to get 6-16 in, was getting a bit excited, but the we got almost nothing, especially down in Estes). So instead we hung out in the cache, cleaning and painting.
Tuesday, our last chance to go to Shadow Mountain, stolen from us again, because Trail Ridge Road was still closed and talk of storms still stirred. Most of the crew was then sent on the wonderful duty of hiking several loads of crap out of the composting privies at one backcountry campsite. Kevin and I however, had the worse duty of doing computer work all day-trying to sort through backcountry campsite photos for the backcountry campsite book. This was the most boring day of all our workdays this summer. I wouldn’t have volunteered if I knew everyone was doing a hike the next day no matter what job they were given Tuesday. But I thought at the time, that the people who did bookwork Tuesday would switch jobs on Wednesday with the Tuesday hikers, and just clean out a different privy. I chose Odessa privy over Upper Milner’s. That day reminded me that I would never be able to stand a desk job. I would lose what little sanity I have.
But of course, Wednesday, everyone ended up hiking. Luckily though, I got on the good hike. Three people went to hike out some waste from a different compost privy, while the other lucky three (myself included), got to join Tara on a nice long hike to inspect campsites. Starting at Longs Peak trailhead and ending at Storm Pass trailhead (about 10ish miles). We hiked through a small snowstorm over Granite Pass, and the snow coated peaks where beautiful. My pictures sadly do not do it justice.
That evening, I went to Jim’s house, split some wood, did a little research, and enjoyed dessert with Jim at Oskar Blues (the first restaurant we ate together at after our first adventure).
Thursday was my last day of work, only no work was involved. First we went to an all staff meeting, where they talked about H1N1 (noting that it’s bad to cluster a lot of people in one room together-“starting after 10:00 am today”), they gave an award to someone for something, and then the interesting part-we watched a preview about the new series on National Parks coming out on Pubic television.. After the meeting, we cleaned out our lockers, handed in our keys, signed some forms, went out to lunch at Nepal’s Café, and did some last minute cleaning. I started the sad, and tedious job of packing and cleaning.
Friday, though the weather didn’t look promising at first, it turned out to beautiful day (and I’m happy to say the two days after that were clear, warm and beautiful as well), and Sam and I got a full day of climbing in at little twin owls-a 5.6, 5.9, that brutal 5.11 a finger crack where I think I damage to my nerves in my hand a second time, and a 5.11 c (twice) with sharp painful holds in the beginning. After that, Sam wanted to go Bouldering and I thought I was up for it, until I tried a problem I did the day before and I could no longer do it because of fatigue and the pain throbbing through my raw fingertips. I gave up quickly. That night, I went to the Rock Inn to hang out with Christina, Garritt, and Brain Drew.
Saturday morning, I went for a run, packed up my bike (which took forever) and met with the Hills family in the afternoon. We dropped off my bike at the UPS store and then went to lunch, before heading for an easy, though beautiful 8ish mile hike by Emerald Lake and Lake Hayaha. It was a stunning day. After our hike, we went to eat dinner at Napel’s Café, which was unfortunately packed and short on staff (we waited a bit long for a dinner I believe we were all very hungry for, though it gave us time to talk). The food was delicious though when it finally arrived.
Sunday, I joined Kelly and Rohan climbing at the Iron Clads. It was a slow start to the morning, for we stopped at Kelly’s friend’s house, where they were waiting for some others. We spent a couple of hours there, and conveniently, Jim lived right next door, so we stopped in. Little Rohan and Phelan (find out it’s Gaelic for wolf) got to see the reptile room. They were absolutely ecstatic. Jim then joined us climbing-his first climb since surgery on his shoulder about 3 weeks before. Of course he starts off on a challenging 5.10. But he did well, shoulder was just a little soar and he was happy with his progress. He then left us to work on his book (which he’s making great progress on). Kelly and I did two more climbs together, while Phelan and Rohan had a blast playing together (a few tears hear and there, but that’s to be expected). The two of them even had a little screaming competition at one point. That night, I had dinner with Kelly and her family.
4:30 Monday morning, Terra arrived to pick me and all my luggage up, and we headed down to Denver. While driving through downtown Estes Park, I saw my first bear of Rocky Mountain National Park (figures all the time in the backcountry I would never see it). He was a big one. We watched him for a few minutes wander the streets, until he ran down a back alley, before we continued on our drive.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Last full week of regular work! You’ve got to be kidding.
Friday, September 18, 2009
I can’t believe I just got back from my last week of real work (not that we don’t have work next week, it’s just that half of it will probably be front country work where we’re cleaning the cache, vehicles, etc). We were out all four days up at La Poudre Patrol cabin on the west side of the park. A pretty relaxed, though productive week.
Anyways, I’m getting a head of myself here. I still haven’t finished telling you about last weekend and I’ll get really confused jumping back and forth in time.
So Saturday I was originally going to go to this huge Celtic festival with Garrett, Brian and Christina, but then they didn’t want to pay the entrance fee of $25 and then pay for everything in there. Instead, we decided to go climbing at the Monastery. Morning comes though and it was the coldest, most overcast day we’ve had since I got here. We decided to just go see the Celtic parade in the morning, see if it clears, and if not, find something else to do. Well, it didn’t clear, even drizzled a few times during the parade and the rest of the day. The weather definitely had an immense influence on the crowd’s mood, because that was the quietest parade I have ever been to-the rain dampening their spirits and energy. Nothing much ended up happening on Saturday. Brain, Garret and I did end up seeing The Inglorious Bastards in theater and sort of just hung out, did nothing productive of course.
Sunday, I went to the Ironclads with Christina in the morning. Finally got on the legendary “Gut Buster.” Which I have to say really lives up to its name. I unfortunately forgot to take pictures of the climb when we were actually climbing it, but I snapped a few photos of it after so you can get an idea of it. Early afternoon, Christina dropped me off at Jim Detterline’s so I could finally chop some wood for him and do my research. We arrived in the middle of his cleaning frenzy (now that all the Venezuelans finally left, he can finally put his home back the way he wants it). For a guy who basically only has on arm right now, it’s impressive the amount he got done. Christina ended up staying for about half an hour to help move furniture. I stayed a few hours, getting some moving and wood splitting done. Unfortunately the research will have to wait till next weekend. That night, when I got back, I met up with Christina to go do a workout in the Bouldering room (since she’s going to Thailand this January for climbing and all the routes there are 5.10 or harder because they’re all overhanging, she wants to build up her strength).
Monday morning had a rather bad start off. My phone stopped working Sunday night for some reason, so I had to use my watches for my alarm. Unfortunately, they failed at their job and luckily me roommate too the business over a bit late, waking me up 5 minutes before I was supposed to be picking Christina up for work (how will I ever live without a roommate?). It was a mad rush and I was 10 minutes late in picking Christina up. On the way to work, we made a 2 minute stop at the Donut Haus to grab breakfast. For work we drove to the west side, up the ditch road to the La Poudre Pass cabin. There we would stay all three nights to get work done at the different campsites in the area. We did have some excitement on the drive in. A moose with her calf were on the ditch road when we came around a corner. We followed them in the jeep about 500 m down the dirt path before they finally found a way down the steep slope and disappeared among the trees. Unfortunately only Christina was able to access her camera, but hopefully I will track down the pictures from her.
That week we got some tent pad work done, but also had time to hike up to Crystal Lake and Thunder Pass-both beautiful spots that I have not been to before. The pictures are posted in photobucket.
Thursday, I got back from work and went bouldering with Sam at the Suzuki boulders. There we played on some problems and made plans for the weekend.
Friday morning, after making some banana molasses bread, which failed to rise as much as I hoped (I have to remember to add extra flour-last time I remembered, this time unfortunately I did not-still edible though. Well At least I and my friend didn’t die when we tried it), I went for an interesting short run. Long story short, I ended up having to walk for some of it-to avoid 3 large bull elk with about 6 points on each antler and who were getting a bit competitive over a female. I didn’t feel like running through the middle of that conflict and risk being charged (I haven’t heard of elk attacking people, but I didn’t feel like becoming a statistics-whether I was the first or not).
Right after my exciting run, I met with Sam to go to Chaos Canyon for bouldering with Estabon and Tommy Caldwell (who happens to be one of the best climbers in the world and is yet so down to earth and kind). It was great, though the problems (meaning a was just getting my butt off the ground or hold a position for a second or two) were all out of my league, I worked on a couple of V9’s and this awesome V7 which Tommy had set. It was great having him there for beta.
Upon returning home, I found myself glued to the computer, again searching for gear on pro-deal, trying to decide what to buy. Then I met up with Walt and Sally for dinner in Estes. It was fantastic to catch up with them, learn about a huge contest they went to for sheep dog herding, and other updates with themselves. Hopefully I will see them one last time before I go. 10 days…
I can’t believe I just got back from my last week of real work (not that we don’t have work next week, it’s just that half of it will probably be front country work where we’re cleaning the cache, vehicles, etc). We were out all four days up at La Poudre Patrol cabin on the west side of the park. A pretty relaxed, though productive week.
Anyways, I’m getting a head of myself here. I still haven’t finished telling you about last weekend and I’ll get really confused jumping back and forth in time.
So Saturday I was originally going to go to this huge Celtic festival with Garrett, Brian and Christina, but then they didn’t want to pay the entrance fee of $25 and then pay for everything in there. Instead, we decided to go climbing at the Monastery. Morning comes though and it was the coldest, most overcast day we’ve had since I got here. We decided to just go see the Celtic parade in the morning, see if it clears, and if not, find something else to do. Well, it didn’t clear, even drizzled a few times during the parade and the rest of the day. The weather definitely had an immense influence on the crowd’s mood, because that was the quietest parade I have ever been to-the rain dampening their spirits and energy. Nothing much ended up happening on Saturday. Brain, Garret and I did end up seeing The Inglorious Bastards in theater and sort of just hung out, did nothing productive of course.
Sunday, I went to the Ironclads with Christina in the morning. Finally got on the legendary “Gut Buster.” Which I have to say really lives up to its name. I unfortunately forgot to take pictures of the climb when we were actually climbing it, but I snapped a few photos of it after so you can get an idea of it. Early afternoon, Christina dropped me off at Jim Detterline’s so I could finally chop some wood for him and do my research. We arrived in the middle of his cleaning frenzy (now that all the Venezuelans finally left, he can finally put his home back the way he wants it). For a guy who basically only has on arm right now, it’s impressive the amount he got done. Christina ended up staying for about half an hour to help move furniture. I stayed a few hours, getting some moving and wood splitting done. Unfortunately the research will have to wait till next weekend. That night, when I got back, I met up with Christina to go do a workout in the Bouldering room (since she’s going to Thailand this January for climbing and all the routes there are 5.10 or harder because they’re all overhanging, she wants to build up her strength).
Monday morning had a rather bad start off. My phone stopped working Sunday night for some reason, so I had to use my watches for my alarm. Unfortunately, they failed at their job and luckily me roommate too the business over a bit late, waking me up 5 minutes before I was supposed to be picking Christina up for work (how will I ever live without a roommate?). It was a mad rush and I was 10 minutes late in picking Christina up. On the way to work, we made a 2 minute stop at the Donut Haus to grab breakfast. For work we drove to the west side, up the ditch road to the La Poudre Pass cabin. There we would stay all three nights to get work done at the different campsites in the area. We did have some excitement on the drive in. A moose with her calf were on the ditch road when we came around a corner. We followed them in the jeep about 500 m down the dirt path before they finally found a way down the steep slope and disappeared among the trees. Unfortunately only Christina was able to access her camera, but hopefully I will track down the pictures from her.
That week we got some tent pad work done, but also had time to hike up to Crystal Lake and Thunder Pass-both beautiful spots that I have not been to before. The pictures are posted in photobucket.
Thursday, I got back from work and went bouldering with Sam at the Suzuki boulders. There we played on some problems and made plans for the weekend.
Friday morning, after making some banana molasses bread, which failed to rise as much as I hoped (I have to remember to add extra flour-last time I remembered, this time unfortunately I did not-still edible though. Well At least I and my friend didn’t die when we tried it), I went for an interesting short run. Long story short, I ended up having to walk for some of it-to avoid 3 large bull elk with about 6 points on each antler and who were getting a bit competitive over a female. I didn’t feel like running through the middle of that conflict and risk being charged (I haven’t heard of elk attacking people, but I didn’t feel like becoming a statistics-whether I was the first or not).
Right after my exciting run, I met with Sam to go to Chaos Canyon for bouldering with Estabon and Tommy Caldwell (who happens to be one of the best climbers in the world and is yet so down to earth and kind). It was great, though the problems (meaning a was just getting my butt off the ground or hold a position for a second or two) were all out of my league, I worked on a couple of V9’s and this awesome V7 which Tommy had set. It was great having him there for beta.
