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…
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