Upon returning home, I found myself glued to the computer, again searching for gear on pro-deal, trying to decide what to buy. Then I met up with Walt and Sally for dinner in Estes. It was fantastic to catch up with them, learn about a huge contest they went to for sheep dog herding, and other updates with themselves. Hopefully I will see them one last time before I go. 10 days…
I will be productive, I will be productive…oh drat.
Friday, September 11
So last Saturday, I went to do some chores downtown, get a run in, maybe even a bike ride and to quickly check out this arts and crafts fair. Well I complete some of my “To do” list and then I decided to call Kelly to see if she wanted to go for a run. Turns out she we making a run down to Boulder with Rohon to get some chores done, so I decided to join her and finally buy some of the gear I’ve been holding off on and some shopping done. We were suppose to be done there only a few hours, turned out to be the whole afternoon, but luckily we still had a chance to run together. We ran around Estes Park lake, with me pushing Rohan in his sporty stroller (which wasn’t all that bad actually, well until you hit the uphill sections...builds character). That night I ended up sleeping over Kelly’s to save her from having to drive me back, though this meant I wasn’t getting a few things on my to do list done.
Sunday morning and early afternoon, I hung out with Kelly and Rohan. Kelly and I finally worked on the legendary 5.11 a finger crack at little twin owls (when they say finger crack, they’re not kidding, some points it’s more like finger tips). I lost my cell phone of course while belaying Kelly. But I was waiting to here from Jim about his the biking trip he wanted to do all summer, so I decided to look for it later and get to a phone first. That evening, I was luckily able to meet up with Jim, the two remaining Venezuelans, and Dave, Jim’s biking friend, to go on the mountain bike trip at the Devil’s Backbone. Hardest mountain bike trip in my life. There were actual drop offs! Jim tried to walk down it on his bike. One moment he’s there, next, he’s gone. I chose, like the other’s to get off and walk these points. I decided I’d rather give up the chance to practice my EMT skills. That night, we all ate together at the Village Inn Restaurant in Loveland.
Monday-I actually got some cleaning done, biked to little twin owls to look for my cell (success!). Then headed over to Kelly’s and Estabon’s to meet for climbing. We went down to the Monastery for a “full half day,” as Estabon put it. I did my first 5.11 lead! Though unfortunately not clean-which annoys me because I easily flashed it on top rope before leading it. See, trusting a crimper that’s half the width of my finger tips is a lot harder when your 3 feet above your last bolt, than when the rope is above you. I didn’t fall but I rested 3 times. Ok, before I leave, I will work on that mental block with falling Especially when it’s a clean fall, which the 11 was! After climbing, we went to the Thai resteruant for dinner. Oh I almost forgot! Rohan and Kelly sang this one song for part of the day-6:00 the next morning, found myself singing it in the shower. It was stuck in my head all morning and it was definitely one of those songs you teach your toddler. I have no idea the name I’m afraid.
As for work that week (a grand total of 3 days), it was rather boring but definitely needed: EMT refresher-yay free hours! Tuesday night was exciting though, incase you haven’t heard, Tom and I finally bought our tickets to South America! Flying into Santiago Nov 15, wonder around Chile for a little together, maybe head to El Bolson/Bariloche (aka Little Switzerland-fantastic skiing, climbing, and chocolate!) together, and then when Tom leaves on the 26th, I’m off to work on an Organic Farm, and hopefully meeting people for climbing and hiking and what ever other adventures that catch my interest when I’m down there. I will be back home on Christmas eve.
Thursday night, for happy hour, the crew and others met at the Rock Inn to sort of celebrate Jim’s “Retirement” and he finally getting his surgery done on his shoulder. Except, Jim ended up not showing up. Unfortunately, Jim’s not that fond of such things, is bitter towards the park system and doesn’t seem to realize how many people who work for the park and who are outside the park admire him. Have to work on that. I’m headed to Jim’s house tomorrow evening after the Celtic festival to chop wood for him and do my research on South America (having been there himself, he is an excellent source of knowledge and he has a little library on South America).
Oh, glad to say I actually was productive today! Unfortunately didn’t go climbing, but did go for a run and bike ride, got to the library, got some shopping done, and some other chores, including letter writing (about time I did that-a bit late I know). Felt good to actually get some things done.
So last Saturday, I went to do some chores downtown, get a run in, maybe even a bike ride and to quickly check out this arts and crafts fair. Well I complete some of my “To do” list and then I decided to call Kelly to see if she wanted to go for a run. Turns out she we making a run down to Boulder with Rohon to get some chores done, so I decided to join her and finally buy some of the gear I’ve been holding off on and some shopping done. We were suppose to be done there only a few hours, turned out to be the whole afternoon, but luckily we still had a chance to run together. We ran around Estes Park lake, with me pushing Rohan in his sporty stroller (which wasn’t all that bad actually, well until you hit the uphill sections...builds character). That night I ended up sleeping over Kelly’s to save her from having to drive me back, though this meant I wasn’t getting a few things on my to do list done.
Sunday morning and early afternoon, I hung out with Kelly and Rohan. Kelly and I finally worked on the legendary 5.11 a finger crack at little twin owls (when they say finger crack, they’re not kidding, some points it’s more like finger tips). I lost my cell phone of course while belaying Kelly. But I was waiting to here from Jim about his the biking trip he wanted to do all summer, so I decided to look for it later and get to a phone first. That evening, I was luckily able to meet up with Jim, the two remaining Venezuelans, and Dave, Jim’s biking friend, to go on the mountain bike trip at the Devil’s Backbone. Hardest mountain bike trip in my life. There were actual drop offs! Jim tried to walk down it on his bike. One moment he’s there, next, he’s gone. I chose, like the other’s to get off and walk these points. I decided I’d rather give up the chance to practice my EMT skills. That night, we all ate together at the Village Inn Restaurant in Loveland.
Monday-I actually got some cleaning done, biked to little twin owls to look for my cell (success!). Then headed over to Kelly’s and Estabon’s to meet for climbing. We went down to the Monastery for a “full half day,” as Estabon put it. I did my first 5.11 lead! Though unfortunately not clean-which annoys me because I easily flashed it on top rope before leading it. See, trusting a crimper that’s half the width of my finger tips is a lot harder when your 3 feet above your last bolt, than when the rope is above you. I didn’t fall but I rested 3 times. Ok, before I leave, I will work on that mental block with falling Especially when it’s a clean fall, which the 11 was! After climbing, we went to the Thai resteruant for dinner. Oh I almost forgot! Rohan and Kelly sang this one song for part of the day-6:00 the next morning, found myself singing it in the shower. It was stuck in my head all morning and it was definitely one of those songs you teach your toddler. I have no idea the name I’m afraid.
As for work that week (a grand total of 3 days), it was rather boring but definitely needed: EMT refresher-yay free hours! Tuesday night was exciting though, incase you haven’t heard, Tom and I finally bought our tickets to South America! Flying into Santiago Nov 15, wonder around Chile for a little together, maybe head to El Bolson/Bariloche (aka Little Switzerland-fantastic skiing, climbing, and chocolate!) together, and then when Tom leaves on the 26th, I’m off to work on an Organic Farm, and hopefully meeting people for climbing and hiking and what ever other adventures that catch my interest when I’m down there. I will be back home on Christmas eve.
Thursday night, for happy hour, the crew and others met at the Rock Inn to sort of celebrate Jim’s “Retirement” and he finally getting his surgery done on his shoulder. Except, Jim ended up not showing up. Unfortunately, Jim’s not that fond of such things, is bitter towards the park system and doesn’t seem to realize how many people who work for the park and who are outside the park admire him. Have to work on that. I’m headed to Jim’s house tomorrow evening after the Celtic festival to chop wood for him and do my research on South America (having been there himself, he is an excellent source of knowledge and he has a little library on South America).
Oh, glad to say I actually was productive today! Unfortunately didn’t go climbing, but did go for a run and bike ride, got to the library, got some shopping done, and some other chores, including letter writing (about time I did that-a bit late I know). Felt good to actually get some things done.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
The usual climbing and work week
September 4, 2009
Oh, I am pumped-4 day weekend! Woot woot. Gotta love Labor day, the day of no labor, sweat, stress, or boredom, but of adventures and friends. Well, so I hope, I don’t have definite plans yet, but it sounds like a day of sport climbing with Kelly, Estabon and Rohan at the Monastery. No more chickening out, I will lead my first 5.11. And I’ll get over the whole lead fall thing-maybe I’ll make myself take a few (ooh, I do hate doing unnecessary damage to my rope).
Anyways, moving on. Last Thursday, the 27th of August, was a fantastic day at work. We finished the work at the new sunset campsite by putting in the footbridge, taking out a huge stone and a couple of trees. It was great because we got to work with Jim Dougan, who is always an energetic, fun guy to work with. He always amazes me. I wish I could be as spontaneous as he, with an endless storage of energy that needs so little to fuel or stimulate it.
Friday, I went climbing with Garritt, Christina and Brian Drew, down St Vrain Canyon at Monkey Skull (great name ehh? Funny how it sort of stands up to it). I led this 5.10 c right off that bat with my newly resoled shoes, and well, I took my second lead fall, but I blame it on equipment failure-apparently you need to break in the new rubber because it can become oxidized. Anyways, after climbing, Garritt, Brian and I went tubing through downtown Estes. Fair warning to all future tubers, tire tubes can make great inner tubes, but don’t get real cheap ones because they can pop easily (as Garritt discovered about 10 minutes into our trip-it was quite a funny site to see the explosion and him just sink. I laughed, so I suppose I deserve the next minute where I fell out of my tube at a rapid and had to dash out of the water and chase my tube down stream). This karma leads to my next warning: make sure your tube blows up equally on all sides (wait, I’m forgetting my geometry, circles don’t have sides…all turns? You know what I mean).-tubing on a lopsided tube is rather difficult-especially in rapids. Though it does make a good abdominal workout.
Saturday, I can’t remember. Sunday I went climbing at lumpy with Dave from trail crew. I did my third trad lead. Just need to work on my large gear placement and my trust in my own pieces.
Monday at work, Luke and I hiked to Big Meadows again and put some steps and water checks in at the Paintbrush and Sunset campsites. Tuesday, Luke, Kevin and I had the oh so enjoyable duty of carrying out crap with the llamas from the Odessa campsite composting privy. Which by the way was definitely failing at the whole composting thing-way too many users. Well at least we also got to do some tent pad work and Odessa Lake was in a rather beautiful area of the park.
Wednesday the crew was supposed to go on an overnight at Shadow mountain fire tower to take down the privies and burn them, but we got called late Tuesday night to go on a SAR 7:00 in the morning and after hanging around for about 45 minutes, we found out we weren’t really needed-so disappointing. So the trip was cancelled (partially because Tara was still on the SAR) and the crew headed back to the cache, cleaned things up a bit and hiked Twin Sisters-an easy little orientation hike. Thursday, our Shadow Mountain trip became the day trip, though unfortunately, the campfire part was not included.
Today, I got to go climbing at the monastery again-though unfortunately I chickened out on leading hard routes (partially because my climbing partner Luke doesn’t climb that hard, he has never caught lead falls, and I was tired), but I did do some fun classic routes.
Oh, I am pumped-4 day weekend! Woot woot. Gotta love Labor day, the day of no labor, sweat, stress, or boredom, but of adventures and friends. Well, so I hope, I don’t have definite plans yet, but it sounds like a day of sport climbing with Kelly, Estabon and Rohan at the Monastery. No more chickening out, I will lead my first 5.11. And I’ll get over the whole lead fall thing-maybe I’ll make myself take a few (ooh, I do hate doing unnecessary damage to my rope).
Anyways, moving on. Last Thursday, the 27th of August, was a fantastic day at work. We finished the work at the new sunset campsite by putting in the footbridge, taking out a huge stone and a couple of trees. It was great because we got to work with Jim Dougan, who is always an energetic, fun guy to work with. He always amazes me. I wish I could be as spontaneous as he, with an endless storage of energy that needs so little to fuel or stimulate it.
Friday, I went climbing with Garritt, Christina and Brian Drew, down St Vrain Canyon at Monkey Skull (great name ehh? Funny how it sort of stands up to it). I led this 5.10 c right off that bat with my newly resoled shoes, and well, I took my second lead fall, but I blame it on equipment failure-apparently you need to break in the new rubber because it can become oxidized. Anyways, after climbing, Garritt, Brian and I went tubing through downtown Estes. Fair warning to all future tubers, tire tubes can make great inner tubes, but don’t get real cheap ones because they can pop easily (as Garritt discovered about 10 minutes into our trip-it was quite a funny site to see the explosion and him just sink. I laughed, so I suppose I deserve the next minute where I fell out of my tube at a rapid and had to dash out of the water and chase my tube down stream). This karma leads to my next warning: make sure your tube blows up equally on all sides (wait, I’m forgetting my geometry, circles don’t have sides…all turns? You know what I mean).-tubing on a lopsided tube is rather difficult-especially in rapids. Though it does make a good abdominal workout.
Saturday, I can’t remember. Sunday I went climbing at lumpy with Dave from trail crew. I did my third trad lead. Just need to work on my large gear placement and my trust in my own pieces.
Monday at work, Luke and I hiked to Big Meadows again and put some steps and water checks in at the Paintbrush and Sunset campsites. Tuesday, Luke, Kevin and I had the oh so enjoyable duty of carrying out crap with the llamas from the Odessa campsite composting privy. Which by the way was definitely failing at the whole composting thing-way too many users. Well at least we also got to do some tent pad work and Odessa Lake was in a rather beautiful area of the park.
Wednesday the crew was supposed to go on an overnight at Shadow mountain fire tower to take down the privies and burn them, but we got called late Tuesday night to go on a SAR 7:00 in the morning and after hanging around for about 45 minutes, we found out we weren’t really needed-so disappointing. So the trip was cancelled (partially because Tara was still on the SAR) and the crew headed back to the cache, cleaned things up a bit and hiked Twin Sisters-an easy little orientation hike. Thursday, our Shadow Mountain trip became the day trip, though unfortunately, the campfire part was not included.
Today, I got to go climbing at the monastery again-though unfortunately I chickened out on leading hard routes (partially because my climbing partner Luke doesn’t climb that hard, he has never caught lead falls, and I was tired), but I did do some fun classic routes.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Field Trip!
August 26th, 2009
The Sunday after the dull sick Saturday, I was feeling far better, so I jumped on the chance to go climbing with Sam (the one with dreadlocks and who I attempted to climb spearhead with) and his friend from trail crew-Dave. We had an early start-around 5:00, because we wanted to have a full day of climbing, but we had about an hour-1.5 hour drive. We were off to Boulder Canyon! My second time there this summer, all in the same weekend.
This time, I went to this wall called Sherwood Forest. I didn’t battle any sheriffs or fake Kings, but I did flash a 5.11d (on top rope though) and I did complete (not cleanly, but still got all the moves, after many tries on some parts) my first 5.12 (b). I really need to start leading harder-my goal for the end of the summer-to lead a lot more trad routes and to lead some 5.11-to break through my mind barriers. Oh and then we went to Bell Buttress and did this neat 5.9+ trad route. We also met this famous rockclimber there-I’m afraid I’ve already forgotten his name, but what’s new? I never paid attention too much to famous, popular rock climbers.
The next day I went to work with a little, belated surprise for Christina and the rest of the crew. Late Sunday night, I made a dark chocolate cake from scratch (ok, I’ll confess, I cheated on the frosting. But I did decorate it myself in true backpacker’s style-using cashews, almonds, dried papaya, banana chips and craisens to create flower and other designs). The cake was for Christina’s birthday and an apology (long story short, the week before I accidentally set my watch time 15 min ahead instead of my alarm-so when I awoke in the morning, I thought I was running late, and when I went to pick up Christina, I thought I was 10 min late and she had given up on me and left-but no, she chased after me, yelling and screaming and I somehow didn't see her as I drove away-didn’t know the truth until I got to the cache..oops). The cake turned out to be delicious and everyone loved it. Unfortunately, the day of climbing and late night baking probably brought a bit of the fever back, for I was feeling a bit sluggish and off in the morning. But I still had a good time helping to tear apart an outhouse and burn the unpainted pieces.
That evening, Scott arrived soon after I got back from work. We went out to dinner at the Italian Restaurant Sweet Basilicas. Then we packed for our backpacking trip the next day for m work.
Tuesday, we hiked with Christina and Mister from Cow Creek, to a campsite where we replaced a rather sketchy privy platform. After replacing it with Scott’s help, we headed up to Lawn lake. The next day, there wasn’t really much to do, so Scott and I headed up to the Saddle and Crystal Lake, before we all packed up and headed out via the Long Lake trail.
After work, Scott and I headed to Loveland for food shopping and then to Fort Collins for dinner. We ate at this Middle Eastern Restaurant (Lulu’s?). I decided to be adventurous and tried these sushi rolls-made of eel and avocado. Actually, it was surprisingly delicious. And I tried this dish called Koko chicken and Thai iced tea, both were fantastic (I really need to start experimenting with making Asian dishes-they are so good).
The next day, since Scott couldn’t join the crew on a traversing hiking for orienting ourselves to the park, we left a day early for our weekend road trip. First we headed to Boulder-where I picked up my climbing shoes, and we checked out El Dorado Canyon for a couple of hours-a famed climbing area-though we just walked around. After, we head to the Lund’s house on Sugarloaf Mountain. There we spent lunch and a few hours afterwards. We spent some time talking with Sally and Walt and took a nice leisurely walk up to the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain.
Unfortunately, we were not able to stay very long, for rush hour was not a time we wanted to get stuck in Denver. So mid afternoon, we made our farewells and headed to CO Springs. When we arrived, we went out to dinner with Scott’s Grandmother. Kind of a funny story actually. She asked us where we wanted to go, saying she had this one place in mind, wasn’t sure if we wanted trout (Scott had informed me she was obsessed with this restaurant-more particularly, their trout dish). We asked what was around, she mentioned again the trout restaurant, then off handedly mentioned a few other places. She asked us what kind of food we were looking for. Scott said how we were aiming for local restaurants. “That’s it,” she exclaimed in all seriousness, “We’ll got to the Mason Jar, there’s a classic local place.” This of course turns out to be that famed trout restaurant (someone’s mind wasn’t already set for where we were going). It turned out to be a decent place though.
After dinner, we headed to the Garden of the Gods. We walked around there for a little while. The rock was oh so tempting to climb, though sadly you need a permit unless you want to pay a $500 fine. The rock was pretty cool to see though in the sunset.
The next morning (Friday), we stopped briefly at the Garden of the God’s visitor center, and then headed to Breckenridge. When we arrived, we walked around exploring while trying to find a campsite we could camp at. Still not sure if we had a place to sleep (I figured, worse comes to worse, we could sleep in the car) we went to dinner at this really nice restaurant-with both of us of course a bit dressed down with the place (shorts and t-shirts-not too bad right?). I had this delicious curry salmon and Scott and I split two succulent desserts-this gooseberry bread pudding? And dark chocolate cake with vanilla milkshake.
Next, we drove around for about an hour, and finally, just after dark, we found a campsite that was actually open and not full, and quickly set up the tent before we checked on the internet for some exciting activities to do the next day before heading home.
The next morning we went out to breakfast (I of course forgot to bring the stove and pots, so it would have been rather unpleasant to eat uncooked cream of wheat), checked out the biggest snow blower I have ever seen (it was actually a train), stopped by Scott’s family’s friend house, and then headed to Grays and Torreys to knock off two 14,000 footers. Then we began the long drive back, going through Nederland and the Peak to Peak Highway.
Sunday, before Scott left, we went for a short bike ride up Trail Ridge Road and then stopped by the Stanley hotel (supposedly one of the most haunted places in the US and in the Stephen King Movie, the Shining).
Monday to Wednesday this we, Kevin, Luke and I hiked over Stormy peaks Pass (one of the most beautiful hikes in the park), did some tent pad work, and BICAMS.
The Sunday after the dull sick Saturday, I was feeling far better, so I jumped on the chance to go climbing with Sam (the one with dreadlocks and who I attempted to climb spearhead with) and his friend from trail crew-Dave. We had an early start-around 5:00, because we wanted to have a full day of climbing, but we had about an hour-1.5 hour drive. We were off to Boulder Canyon! My second time there this summer, all in the same weekend.
This time, I went to this wall called Sherwood Forest. I didn’t battle any sheriffs or fake Kings, but I did flash a 5.11d (on top rope though) and I did complete (not cleanly, but still got all the moves, after many tries on some parts) my first 5.12 (b). I really need to start leading harder-my goal for the end of the summer-to lead a lot more trad routes and to lead some 5.11-to break through my mind barriers. Oh and then we went to Bell Buttress and did this neat 5.9+ trad route. We also met this famous rockclimber there-I’m afraid I’ve already forgotten his name, but what’s new? I never paid attention too much to famous, popular rock climbers.
The next day I went to work with a little, belated surprise for Christina and the rest of the crew. Late Sunday night, I made a dark chocolate cake from scratch (ok, I’ll confess, I cheated on the frosting. But I did decorate it myself in true backpacker’s style-using cashews, almonds, dried papaya, banana chips and craisens to create flower and other designs). The cake was for Christina’s birthday and an apology (long story short, the week before I accidentally set my watch time 15 min ahead instead of my alarm-so when I awoke in the morning, I thought I was running late, and when I went to pick up Christina, I thought I was 10 min late and she had given up on me and left-but no, she chased after me, yelling and screaming and I somehow didn't see her as I drove away-didn’t know the truth until I got to the cache..oops). The cake turned out to be delicious and everyone loved it. Unfortunately, the day of climbing and late night baking probably brought a bit of the fever back, for I was feeling a bit sluggish and off in the morning. But I still had a good time helping to tear apart an outhouse and burn the unpainted pieces.
That evening, Scott arrived soon after I got back from work. We went out to dinner at the Italian Restaurant Sweet Basilicas. Then we packed for our backpacking trip the next day for m work.
Tuesday, we hiked with Christina and Mister from Cow Creek, to a campsite where we replaced a rather sketchy privy platform. After replacing it with Scott’s help, we headed up to Lawn lake. The next day, there wasn’t really much to do, so Scott and I headed up to the Saddle and Crystal Lake, before we all packed up and headed out via the Long Lake trail.
After work, Scott and I headed to Loveland for food shopping and then to Fort Collins for dinner. We ate at this Middle Eastern Restaurant (Lulu’s?). I decided to be adventurous and tried these sushi rolls-made of eel and avocado. Actually, it was surprisingly delicious. And I tried this dish called Koko chicken and Thai iced tea, both were fantastic (I really need to start experimenting with making Asian dishes-they are so good).
The next day, since Scott couldn’t join the crew on a traversing hiking for orienting ourselves to the park, we left a day early for our weekend road trip. First we headed to Boulder-where I picked up my climbing shoes, and we checked out El Dorado Canyon for a couple of hours-a famed climbing area-though we just walked around. After, we head to the Lund’s house on Sugarloaf Mountain. There we spent lunch and a few hours afterwards. We spent some time talking with Sally and Walt and took a nice leisurely walk up to the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain.
Unfortunately, we were not able to stay very long, for rush hour was not a time we wanted to get stuck in Denver. So mid afternoon, we made our farewells and headed to CO Springs. When we arrived, we went out to dinner with Scott’s Grandmother. Kind of a funny story actually. She asked us where we wanted to go, saying she had this one place in mind, wasn’t sure if we wanted trout (Scott had informed me she was obsessed with this restaurant-more particularly, their trout dish). We asked what was around, she mentioned again the trout restaurant, then off handedly mentioned a few other places. She asked us what kind of food we were looking for. Scott said how we were aiming for local restaurants. “That’s it,” she exclaimed in all seriousness, “We’ll got to the Mason Jar, there’s a classic local place.” This of course turns out to be that famed trout restaurant (someone’s mind wasn’t already set for where we were going). It turned out to be a decent place though.
After dinner, we headed to the Garden of the Gods. We walked around there for a little while. The rock was oh so tempting to climb, though sadly you need a permit unless you want to pay a $500 fine. The rock was pretty cool to see though in the sunset.
The next morning (Friday), we stopped briefly at the Garden of the God’s visitor center, and then headed to Breckenridge. When we arrived, we walked around exploring while trying to find a campsite we could camp at. Still not sure if we had a place to sleep (I figured, worse comes to worse, we could sleep in the car) we went to dinner at this really nice restaurant-with both of us of course a bit dressed down with the place (shorts and t-shirts-not too bad right?). I had this delicious curry salmon and Scott and I split two succulent desserts-this gooseberry bread pudding? And dark chocolate cake with vanilla milkshake.
Next, we drove around for about an hour, and finally, just after dark, we found a campsite that was actually open and not full, and quickly set up the tent before we checked on the internet for some exciting activities to do the next day before heading home.
The next morning we went out to breakfast (I of course forgot to bring the stove and pots, so it would have been rather unpleasant to eat uncooked cream of wheat), checked out the biggest snow blower I have ever seen (it was actually a train), stopped by Scott’s family’s friend house, and then headed to Grays and Torreys to knock off two 14,000 footers. Then we began the long drive back, going through Nederland and the Peak to Peak Highway.
Sunday, before Scott left, we went for a short bike ride up Trail Ridge Road and then stopped by the Stanley hotel (supposedly one of the most haunted places in the US and in the Stephen King Movie, the Shining).
Monday to Wednesday this we, Kevin, Luke and I hiked over Stormy peaks Pass (one of the most beautiful hikes in the park), did some tent pad work, and BICAMS.
What is this sickness thing?
August 15, 2009
I hate being sick. I have just come down with a fever late last night, and it’s still lingering now in the morning. So instead of climbing today as planned, I’ll actually be productive with my blogs, resume, laundry, and many other things on my “To Do” list.
Last Saturday, after working on my resume, shopping, and other chores, I did some baking and headed to the annual chili cook off at Christina’s house. I was lame and didn’t make any chili for I’m not much of a cook (and I didn’t want to have to buy all the ingredients), but I did make some cornbread, which was of course needed and brownies which were a hit. It was a fun time-the chili was delicious and “prizes” given for the Hottest, the most creative, the most colorful, the best vegetarian, and the best Carnivore. Even Jim Dougan showed up and a group of us had an interesting conversation on our different views of death (can’t remember how we got on to the conversation and it wasn’t as depressing a discussion as you would think).I then got a ride back from someone who was crashing on our coach that night-Chris, who works in Denver with a wildlife resource management program for the national parks. We hung out the next morning, and he was a huge help with helping me to remake my federal job application, which was completely different from the application I learned to make in college. In the afternoon, I did some climbing with Christina and her boyfriend Jim at Combat rock. I am ashamed to say I bailed on a 5.9+-mainly because the fall would not have been a pretty one and I don’t think I’ve been leading enough lately to have the mental confidence to make the moves.
Monday to Thursday, the whole wilderness crew was out together in the backcountry all four days on Timber Creek Trail. There wasn’t much tent pad work to actually do there for the week, but there was nothing for us to do if we went back a day early since Tara was probably still out. So Wednesday, we devoted a whole day to orienting ourselves to the park by hiking up Ida and this other smaller mountain next to it (so basically we had the whole day to relax and hike). That same night was the meteor shower, and I hiked up to the top of Jackstraw Mountain to watch it for an hour. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to stay up till 2 in the morning for the peak of the shower-it was a little chilly on the mountain top, but I did see a number of gorgeous meteors streak across the dark night sky before I headed down to my warm tent.
Thursday night, in celebration of Christina’s birthday (which is the 13th), the crew hung out for a couple of hours at the Rock Inn. There I met the new climbing ranger in charge of Longs peaks rescues (Jim Detterline’s old job)-Sam. He’s a rather funny guy with a few interesting stories in his background that Tara told us about. I made plans with him to go to Boulder the next day for some shopping and climbing
Friday ended up not being as productive a day as I was hoping. We were supposed to go climbing in the morning and then shopping in the afternoon where I’d have plenty of time to hang out a café to get all the work I need done on the internet and make some phone calls. The weather in the morning ended up being bad though, so Same grabbed a breakfast and got his car registered which ended up taking him an hour and then finally we headed down to Boulder. At least down there I got my food shopping done, finally got a new pair of hiking pants for cheap and dropped my climbing shoes off to be expensively resoled (it probably would have cost just a little more for a brand new pair of new shoes through pro-deal, but then, I didn’t have time to wait for a brand new pair of shoes to be mailed before I break through my “new” pair of climbing shoes- besides, first pair of climbing shoes, you grow sort of attached to them and their broken in already-which saves me from a slow, painful process).
By the time we were done shopping, the weather had cleared for some climbing and we went to do some climbing in Boulder canyon-got 3 pitches in. I could have lead some trad then, but I was feeling suddenly very tired, so we just headed out after the 3rd pitch. On our drive back to Estes, I began to notice I was feeling really off, and within a couple of hours, the fever hit.
I hate being sick. I have just come down with a fever late last night, and it’s still lingering now in the morning. So instead of climbing today as planned, I’ll actually be productive with my blogs, resume, laundry, and many other things on my “To Do” list.
Last Saturday, after working on my resume, shopping, and other chores, I did some baking and headed to the annual chili cook off at Christina’s house. I was lame and didn’t make any chili for I’m not much of a cook (and I didn’t want to have to buy all the ingredients), but I did make some cornbread, which was of course needed and brownies which were a hit. It was a fun time-the chili was delicious and “prizes” given for the Hottest, the most creative, the most colorful, the best vegetarian, and the best Carnivore. Even Jim Dougan showed up and a group of us had an interesting conversation on our different views of death (can’t remember how we got on to the conversation and it wasn’t as depressing a discussion as you would think).I then got a ride back from someone who was crashing on our coach that night-Chris, who works in Denver with a wildlife resource management program for the national parks. We hung out the next morning, and he was a huge help with helping me to remake my federal job application, which was completely different from the application I learned to make in college. In the afternoon, I did some climbing with Christina and her boyfriend Jim at Combat rock. I am ashamed to say I bailed on a 5.9+-mainly because the fall would not have been a pretty one and I don’t think I’ve been leading enough lately to have the mental confidence to make the moves.
Monday to Thursday, the whole wilderness crew was out together in the backcountry all four days on Timber Creek Trail. There wasn’t much tent pad work to actually do there for the week, but there was nothing for us to do if we went back a day early since Tara was probably still out. So Wednesday, we devoted a whole day to orienting ourselves to the park by hiking up Ida and this other smaller mountain next to it (so basically we had the whole day to relax and hike). That same night was the meteor shower, and I hiked up to the top of Jackstraw Mountain to watch it for an hour. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to stay up till 2 in the morning for the peak of the shower-it was a little chilly on the mountain top, but I did see a number of gorgeous meteors streak across the dark night sky before I headed down to my warm tent.
Thursday night, in celebration of Christina’s birthday (which is the 13th), the crew hung out for a couple of hours at the Rock Inn. There I met the new climbing ranger in charge of Longs peaks rescues (Jim Detterline’s old job)-Sam. He’s a rather funny guy with a few interesting stories in his background that Tara told us about. I made plans with him to go to Boulder the next day for some shopping and climbing
Friday ended up not being as productive a day as I was hoping. We were supposed to go climbing in the morning and then shopping in the afternoon where I’d have plenty of time to hang out a café to get all the work I need done on the internet and make some phone calls. The weather in the morning ended up being bad though, so Same grabbed a breakfast and got his car registered which ended up taking him an hour and then finally we headed down to Boulder. At least down there I got my food shopping done, finally got a new pair of hiking pants for cheap and dropped my climbing shoes off to be expensively resoled (it probably would have cost just a little more for a brand new pair of new shoes through pro-deal, but then, I didn’t have time to wait for a brand new pair of shoes to be mailed before I break through my “new” pair of climbing shoes- besides, first pair of climbing shoes, you grow sort of attached to them and their broken in already-which saves me from a slow, painful process).
By the time we were done shopping, the weather had cleared for some climbing and we went to do some climbing in Boulder canyon-got 3 pitches in. I could have lead some trad then, but I was feeling suddenly very tired, so we just headed out after the 3rd pitch. On our drive back to Estes, I began to notice I was feeling really off, and within a couple of hours, the fever hit.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Time is flying by, I’m running out of time to put daydreams into reality, the pressures of life are starting to kick in. But the mountains still stand
August 7, 2009
My weeks are passing by so quickly! I can’t believe my internship is more than half over already! It’s rather alarming, because now I don’t have any jobs/internships lined up for the winter.
Well, whether I realize and accept this reality or not, I do need to accept the fact that as of now, I have no definite plans for the winter, and I need to get some things set in stone fast: a job, travel plans, an internship, or a study abroad. I just know that sitting around in damp, cold CT is not on the list. This is consuming much of my free time on the weekends now when I’m not off hanging from some cliff ledge, hiking, or some other adventure.
Well anyways, speaking of rather wet weather in CT, Rocky has had some bizarre weather as of late too. Apparently it’s sort of like their fall weather. In the past 2 weeks, 2 or 3 of the nights I stayed in the backcountry for work, we got hit by hale storms and magnificent, rather windy thunderstorm (some of the most amazing lightning I have ever seen-little more thrilling when you’re staying in a small tent). Hale storms one day, 90 degree weather in Estes the next.
Last week, work was not too exciting except for the fact that Tuesday, when driving to “work” up to the Corral trailhead to head to Mirror Lake for an overnight to do BICAMs and tent pad work, we saw a whole (now mom you are paying attention now right? Read carefully) herd of bull moose (about 8 or so probably). That’s right, the 8 foot high, 12000 lb body with full racks. Oh and then the next day, on our drive out, (keep reading mom) we saw a female moose, with her little calf. It’s times like these I notice that my camera can’t take pictures that really capture the moments. I tried my best though, and you can see the result in photo bucket.
Last weekend was basically spent working on job resumes, running, trying to find climbing partners (suddenly, I seemed to have a shortage of them), visiting the county fair with Jim, and then Kelly and Rohan, research and some pleasure reading. Oh! And I did get to go climbing for the first time at Lumpy Ridge with Brian H. He’s a climbing ranger for the park. We climbed this one cool 5.9 crack called Conad’s Gonads (don’t you just love how climbers name routes?). Then this alright 5.9 crack and a burly 5.11c crack/dihedral. It was pretty fun. Then we went to a Thai restaurant for dinner with Andy (the climbing ranger from the last SAR) and his wife, Rebbecca. Afterward, we enjoyed some rock music from a local band at the Rock Inn.
This week at work was a bit interesting. It was our first week without Jim or Terra. Both were on leave for various reasons. So basically everything was left to us to get done. So on the list for Monday was for Ryan and I to replace a privy base for a campsite in Yipslon’s drainage. We hiked the privy base in 4.5 miles with Mister, only to find that the privy base there was perfectly fine (maybe some touchup paint, but no more). So we ate lunch at Yipslon Lake and then hiked out with the new privy base still with us. Tuesday to Thursday we were on the North Fork Trail that leads from Glen haven to Lost Lake. Tuesday was just a six-mile hike in with both llamas and getting a privy base and BICAM done. The next day however, was an unexpected 20 mile day. The llamas, which were kept in the pen next to the patrol cabin we were staying in, escaped sometime in the night. We chased them all the way down to the trailhead and part way down the road. Luckily, the trail crew was coming in that day, and they helped us capture the llamas. Then we hiked all the way back to the cabin and then to Lost lake to actually get some real work done before we headed back to the patrol cabin for dinner and bed. The next day was a bit more leisurely-everyone burned from the wild llama chase the day before. Basically just pack up, clean up and hike out with a couple of quick jobs to do when we got back to the cache.
That evening, after dinner, I went bouldering with a climbing friend Sam who works for the Fire Management department. We made plans for our adventure the next day-hiking in (about 6 miles) to Spearhead, climbing this four pitch 5.10 route called Syke Sickle, and then hiking out. We met at three in the morning. We got to the trailhead, and quickly started our hike. We flew thru the first intersection, making good time. But then we both started to notice-something was wrong. Neither of us recognized the trail and we had both been up to spearhead before. We soon began to backtrack. We went back about a mile to the first intersection, where we discovered, we both had miss read the sign and took a wrong turn (hey, lets see how awake and attentive you are at 4:00 in the morning when you went bed at 11. And hiking be headlamp rather than daylight makes things feel quite different).
So we debated briefly at the intersection and decided to go with a different plan we had discussed last night-a hard day of climbing at Lumpy, on its fun, but oh so painful cracks. So we went back to Sam’s house, grabbed the gear we needed for cragging, another cup of coffee each, and contemplated stopping at the famed Donut Haus before driving to the ridge. We climbed this on four pitch route on the Book. It’s was pretty cool, definitely had some challenges, especially with the high winds. Then we did some laps on these two single pitch crags and went to little twin owls where I burned out quite embarrassingly on a 5.9 (I’m afraid I already need to resole my new climbing shoes, though I can’t blame my failure of the pitch all on them, unfortunately). Then we finished our very long day by enjoying some pizza with Garrett at his house.
My weeks are passing by so quickly! I can’t believe my internship is more than half over already! It’s rather alarming, because now I don’t have any jobs/internships lined up for the winter.
Well, whether I realize and accept this reality or not, I do need to accept the fact that as of now, I have no definite plans for the winter, and I need to get some things set in stone fast: a job, travel plans, an internship, or a study abroad. I just know that sitting around in damp, cold CT is not on the list. This is consuming much of my free time on the weekends now when I’m not off hanging from some cliff ledge, hiking, or some other adventure.
Well anyways, speaking of rather wet weather in CT, Rocky has had some bizarre weather as of late too. Apparently it’s sort of like their fall weather. In the past 2 weeks, 2 or 3 of the nights I stayed in the backcountry for work, we got hit by hale storms and magnificent, rather windy thunderstorm (some of the most amazing lightning I have ever seen-little more thrilling when you’re staying in a small tent). Hale storms one day, 90 degree weather in Estes the next.
Last week, work was not too exciting except for the fact that Tuesday, when driving to “work” up to the Corral trailhead to head to Mirror Lake for an overnight to do BICAMs and tent pad work, we saw a whole (now mom you are paying attention now right? Read carefully) herd of bull moose (about 8 or so probably). That’s right, the 8 foot high, 12000 lb body with full racks. Oh and then the next day, on our drive out, (keep reading mom) we saw a female moose, with her little calf. It’s times like these I notice that my camera can’t take pictures that really capture the moments. I tried my best though, and you can see the result in photo bucket.
Last weekend was basically spent working on job resumes, running, trying to find climbing partners (suddenly, I seemed to have a shortage of them), visiting the county fair with Jim, and then Kelly and Rohan, research and some pleasure reading. Oh! And I did get to go climbing for the first time at Lumpy Ridge with Brian H. He’s a climbing ranger for the park. We climbed this one cool 5.9 crack called Conad’s Gonads (don’t you just love how climbers name routes?). Then this alright 5.9 crack and a burly 5.11c crack/dihedral. It was pretty fun. Then we went to a Thai restaurant for dinner with Andy (the climbing ranger from the last SAR) and his wife, Rebbecca. Afterward, we enjoyed some rock music from a local band at the Rock Inn.
This week at work was a bit interesting. It was our first week without Jim or Terra. Both were on leave for various reasons. So basically everything was left to us to get done. So on the list for Monday was for Ryan and I to replace a privy base for a campsite in Yipslon’s drainage. We hiked the privy base in 4.5 miles with Mister, only to find that the privy base there was perfectly fine (maybe some touchup paint, but no more). So we ate lunch at Yipslon Lake and then hiked out with the new privy base still with us. Tuesday to Thursday we were on the North Fork Trail that leads from Glen haven to Lost Lake. Tuesday was just a six-mile hike in with both llamas and getting a privy base and BICAM done. The next day however, was an unexpected 20 mile day. The llamas, which were kept in the pen next to the patrol cabin we were staying in, escaped sometime in the night. We chased them all the way down to the trailhead and part way down the road. Luckily, the trail crew was coming in that day, and they helped us capture the llamas. Then we hiked all the way back to the cabin and then to Lost lake to actually get some real work done before we headed back to the patrol cabin for dinner and bed. The next day was a bit more leisurely-everyone burned from the wild llama chase the day before. Basically just pack up, clean up and hike out with a couple of quick jobs to do when we got back to the cache.
That evening, after dinner, I went bouldering with a climbing friend Sam who works for the Fire Management department. We made plans for our adventure the next day-hiking in (about 6 miles) to Spearhead, climbing this four pitch 5.10 route called Syke Sickle, and then hiking out. We met at three in the morning. We got to the trailhead, and quickly started our hike. We flew thru the first intersection, making good time. But then we both started to notice-something was wrong. Neither of us recognized the trail and we had both been up to spearhead before. We soon began to backtrack. We went back about a mile to the first intersection, where we discovered, we both had miss read the sign and took a wrong turn (hey, lets see how awake and attentive you are at 4:00 in the morning when you went bed at 11. And hiking be headlamp rather than daylight makes things feel quite different).
So we debated briefly at the intersection and decided to go with a different plan we had discussed last night-a hard day of climbing at Lumpy, on its fun, but oh so painful cracks. So we went back to Sam’s house, grabbed the gear we needed for cragging, another cup of coffee each, and contemplated stopping at the famed Donut Haus before driving to the ridge. We climbed this on four pitch route on the Book. It’s was pretty cool, definitely had some challenges, especially with the high winds. Then we did some laps on these two single pitch crags and went to little twin owls where I burned out quite embarrassingly on a 5.9 (I’m afraid I already need to resole my new climbing shoes, though I can’t blame my failure of the pitch all on them, unfortunately). Then we finished our very long day by enjoying some pizza with Garrett at his house.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Cut ‘em down! My last days as a raging, hormone swinging, teenager and what life can throw at you. My vacation weekend in Yosemite.
Wednesday, July 29
Ok, so, I sort of broke my promise-I haven’t kept the blog up to date very well lately. As you can tell, there’s a lot to catch up on from the last 2.5 weeks. I’ll try to bring you up to speed quickly and painlessly.
Ok so the week of the 13th, work was not too exciting. Well, for me and most of the wilderness crew at least. We returned with the fire crew to North inlet trail. There, for the next 3 days, the Fire crew with Jim and Terra cut down over 70 MPB kill trees in all the campsites along the inlet. As for the rest of us, we were given the most important duty of protecting the lives of the innocent hikers. Meaning, we sat there at the intersection of the access trail drinking our coffees*1 , eating, daydreaming, what have you; halting and talking to the scattered few visitors we saw. After the fire crew was finished felling trees at each campsite, we usually had the chance to at least help clear out the logs and branches in the site. Oh and I almost forgot, the American conservation Corps were up in the inlet as well, taking down on old hitching rack. They had one boy in their group named Random. How interesting. He basically brought 30 cliff bars to live off of for the four days, besides the dinners. What a random, bad idea.
At night, the conservation group cooked dinner together and the wilderness crew enjoyed our first group dinners (first night provided by Tara, the second by Christina, and dessert was painstakingly and lovingly put together by Ryan (a delicious no bake cheese cake), and it was all marvelous) We all watched with interest as the fire crew ate their MRE meals (which they ate for 3 meals a day). *2
Oh, one good thing out of that part of the week-the boss of the fire crew, Singer, mentioned to me that I should do fire crew, and to give him a call next year. A summer where I actually make money? Good money? Now there’s a novel idea. I am rather tempted-could have some new exciting experiences, and not to mention some free travel (ok, so maybe I wont see much battling fires, but I’ll have the chance to do some resource management-new form of education).
Thursday we worked with the fire crew again, but this time we worked on relocating a campsite that’s north of the big meadow. So we actually got to do some real work, which is always exciting. We created a new trail with markers, put in new tent pads, and did fill.
Lets see, the weekend of the 17th to 19th. I believe that Friday, Jim, Estabon (spelling?), Kelly, and I made an attempt on the Diamond. We were up at 2:00 in the morning, hiking by 3:20 am. It was a long day, and unfortunately, because we got caught in the bottleneck of the climb in this chimney at the base of the diamond with all this loose rock *3 and people flying by, we only got the 1st pitch of the casual route done, before we rapped out. But at least I got my second lead on trad climbing in, with Kelly’s very helpful mentoring.
Saturday, I went climbing with Kelly, her 2 year old Rohoan (no idea how to spell), and her climbing friend, Pete. We went down to the Monastery, and did about 3 good pitches. I then hung out with Kelly at her house and watched that movie on earth houses made out of garbage.
Sunday…I think I sort of just relaxed, went for the first sort of long run in a very long while. It felt pretty good after the first sluggish 20 minutes. Got some other things done. Oh and I went to the library and basically just researched South America.
Monday, the 20th-my last day as a raging teenager and I’m sent out with Luke to do BICAMS (camp/bivy site inventory)-something I have learned now is very tedious and boring. We were hiking up to Meeker’s bivy site by chasm lake, and we were approaching the intersection for the lake and Boulder field on the north side of Longs Peak, when I heard a call on the radio. Someone called into 911, saying a man was having a heart attack on the Home Stretch of the Keyhole route. I slowed, listening to see if it was a real call. Luke said that they’d call us if they needed our help, though they probably wont because they like their regulars. Then the call on the radio came in that people had started CPR and Andy was heading up from Boulder field with the hasty med kit. I called when we got to the intersection, asking if they needed our help. They said yes and to meet them up the Keyhole route. We headed as fast as we could for Boulder field and the keyhole. But when we got to the far side, Andy called us in, saying we should go back to what we were doing, they have the help they need. So we turned around, disappointed and confused. But then they called us in again, asking us to walk down with the party that was with the man. I was wondering what was going on. I knew they called a helicopter, Maybe just Andy and the man were gong to wait for them to come in (I for some reason assumed they had an AED in the med kit). Andy informed me that the daughter of the man was in the group.
So we waited and listened. Soon I heard mention of a body on the radio. I wondered, but it just didn’t sink in (I guess I’ve just pictured all the rescues of me being on, being successful-the first one gave me that false sense of security). I confirmed the truth though with Michelle (a back country ranger) when she arrived. I wondered now how old the daughter was. I figured if the father was 62, she must be late 30’s, early forties. Oh how I was wrong. When they finally met us at Boulderfield, we found out that the daughter, Natalie, was really was the only one in the group that was actually with the man, the rest were just involved in CPR. Natalie, it turns out, was only 22 years old. Within 10 minutes of their arrival, I was walking with Natalie to the trail head, six miles down trail, while Michelle and Luke interviewed all the people involved in the incident. Andy waited for the helicopter. He waited with the body. Alone.
Just before the trail head, we met with a couple who were like Natalies Family #2. I stayed with them to the trail head, unsure what to do. There we met with Donna, the stress counselor/dispatcher for the park. She had Natalie, the couple and me join her in a ranger house, and I stayed with them for the next hour and a half, as Natalie went over probably 3 times the details of her father’s death. I don’t know how she did it.
One thing good thing that I think came out of the day, I made a new friend. Thought I’m afraid she has some hard time ahead of her, and her mom who is not in the best of health. She asked me though if I’d join her on this hike she and her dad were supposed to do the next day.
July 21st, after work where I actually did get the chance to do some BICAMS with Luke over near Morraine Park *4 , I organized a very last minute dinner, and met up with some friends at Nepal’s Café. I was really excited and happy actually with the turnout. Terra, Christina, Ryan, Matt, Monica, Estabon, Kelly, Rohoan, Garrett, and Brian Drew all made it to the party (Jim wanted to come, but unfortunately he had band practice, though he left me a gift at the restaurant). And after dinner, Garrett surprised me with a German Chocolate cake and everyone covered my bill, which I hadn’t expected at all. It was definitely one of the best birthday dinners I have ever had. *5
Wednesday and Thursday were just some more BICAM days at work. Thursday night though, I went to Terra’s friend’s house for the night and caught my flight out of Denver to San Francisco Friday morning. I was off to the re-supply for the new Joie Armstrong scholars, hoping that all my random rides and connections on places to stay, falls through.
The weekend was fantastic. I was easily able to meet up with my first ride, Steve Lockhart, who I believe is the president of Yosemite Institute (the fist of several connections I made this weekend). He turns out to be a climber of 20 years, so when he drove Jane (JAS alum from 2008) and I to Yosemite, he tells me all about these different climbing routes in Yosemite, especially alpine (now I have to go back to do them one day).
That night, I ate a delicious swordfish sandwich at a Mobile gas station *6. I stayed at a campsite that night with all the other re-suppliers and we left about 6:30 in the morning to Twin Lake, where we hiked up to Peeler Lake to meet the JAS. It was a rather hilarious time. Refer to pictures to get the thousand word details. Oh and don’t forget to watch the after lunch dance party video.
The next morning I did some crag climbing with Jesse and Alison who were on the re-supply (and had just returned from Alaska) and that afternoon, after seeing my first sequoia trees, Leslie (my former JAS leader) and I headed to Oakland, CA. there I stayed at Marcia’s (member of HI board) house and got to enjoy a nice hot Jacuzzi and shower. I headed off about 8 the next morning to San Francisco via BART. After walking around San Fran for about 4 hours, eating delicious, though odd Chinese donuts, I headed to the airport. By this time, I have realized that I left the charger for my cell phone at Marcia’s house, but know there’s nothing I can do about it now. I apologize now to those I have not gotten back to that I said I would. I’m gonna be out of cell phone communication until my charger travels halfway across the US.
Ok, I think that covers it for this entry, I’ll catch up on the last two days of work in the next one.
*1 In Ryan’s case at least. He’s been on coffee since he was 10 when he had hockey practice at 5 in the morning (yes, I did feel that the underline, italics and bold was necessary) and his dad gave it to him to perk him up.
*2 We read the ingredients on some of those packages-talk about a long list of who knows what? We think some of the ingredients are in plastic.
*3 Jim accidentally knocked a huge one loose while Kelly and I were still tied in the anchor below. I’ll confess, I was a little terrified, clinging closely to the cliff, listening to the crashing of something very big and helmet penetrable coming down toward us. Oh, I’ll give away the ending for you so you don’t have a heart attack-we lived, it missed us completely. But a helmet is first on my list of things I need to pro-deal this summer.
*4 This was somewhat exciting, because I hadn’t been on this trail before, and I got to see a coyote.
*5 So now that I’m 20, does this mean I’m a normal person now? And seen as an adult? Because all those crazy, spontaneous hormones and crazy teenager ideas all disappear on this day…right?
*6 Who would have guessed a four star chef would quite his job at a fancy restaurant to be able to ski in the winter and serve food to the local hiker and at a gas station no less?
Ok, so, I sort of broke my promise-I haven’t kept the blog up to date very well lately. As you can tell, there’s a lot to catch up on from the last 2.5 weeks. I’ll try to bring you up to speed quickly and painlessly.
Ok so the week of the 13th, work was not too exciting. Well, for me and most of the wilderness crew at least. We returned with the fire crew to North inlet trail. There, for the next 3 days, the Fire crew with Jim and Terra cut down over 70 MPB kill trees in all the campsites along the inlet. As for the rest of us, we were given the most important duty of protecting the lives of the innocent hikers. Meaning, we sat there at the intersection of the access trail drinking our coffees*1 , eating, daydreaming, what have you; halting and talking to the scattered few visitors we saw. After the fire crew was finished felling trees at each campsite, we usually had the chance to at least help clear out the logs and branches in the site. Oh and I almost forgot, the American conservation Corps were up in the inlet as well, taking down on old hitching rack. They had one boy in their group named Random. How interesting. He basically brought 30 cliff bars to live off of for the four days, besides the dinners. What a random, bad idea.
At night, the conservation group cooked dinner together and the wilderness crew enjoyed our first group dinners (first night provided by Tara, the second by Christina, and dessert was painstakingly and lovingly put together by Ryan (a delicious no bake cheese cake), and it was all marvelous) We all watched with interest as the fire crew ate their MRE meals (which they ate for 3 meals a day). *2
Oh, one good thing out of that part of the week-the boss of the fire crew, Singer, mentioned to me that I should do fire crew, and to give him a call next year. A summer where I actually make money? Good money? Now there’s a novel idea. I am rather tempted-could have some new exciting experiences, and not to mention some free travel (ok, so maybe I wont see much battling fires, but I’ll have the chance to do some resource management-new form of education).
Thursday we worked with the fire crew again, but this time we worked on relocating a campsite that’s north of the big meadow. So we actually got to do some real work, which is always exciting. We created a new trail with markers, put in new tent pads, and did fill.
Lets see, the weekend of the 17th to 19th. I believe that Friday, Jim, Estabon (spelling?), Kelly, and I made an attempt on the Diamond. We were up at 2:00 in the morning, hiking by 3:20 am. It was a long day, and unfortunately, because we got caught in the bottleneck of the climb in this chimney at the base of the diamond with all this loose rock *3 and people flying by, we only got the 1st pitch of the casual route done, before we rapped out. But at least I got my second lead on trad climbing in, with Kelly’s very helpful mentoring.
Saturday, I went climbing with Kelly, her 2 year old Rohoan (no idea how to spell), and her climbing friend, Pete. We went down to the Monastery, and did about 3 good pitches. I then hung out with Kelly at her house and watched that movie on earth houses made out of garbage.
Sunday…I think I sort of just relaxed, went for the first sort of long run in a very long while. It felt pretty good after the first sluggish 20 minutes. Got some other things done. Oh and I went to the library and basically just researched South America.
Monday, the 20th-my last day as a raging teenager and I’m sent out with Luke to do BICAMS (camp/bivy site inventory)-something I have learned now is very tedious and boring. We were hiking up to Meeker’s bivy site by chasm lake, and we were approaching the intersection for the lake and Boulder field on the north side of Longs Peak, when I heard a call on the radio. Someone called into 911, saying a man was having a heart attack on the Home Stretch of the Keyhole route. I slowed, listening to see if it was a real call. Luke said that they’d call us if they needed our help, though they probably wont because they like their regulars. Then the call on the radio came in that people had started CPR and Andy was heading up from Boulder field with the hasty med kit. I called when we got to the intersection, asking if they needed our help. They said yes and to meet them up the Keyhole route. We headed as fast as we could for Boulder field and the keyhole. But when we got to the far side, Andy called us in, saying we should go back to what we were doing, they have the help they need. So we turned around, disappointed and confused. But then they called us in again, asking us to walk down with the party that was with the man. I was wondering what was going on. I knew they called a helicopter, Maybe just Andy and the man were gong to wait for them to come in (I for some reason assumed they had an AED in the med kit). Andy informed me that the daughter of the man was in the group.
So we waited and listened. Soon I heard mention of a body on the radio. I wondered, but it just didn’t sink in (I guess I’ve just pictured all the rescues of me being on, being successful-the first one gave me that false sense of security). I confirmed the truth though with Michelle (a back country ranger) when she arrived. I wondered now how old the daughter was. I figured if the father was 62, she must be late 30’s, early forties. Oh how I was wrong. When they finally met us at Boulderfield, we found out that the daughter, Natalie, was really was the only one in the group that was actually with the man, the rest were just involved in CPR. Natalie, it turns out, was only 22 years old. Within 10 minutes of their arrival, I was walking with Natalie to the trail head, six miles down trail, while Michelle and Luke interviewed all the people involved in the incident. Andy waited for the helicopter. He waited with the body. Alone.
Just before the trail head, we met with a couple who were like Natalies Family #2. I stayed with them to the trail head, unsure what to do. There we met with Donna, the stress counselor/dispatcher for the park. She had Natalie, the couple and me join her in a ranger house, and I stayed with them for the next hour and a half, as Natalie went over probably 3 times the details of her father’s death. I don’t know how she did it.
One thing good thing that I think came out of the day, I made a new friend. Thought I’m afraid she has some hard time ahead of her, and her mom who is not in the best of health. She asked me though if I’d join her on this hike she and her dad were supposed to do the next day.
July 21st, after work where I actually did get the chance to do some BICAMS with Luke over near Morraine Park *4 , I organized a very last minute dinner, and met up with some friends at Nepal’s Café. I was really excited and happy actually with the turnout. Terra, Christina, Ryan, Matt, Monica, Estabon, Kelly, Rohoan, Garrett, and Brian Drew all made it to the party (Jim wanted to come, but unfortunately he had band practice, though he left me a gift at the restaurant). And after dinner, Garrett surprised me with a German Chocolate cake and everyone covered my bill, which I hadn’t expected at all. It was definitely one of the best birthday dinners I have ever had. *5
Wednesday and Thursday were just some more BICAM days at work. Thursday night though, I went to Terra’s friend’s house for the night and caught my flight out of Denver to San Francisco Friday morning. I was off to the re-supply for the new Joie Armstrong scholars, hoping that all my random rides and connections on places to stay, falls through.
The weekend was fantastic. I was easily able to meet up with my first ride, Steve Lockhart, who I believe is the president of Yosemite Institute (the fist of several connections I made this weekend). He turns out to be a climber of 20 years, so when he drove Jane (JAS alum from 2008) and I to Yosemite, he tells me all about these different climbing routes in Yosemite, especially alpine (now I have to go back to do them one day).
That night, I ate a delicious swordfish sandwich at a Mobile gas station *6. I stayed at a campsite that night with all the other re-suppliers and we left about 6:30 in the morning to Twin Lake, where we hiked up to Peeler Lake to meet the JAS. It was a rather hilarious time. Refer to pictures to get the thousand word details. Oh and don’t forget to watch the after lunch dance party video.
The next morning I did some crag climbing with Jesse and Alison who were on the re-supply (and had just returned from Alaska) and that afternoon, after seeing my first sequoia trees, Leslie (my former JAS leader) and I headed to Oakland, CA. there I stayed at Marcia’s (member of HI board) house and got to enjoy a nice hot Jacuzzi and shower. I headed off about 8 the next morning to San Francisco via BART. After walking around San Fran for about 4 hours, eating delicious, though odd Chinese donuts, I headed to the airport. By this time, I have realized that I left the charger for my cell phone at Marcia’s house, but know there’s nothing I can do about it now. I apologize now to those I have not gotten back to that I said I would. I’m gonna be out of cell phone communication until my charger travels halfway across the US.
Ok, I think that covers it for this entry, I’ll catch up on the last two days of work in the next one.
*1 In Ryan’s case at least. He’s been on coffee since he was 10 when he had hockey practice at 5 in the morning (yes, I did feel that the underline, italics and bold was necessary) and his dad gave it to him to perk him up.
*2 We read the ingredients on some of those packages-talk about a long list of who knows what? We think some of the ingredients are in plastic.
*3 Jim accidentally knocked a huge one loose while Kelly and I were still tied in the anchor below. I’ll confess, I was a little terrified, clinging closely to the cliff, listening to the crashing of something very big and helmet penetrable coming down toward us. Oh, I’ll give away the ending for you so you don’t have a heart attack-we lived, it missed us completely. But a helmet is first on my list of things I need to pro-deal this summer.
*4 This was somewhat exciting, because I hadn’t been on this trail before, and I got to see a coyote.
*5 So now that I’m 20, does this mean I’m a normal person now? And seen as an adult? Because all those crazy, spontaneous hormones and crazy teenager ideas all disappear on this day…right?
*6 Who would have guessed a four star chef would quite his job at a fancy restaurant to be able to ski in the winter and serve food to the local hiker and at a gas station no less?
Monday, July 13, 2009
These boots weren’t made for climbing, but climbing’s what I’m doin’. These boots weren’t made for climbin’ but I’m climbin’ over this peak.
Saturday, July 11
Talk about a very long, tiring week where sleep seemed to be at the bottom of the priority list. So I wont go in so much detail of everything, because I really don’t want to type up that much and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to read it. If you want the details, you’ll have to call me or come talk to me in person (meaning come visit!).
So Friday morning (July 3), I borrowed my roommate’s car (wow, she is so trusting) and drove down to Boulder to pick up Tom (who flew in that morning to Denver), shop, get a hair cut (long hair is not cutting it in this heat), and meet up with Walt and Sally Lundt for the afternoon. After I picked up Tom, we did some fast shopping and then met with Walt and Sally at the store. Unfortunately, we could not spend as much time with them as originally planned because they had to fix the propane detector on their RV, but we did get to have a wonderful lunch at this beautiful restaurant (mom, grammy-you would have loved this place), the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse. The building was actually made in Tajikistan, and then sent in pieces to Boulder.It was beautiful, with original columns with engravings that were all carved by hand, colorful painted flowers on the wall. It definitely had a Himalayan theme/style. And they had rose bushes outside and delicious food.
After lunch, the Lundts gave us a driving tour of the Flat Irons and we went by El Dorado Canyon. After that, we unfortunately had to split, but it did give Tom and I some time to wonder around Boulder, before heading back to Estes Park.
Saturday (July 4th), the plan was to climb all day with Christina in Jurassic Park but unfortunately, the rain rolled in right after we finished just one route(Tom apparently flew the bad weather from New England over with him). We then spent a few hours at Christina’s house, before we headed off to a BBQ where we found everyone crammed into small shed, waiting for the rain to stop and the food to be done. Luckily, we did get a couple of volleyball games in before we headed to Jim’s to go with him to his Band concert.
Jim performed in a concert band that evening for the fourth of July. Between 2 of the songs, he received a well deserved award from his fellow band members and the community (though some people in the park service may not admit what a great guy Jim is and the amazing things he’s done for park and its visitors, the community recognizes it). After that, we went to Jim ’s friend’s house, to watch the fireworks and eat some delicious ribs.
I ended up not watching the fireworks because I got so side tracked talking to Shorty (Jim’s friend) and his wife Cartoon (who’s from Thailand). They are so amazing. Shorty is this older man who has pulmonary hypo-tension and has an oxygen tank, but this does not stop him from skiing on his own. In his day, he has done so much traveling and hiking, especially in the Himalayas. Cartoon is brilliant, knows 7 languages, and owns her own business. Their house was awesome-so many cool pieces of art from all over.
Saturday night was a late one and we had an early morning Sunday. We slept over Jim’s house, to join him, with his friend Glen (who has made 3 Everest expeditions, summiting it in the 80’s, and was using this as training to climb the Matterhorn again) to climb shark’s tooth-the most technical summit in the park-5.6 alpine climb, 6 pitches, with I think a 4-5 milee hike in and out. It was fantastic, though our day ended up far longer than we expected, and there was a close call with a thunderstorm, (we watched it blow by about 10 miles away-pretty scary when your 4 pitches up). It was awesome anyways though, and I think I (well I guess Jim really) finally got Tom hooked on rock climbing-well at least alpine rock climbing. It was pretty neat to get to know Glen too, though I don’t think he cared for us very much at first or took us seriously, until we got him talking a few times, and I went and peed on a large ledge with all the others there (hey, there’s no resisting nature’s call, especially when you’re in a harness for so many hours, and as Glen said, sometimes you have to lforget modesty on these sort of expeditions). I think it got him to see though that I do know sort of know/understand what backcountry adventures are like, and Tom and I weren’t just city kids tagging along).
Well anyways, after that long day, we had a really late dinner at Jim’s house and slept over again, to wake up at about 5 to have time to go back to my house and pack for work. Tom was able to join Luke and I for an overnight in the backcountry doing Wilderness crew work up at Pear Lake. We had the bonus too of getting an extra hike in with almost a summit of a 13000 footer.
When we got back from work Tuesday, Tom and I rushed to clean up (really just change, because we had about 10 minutes) before we headed to the Rodeo with Jim and the Venezuelans. I’ll confess, at first I thought the first 45 minutes was really boring-way too much advertisement and talk of Rodeo queens. But the Rodeo clown, the barrel races (the only event with women), and the little kids getting a taste of rodeo life with sheep-riding (so cute and kind of nerve racking at a few points) really excited things up for me. After the rodeo, we headed to a party at Christina’s (just a wee-bit late) where we were able to talk to some people, and find a ride for Tom to Boulder in the morning.
Wednesday morning, I left for work, and Tom left for the airport. For work that day, I merely spotted the trail for hikers, while Tara cut down trees, and then tossed the logs out of the camp afterwards. This was at a campsite near Big Meadows. That night I shopped, prepped for our long (probably like 20 miles) “orienteering hike” for the next day, and then checked email. At 10:30- that night however, I found out that we were instead going on a SAR the next morning to search for a 71 year old woman who got lost in the Park’s Bermuda Triangle (also known as the Mummy range). So then I had to pack for that instead-a possible overnight. It was kind of nice though not having to meet at 5 in the morning, but instead at 7. However, when I arrived at the SAR cache, I found out that the SAR was off, the woman had come out on her own, hours before the hasty search was sent out last night. Drat.
So, instead, since we didn’t have time now to do our original hike, the Wildernesss crew did half the Mummy range, checking the campsites on the way down from Yiplson.
That evening, I once again was rushing to pack in 20 minutes for my next adventure. After work, Jim picked me up, we went out for pizza and then headed to his house. I slept over to wake up early to hike/climb the Notch on Longs Peak with Jim and his friend Mark, who has also done a lot of hiking in the Himalayas and Andes. It was a long day-12 hours-but awesome. The notch is about 60-70 angle and covered in snow. We had to use 2 ice axes. After we get out of the snow, we have 2, 5.5 rock climbing pitches to the top. Once again, I find myself rock climbing in hiking boots-as I did the second half of Shark’s tooth. We just did the whole climb tandem style, to save time, and climbed down the North face. Once we got to trailhead, we talked with some of Jim’s volunteer friends at the hut and then drove back to Jim’s house to be late to Jim’s own Pieta (?-no idea how to spell) party (luckily, the Venezuelans did all the cooking and it was a real late dinner anyways).
Finally, late that night, I caught a ride home, showered, and crashed. Needless to say, today was a sort of laid-back day, very slow to get anything done.
Once again I fail to keep it short, but there were some bits I just couldn’t leave out. I met so many interested people this week and have begun to do things I didn’t think I would have the chance to do so soon.
Oh I almost forgot! Thursday did have a rather entertaining start off at the cache. A hummingbird got into the building and it was really funny watching so many people sending their jackets flying, using cardboard boxes and a snow shovel to try and chase it out. It was a good laugh for about 20 minutes.
Talk about a very long, tiring week where sleep seemed to be at the bottom of the priority list. So I wont go in so much detail of everything, because I really don’t want to type up that much and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to read it. If you want the details, you’ll have to call me or come talk to me in person (meaning come visit!).
So Friday morning (July 3), I borrowed my roommate’s car (wow, she is so trusting) and drove down to Boulder to pick up Tom (who flew in that morning to Denver), shop, get a hair cut (long hair is not cutting it in this heat), and meet up with Walt and Sally Lundt for the afternoon. After I picked up Tom, we did some fast shopping and then met with Walt and Sally at the store. Unfortunately, we could not spend as much time with them as originally planned because they had to fix the propane detector on their RV, but we did get to have a wonderful lunch at this beautiful restaurant (mom, grammy-you would have loved this place), the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse. The building was actually made in Tajikistan, and then sent in pieces to Boulder.It was beautiful, with original columns with engravings that were all carved by hand, colorful painted flowers on the wall. It definitely had a Himalayan theme/style. And they had rose bushes outside and delicious food.
After lunch, the Lundts gave us a driving tour of the Flat Irons and we went by El Dorado Canyon. After that, we unfortunately had to split, but it did give Tom and I some time to wonder around Boulder, before heading back to Estes Park.
Saturday (July 4th), the plan was to climb all day with Christina in Jurassic Park but unfortunately, the rain rolled in right after we finished just one route(Tom apparently flew the bad weather from New England over with him). We then spent a few hours at Christina’s house, before we headed off to a BBQ where we found everyone crammed into small shed, waiting for the rain to stop and the food to be done. Luckily, we did get a couple of volleyball games in before we headed to Jim’s to go with him to his Band concert.
Jim performed in a concert band that evening for the fourth of July. Between 2 of the songs, he received a well deserved award from his fellow band members and the community (though some people in the park service may not admit what a great guy Jim is and the amazing things he’s done for park and its visitors, the community recognizes it). After that, we went to Jim ’s friend’s house, to watch the fireworks and eat some delicious ribs.
I ended up not watching the fireworks because I got so side tracked talking to Shorty (Jim’s friend) and his wife Cartoon (who’s from Thailand). They are so amazing. Shorty is this older man who has pulmonary hypo-tension and has an oxygen tank, but this does not stop him from skiing on his own. In his day, he has done so much traveling and hiking, especially in the Himalayas. Cartoon is brilliant, knows 7 languages, and owns her own business. Their house was awesome-so many cool pieces of art from all over.
Saturday night was a late one and we had an early morning Sunday. We slept over Jim’s house, to join him, with his friend Glen (who has made 3 Everest expeditions, summiting it in the 80’s, and was using this as training to climb the Matterhorn again) to climb shark’s tooth-the most technical summit in the park-5.6 alpine climb, 6 pitches, with I think a 4-5 milee hike in and out. It was fantastic, though our day ended up far longer than we expected, and there was a close call with a thunderstorm, (we watched it blow by about 10 miles away-pretty scary when your 4 pitches up). It was awesome anyways though, and I think I (well I guess Jim really) finally got Tom hooked on rock climbing-well at least alpine rock climbing. It was pretty neat to get to know Glen too, though I don’t think he cared for us very much at first or took us seriously, until we got him talking a few times, and I went and peed on a large ledge with all the others there (hey, there’s no resisting nature’s call, especially when you’re in a harness for so many hours, and as Glen said, sometimes you have to lforget modesty on these sort of expeditions). I think it got him to see though that I do know sort of know/understand what backcountry adventures are like, and Tom and I weren’t just city kids tagging along).
Well anyways, after that long day, we had a really late dinner at Jim’s house and slept over again, to wake up at about 5 to have time to go back to my house and pack for work. Tom was able to join Luke and I for an overnight in the backcountry doing Wilderness crew work up at Pear Lake. We had the bonus too of getting an extra hike in with almost a summit of a 13000 footer.
When we got back from work Tuesday, Tom and I rushed to clean up (really just change, because we had about 10 minutes) before we headed to the Rodeo with Jim and the Venezuelans. I’ll confess, at first I thought the first 45 minutes was really boring-way too much advertisement and talk of Rodeo queens. But the Rodeo clown, the barrel races (the only event with women), and the little kids getting a taste of rodeo life with sheep-riding (so cute and kind of nerve racking at a few points) really excited things up for me. After the rodeo, we headed to a party at Christina’s (just a wee-bit late) where we were able to talk to some people, and find a ride for Tom to Boulder in the morning.
Wednesday morning, I left for work, and Tom left for the airport. For work that day, I merely spotted the trail for hikers, while Tara cut down trees, and then tossed the logs out of the camp afterwards. This was at a campsite near Big Meadows. That night I shopped, prepped for our long (probably like 20 miles) “orienteering hike” for the next day, and then checked email. At 10:30- that night however, I found out that we were instead going on a SAR the next morning to search for a 71 year old woman who got lost in the Park’s Bermuda Triangle (also known as the Mummy range). So then I had to pack for that instead-a possible overnight. It was kind of nice though not having to meet at 5 in the morning, but instead at 7. However, when I arrived at the SAR cache, I found out that the SAR was off, the woman had come out on her own, hours before the hasty search was sent out last night. Drat.
So, instead, since we didn’t have time now to do our original hike, the Wildernesss crew did half the Mummy range, checking the campsites on the way down from Yiplson.
That evening, I once again was rushing to pack in 20 minutes for my next adventure. After work, Jim picked me up, we went out for pizza and then headed to his house. I slept over to wake up early to hike/climb the Notch on Longs Peak with Jim and his friend Mark, who has also done a lot of hiking in the Himalayas and Andes. It was a long day-12 hours-but awesome. The notch is about 60-70 angle and covered in snow. We had to use 2 ice axes. After we get out of the snow, we have 2, 5.5 rock climbing pitches to the top. Once again, I find myself rock climbing in hiking boots-as I did the second half of Shark’s tooth. We just did the whole climb tandem style, to save time, and climbed down the North face. Once we got to trailhead, we talked with some of Jim’s volunteer friends at the hut and then drove back to Jim’s house to be late to Jim’s own Pieta (?-no idea how to spell) party (luckily, the Venezuelans did all the cooking and it was a real late dinner anyways).
Finally, late that night, I caught a ride home, showered, and crashed. Needless to say, today was a sort of laid-back day, very slow to get anything done.
Once again I fail to keep it short, but there were some bits I just couldn’t leave out. I met so many interested people this week and have begun to do things I didn’t think I would have the chance to do so soon.
Oh I almost forgot! Thursday did have a rather entertaining start off at the cache. A hummingbird got into the building and it was really funny watching so many people sending their jackets flying, using cardboard boxes and a snow shovel to try and chase it out. It was a good laugh for about 20 minutes.
Well that was a great hike, when do we begin work?
Thursday, July 2
Well, I’m afraid the weeks are becoming a little less eventful. Though I guess that’s good for you, because now you wont have so suffer through yet another long entry.
Sunday, I went climbing with Garett at the December wall, which did not remind me of winter at all. We were in the intense sun all day, with no shade what so ever. I will always remember this wall, because it is where I made my first lead fall, on a 10d slab, the total drop was only about 6-8 feet. Wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, and I kept going, but mentally shut down later in the route on a section that was supposedly easier, but it was definitely not. Some how leaning backward on a terrible hand hold with almost no feet (and those that I had were horrible), 5 feet about my last clip in, was just not appealing to me. I had to bail and Garett gave a go at it himself, but he fell twice at the spot I froze. Luckily, a man did it on top rope and retrieved Garett’s bail bineer.
On our hike down from the cliff, we had a little excitement-Garrett almost ran into a rattlesnake. Don’t worry, he didn’t get bit, but the snake was not at all happy. Then on our drive down to Lyons to grab ice cream (well earned if you as me, and boy, after being in the searing sun all day, nothing like a milkshake to cool down the body temperature) we saw some young big horned sheep on the side of the road.
Monday, I left with Ryan and Matt for a three-day work trip. We drove to the west side and hiked in on the East Inlet Trail. The next three days involved some fill work, fixing up tent pads and removing a few fallen trees, but also a lot of down time. Without being able to use a chainsaw the work on the campsites that we can do, is limited. So we went and hiked up to the 5th lake and added another dip to our list at about 11,000 ft. I swear it was colder than the ocean on May day. My feet were in excruciating pain the instant they hit the water. Yes, I know, we’re just asking for hypothermia. Luckily the sun dried us out quick.
Wednesday, a little while after I got out of work, I went bouldering with Sam. Who in the world rated their boulder problems? Their v3 feels like a v5 just about anywhere else you go. And so it goes with just about every problem here when it comes to rock climbing, at least that’s how I feel about it.
Today, after feeding the llamas, I headed with Christina and Luke to Jim Detterline’s house to do some climbing at the Iron clads again. I have to say the ride in a lot faster and less nerve racking with Jim’s truck than Christina’s little Honda. We did a few climbing routes there then early afternoon we headed home because Jim had a meeting, but we had some exciting plans for the evening, so we would meet up. I worked on this entry and some cleaning. I was watching the weather as I did so, for something was rolling in from the west. I was getting rather worried-a thunderstorm would put a damper on our plans.
As promised Jim arrived at my house at 5:15, as well as Christina and Luke. The storm finally arrived as well. I was expecting the whole thing to be off, which was rather a disappointing thought because this was our last chance to do this adventure. Then again, I didn’t want to get struck by lightning. Well Jim came in and was like, you ready to go? I said yes, very surprised, and kind of worried. He said great, we just have a change of plans. They opened up Old Fall River 15 minutes ago, even though they weren’t supposed to open it up until tomorrow. So we wont be able to do our 25 mile down hill bike ride on the old dirt road. But we’re gonna go by the Balpate to this other dirt road, and it’s shorter but less exposed. Then after our ride, we can go eat at the Balpate (nice restaurant that just has a good salad bar, dessert and the largest key collection in the world (who’s keeping track?).
And so we went to pick up the mountain bikes and the slow moving/easily distracted Venezuelans, and a couple of Jim’s friends. Jim was able to get a mountain bike for each of us for free for the evening (I wish I had such good networking connections). We all crammed into three cars, drove to the Balpate, and then dropped one car off at the bottum of the 5ish mile hill. And then we were off. For a short run, it was fun. We briefly went on a trail with lots of rocks and pin point turns that made the going a lot more technical. It was a blast though. We finished off our evening with a delicious dinner at the Balpate restaurant and a walk through a room that hold the largest key collection in the world.
Well, I’m afraid the weeks are becoming a little less eventful. Though I guess that’s good for you, because now you wont have so suffer through yet another long entry.
Sunday, I went climbing with Garett at the December wall, which did not remind me of winter at all. We were in the intense sun all day, with no shade what so ever. I will always remember this wall, because it is where I made my first lead fall, on a 10d slab, the total drop was only about 6-8 feet. Wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, and I kept going, but mentally shut down later in the route on a section that was supposedly easier, but it was definitely not. Some how leaning backward on a terrible hand hold with almost no feet (and those that I had were horrible), 5 feet about my last clip in, was just not appealing to me. I had to bail and Garett gave a go at it himself, but he fell twice at the spot I froze. Luckily, a man did it on top rope and retrieved Garett’s bail bineer.
On our hike down from the cliff, we had a little excitement-Garrett almost ran into a rattlesnake. Don’t worry, he didn’t get bit, but the snake was not at all happy. Then on our drive down to Lyons to grab ice cream (well earned if you as me, and boy, after being in the searing sun all day, nothing like a milkshake to cool down the body temperature) we saw some young big horned sheep on the side of the road.
Monday, I left with Ryan and Matt for a three-day work trip. We drove to the west side and hiked in on the East Inlet Trail. The next three days involved some fill work, fixing up tent pads and removing a few fallen trees, but also a lot of down time. Without being able to use a chainsaw the work on the campsites that we can do, is limited. So we went and hiked up to the 5th lake and added another dip to our list at about 11,000 ft. I swear it was colder than the ocean on May day. My feet were in excruciating pain the instant they hit the water. Yes, I know, we’re just asking for hypothermia. Luckily the sun dried us out quick.
Wednesday, a little while after I got out of work, I went bouldering with Sam. Who in the world rated their boulder problems? Their v3 feels like a v5 just about anywhere else you go. And so it goes with just about every problem here when it comes to rock climbing, at least that’s how I feel about it.
Today, after feeding the llamas, I headed with Christina and Luke to Jim Detterline’s house to do some climbing at the Iron clads again. I have to say the ride in a lot faster and less nerve racking with Jim’s truck than Christina’s little Honda. We did a few climbing routes there then early afternoon we headed home because Jim had a meeting, but we had some exciting plans for the evening, so we would meet up. I worked on this entry and some cleaning. I was watching the weather as I did so, for something was rolling in from the west. I was getting rather worried-a thunderstorm would put a damper on our plans.
As promised Jim arrived at my house at 5:15, as well as Christina and Luke. The storm finally arrived as well. I was expecting the whole thing to be off, which was rather a disappointing thought because this was our last chance to do this adventure. Then again, I didn’t want to get struck by lightning. Well Jim came in and was like, you ready to go? I said yes, very surprised, and kind of worried. He said great, we just have a change of plans. They opened up Old Fall River 15 minutes ago, even though they weren’t supposed to open it up until tomorrow. So we wont be able to do our 25 mile down hill bike ride on the old dirt road. But we’re gonna go by the Balpate to this other dirt road, and it’s shorter but less exposed. Then after our ride, we can go eat at the Balpate (nice restaurant that just has a good salad bar, dessert and the largest key collection in the world (who’s keeping track?).
And so we went to pick up the mountain bikes and the slow moving/easily distracted Venezuelans, and a couple of Jim’s friends. Jim was able to get a mountain bike for each of us for free for the evening (I wish I had such good networking connections). We all crammed into three cars, drove to the Balpate, and then dropped one car off at the bottum of the 5ish mile hill. And then we were off. For a short run, it was fun. We briefly went on a trail with lots of rocks and pin point turns that made the going a lot more technical. It was a blast though. We finished off our evening with a delicious dinner at the Balpate restaurant and a walk through a room that hold the largest key collection in the world.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
The Life and Work of the Backcountry Wilderness Crew
Saturday, June 26
What a week. The training weeks have finally ended and work has at long last begun. This week we were scheduled to hike into North Inlet Ranger Campsite on Monday, and work that day, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday on fixing up the campsites all along the North Inlet trail. This included noting the number of trees that need to be cut down at campsites because of Mountain Pine beetle (we were originally supposed to cut them down ourselves, but that’s another long story), fixing the drainage at one site because a new stream was running right over the tent pad, getting the bear boxes, checking the privies, fixing up the tent pads, stumping trees (which by the way, gives you quite the back and arm workout when your doing it with the long 2 person saw), and cutting/moving trees that had fallen in the campsite.
So the highlight, or I should say funniest moment of our trip happened on the first day, on the walk in. We brought both llamas (Fabian and Mister) with us to help carry our food and tools. About 20 minutes int our hike, we were walking by a river. Mister (the older, less tamed, more obnoxious llama; he is such a complainer let me tell you), bent down to get a drink in the river, and ended up tripping in a hole on the side of the trail and falling into the water with the saddle bags on his back (which by the way, had our food in it. He almost bringing Tara with him too. The river was deep and fast flowing, though only about 10 meters across. And being mister, always trying to escape (Matt had to chase him 5 miles down a mountain last summer) he swam for the other bank. Matt and Ryan quickly (and I would say eagerly, at least on Matt’s part) stripped down to their boxers to go after Mister. Matt went into the water from the upriver side and swam across while Ryan waited downstream, ready to jump in if Mister decided to make a getaway down river. As soon as Matt got near him, Mister turned, and swam across the stream and there was a mad rush to grab his tether.
On our way up to the North Inlet campsite, we took turns stopping at the different campsites to make note of the work that needs to be done at each one and to get some before work pictures.
By the time we got to our campsite and set up, we were off work (5:00). We hung out the rest of the evening, talking, making dinner, and I joined Tara in an abdominal workout (her idea, not mine-she did show me a couple of good hip flexor workouts).
Tuesday, I joined Matt and Luke to work on the drainage at Grouseberry and we slowly work our way back to the North Inlet campsite as we stopped at all the campsites on the way back. The others headed up to the July campsite. We all ended up finishing so early, and getting the work we were supposed to do Wednesday done. Tara decided that night that we’d head back a day early to get some other work done on Thursday. However, the rest of us also decided that the trail up to Lake Nokoni and Lake Nanita needed to be “patrolled”-you know check for fallen trees on the trail, check hikers’ permits and give an help in needed. So we hiked up (everyone but Tara and Luke that is because Tara had to get back for a meeting) to the two lakes first thing in the morning. It was so nice out and we were all so hot from the hike up, we all ended up going for a dip in both lakes (ok, I only went in the first one, but still, they both had ice and snow coating the surface and I wasn’t sure if I would warm up enough after the second one because then we’d be hiking downhill from there. Plus, after seeing the other’s freaking out about the cold and saying how their muscles were going into spasms, I wasn’t to keen on the idea of following them in). After we got back to camp, we had lunch and then hiked out.
Thursday, I hiked with Ryan about 13ish miles as we checked four campsites for what trees needed to be cut for MPB, what bear boxes still needed still be removed, and the level of crap in the privies.
I just calculated the mileage I’ve hike this week. And in 5 days, I did about 47 miles of hiking-some of which was with a rather heavy backpack. I’m much to lazy to calculate the elevation gain, but it’s definitely over 14,000 ft. Sunday alone I think was 7000ish.
Oh and I have some really, really bad news. I did laundry last night and as I took my clothes out of the washer, what did I find? My cell phone. I tried to turn it on later that night. It turned on briefly, then the screen went blank and it started to vibrate nonstop. Even now I can see a lot of moisture still trapped behind the screen. I’m afraid now, the only way to contact me short of seeing me in person, is via email or snail mail. Hopefully in a couple of days it will be in working order again. I’m very sorry, because if you thought it was frustrating getting in contact with me before, it’s gonna be a real pain in the ass now.
Shoot, now I’m gonna have a hard time getting a hold of people to go climbing or hiking. I actually had to bike to Christina’s house this morning because we made plans yesterday evening to go climbing together this morning, but then she had no way of knowing my cell broke and we hadn’t made plans on what time or where we were headed out. Luckily I caught her before she left and we did get out for some climbing at the Iron Clads before the afternoon storms rolled in. It was quite an interesting getting to the ledges. The guide book said the road was fixed up so that normal cars can drive on it now. Well, there were a bunch of times we thought her Honda Civic was going to bottom out. If that was the road fixed up, you must have needed a ATV to get in before.
What a week. The training weeks have finally ended and work has at long last begun. This week we were scheduled to hike into North Inlet Ranger Campsite on Monday, and work that day, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday on fixing up the campsites all along the North Inlet trail. This included noting the number of trees that need to be cut down at campsites because of Mountain Pine beetle (we were originally supposed to cut them down ourselves, but that’s another long story), fixing the drainage at one site because a new stream was running right over the tent pad, getting the bear boxes, checking the privies, fixing up the tent pads, stumping trees (which by the way, gives you quite the back and arm workout when your doing it with the long 2 person saw), and cutting/moving trees that had fallen in the campsite.
So the highlight, or I should say funniest moment of our trip happened on the first day, on the walk in. We brought both llamas (Fabian and Mister) with us to help carry our food and tools. About 20 minutes int our hike, we were walking by a river. Mister (the older, less tamed, more obnoxious llama; he is such a complainer let me tell you), bent down to get a drink in the river, and ended up tripping in a hole on the side of the trail and falling into the water with the saddle bags on his back (which by the way, had our food in it. He almost bringing Tara with him too. The river was deep and fast flowing, though only about 10 meters across. And being mister, always trying to escape (Matt had to chase him 5 miles down a mountain last summer) he swam for the other bank. Matt and Ryan quickly (and I would say eagerly, at least on Matt’s part) stripped down to their boxers to go after Mister. Matt went into the water from the upriver side and swam across while Ryan waited downstream, ready to jump in if Mister decided to make a getaway down river. As soon as Matt got near him, Mister turned, and swam across the stream and there was a mad rush to grab his tether.
On our way up to the North Inlet campsite, we took turns stopping at the different campsites to make note of the work that needs to be done at each one and to get some before work pictures.
By the time we got to our campsite and set up, we were off work (5:00). We hung out the rest of the evening, talking, making dinner, and I joined Tara in an abdominal workout (her idea, not mine-she did show me a couple of good hip flexor workouts).
Tuesday, I joined Matt and Luke to work on the drainage at Grouseberry and we slowly work our way back to the North Inlet campsite as we stopped at all the campsites on the way back. The others headed up to the July campsite. We all ended up finishing so early, and getting the work we were supposed to do Wednesday done. Tara decided that night that we’d head back a day early to get some other work done on Thursday. However, the rest of us also decided that the trail up to Lake Nokoni and Lake Nanita needed to be “patrolled”-you know check for fallen trees on the trail, check hikers’ permits and give an help in needed. So we hiked up (everyone but Tara and Luke that is because Tara had to get back for a meeting) to the two lakes first thing in the morning. It was so nice out and we were all so hot from the hike up, we all ended up going for a dip in both lakes (ok, I only went in the first one, but still, they both had ice and snow coating the surface and I wasn’t sure if I would warm up enough after the second one because then we’d be hiking downhill from there. Plus, after seeing the other’s freaking out about the cold and saying how their muscles were going into spasms, I wasn’t to keen on the idea of following them in). After we got back to camp, we had lunch and then hiked out.
Thursday, I hiked with Ryan about 13ish miles as we checked four campsites for what trees needed to be cut for MPB, what bear boxes still needed still be removed, and the level of crap in the privies.
I just calculated the mileage I’ve hike this week. And in 5 days, I did about 47 miles of hiking-some of which was with a rather heavy backpack. I’m much to lazy to calculate the elevation gain, but it’s definitely over 14,000 ft. Sunday alone I think was 7000ish.
Oh and I have some really, really bad news. I did laundry last night and as I took my clothes out of the washer, what did I find? My cell phone. I tried to turn it on later that night. It turned on briefly, then the screen went blank and it started to vibrate nonstop. Even now I can see a lot of moisture still trapped behind the screen. I’m afraid now, the only way to contact me short of seeing me in person, is via email or snail mail. Hopefully in a couple of days it will be in working order again. I’m very sorry, because if you thought it was frustrating getting in contact with me before, it’s gonna be a real pain in the ass now.
Shoot, now I’m gonna have a hard time getting a hold of people to go climbing or hiking. I actually had to bike to Christina’s house this morning because we made plans yesterday evening to go climbing together this morning, but then she had no way of knowing my cell broke and we hadn’t made plans on what time or where we were headed out. Luckily I caught her before she left and we did get out for some climbing at the Iron Clads before the afternoon storms rolled in. It was quite an interesting getting to the ledges. The guide book said the road was fixed up so that normal cars can drive on it now. Well, there were a bunch of times we thought her Honda Civic was going to bottom out. If that was the road fixed up, you must have needed a ATV to get in before.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)