timloco

I totally forgot about this blog

2010-01-09T00:19:00.000-08:00

feh

Cedar Mesa Madness

2009-04-06T12:06:00.000-07:00

Black Hawk Down/ Bad day to be a government vehicle

The ipod is random playing through the reggae songs as we travel down
C470 south. The northbound lanes are a gigantic parking lot as crews
clean up accidents left over from the blizzard the day before. As we
travel up 285, we see a tow truck towing a fire truck. "That's not
something you see every day." I say and Steve murmurs his assent. A
mile down the road and we see a cop car getting towed as well. It's
beat up pretty good, I'd hate to be the guy who caused that. As we
approach the top of Monarch pass, the cars are all stopped. "Must be
doing avalanche control or something." I said. A few minutes later a
great cloud of snow blows around farther up the road and a huge
Chinook helicopter lumbers over the valley flying east. "Well, I
didn't expect to see THAT!". We wait for another ten minutes or so
and a truck comes down the road slowly. People are asking him what's
up and we overhear that a Black Hawk helicopter has crashed farther up
the road. When they finally let the traffic through, I catch a
glimpse of a tail rotor sticking up between the trees as we drive by.

The Mesa

We spend the night at the Log Hill bed and breakfast, catching up with
friends and enjoying the traditional potion known as the One True
Margarita. Slightly hung over, we hit the road the next day and stock
up on beef jerky from Ray's (not bad actually). Fueled by jerky,
salty snack foods and high fructose corn syrup we make our way to
Cedar Mesa, stopping by the Kane Gulch ranger station to check
conditions. We camp that night down the Snow Flat road and in the
morning drive to the overlook for the Moon House ruin. It's cool, but
we didn't feel like hiking down to it and instead get our permits and
hit the trail head for the 3 night backpacking trip we planned. We
park at Bullet canyon, the plan is to go down Bullet and out Sheiks,
taking our time and poking around inside the canyons. We tried to do
this same loop 2 years ago but our camp stove broke and after a Gorp
dinner and a cold oatmeal breakfast we bailed and went to some hot
springs.

I Lost Steve

We camped Sunday night in Bullet, near Jailhouse ruin. It's a nice
day but as evening progresses , menacing looking clouds swirl around
above us. Steve had never really noticed what virga looks like when
it's right over your head before. That night it snows a couple of
inches and my twenty degree bag isn't quite up to the task of keeping
me warm. The morning is clear and nice though, and the snow melts
quickly. We pack up and head down canyon. The plan is to drop our
packs at the mouth of the canyon and head down Grand Gulch but we miss
the the actual mouth and head down a good half a mile with our packs
on before we break out the map and figure out our mistake. It's
getting a little late by this point and we decide to just head back up
canyon to the Green Mask spring, where there's good water and camping.
Steve takes off ahead of me, he's a very fast hiker and usually just
walks ahead of me and waits for me from time to time. As I get to the
turnoff we missed, I don't see Steve waiting for me. I yelled out a
couple of times for him but didn't get a reply so I start hiking
towards Green Mask. I still don't notice Steve and I was concerned
that he might have missed the turn off. I dropped my pack and hike up
a spit of land in between the two canyons where I can look down into
both, but I don't see him. I yell a couple more times but no reply. I
put my pack on and double time it to Sheik's, trying to catch up to
him. He isn't at Sheik's so I go a mile or so farther up, thinking he
might have overshot it. By this point the sun is sinking low and I'm
in the shadows as I walk back to where we were planning on camping.
Steve has not showed up there and I figure he must have hiked back up
Bullet. It's too late to go there so I just set up my tent and camp
there that night, sipping tequila to assuage my worry.

The next morning I pack my day pack and head down to where I last saw
Steve. I head back up Bullet to where we camped the night before,
then back to where I was camped. No Steve. I break camp and head up
Sheik's canyon to the mesa top and head across Sheik's flat when I see
Steve's 4runner driving towards me. We celebrate our reuniting with
cold beer and talk about what happened. Steve missed the turnoff to
Sheik's and went up Bullet all the way to where we camped the night
before, then the next morning took off up and out Bullet, went to the
ranger station and filed a missing persons report on me on me just in
case before going back to the trail head to wait for me. We head to
the Ranger station and let them know I'm ok before going into town for
beer and steaks.

Hands and Caves

Wednesday we take it easy, driving along the Butler Wash road and
hiking up into a couple of shallow caves on Comb Ridge. Fish Mouth
cave is interesting, a very large deep arch shaped cave but no ruins
in it, presumably they've been torn down from all the people that can
go there. There's tons of graffiti on the walls but a few genuine hand
prints and other rock art. The next one is better, Monarch cave has
some good ruins in it and it looks like not as many people go there.
There's also hand prints on the walls here. We camp that night at the
Recapture Lodge on account of the icky weather forecast.

Thursday is a gorgeous bluebird Utah day. We drive up the Snow Flat
road from the east, this is not for a low clearance vehicle. We park
and hike down into Moon House ruin and spend the afternoon poking
around and taking pictures. That night we camp near a drill site and
enjoy a juniper fire beneath the clear starry night.

San Juan Blow

Friday morning the sky is hazy with dust and the wind is kicking up
again. We go to the Ranger station, let them know I'm still alive,
and check the forecast. Not good. We do a car day, drive to Natural
Bridges monument (Steve had never been there) and drive from spot to
spot, doing a little hiking but not much. Afterwords we drive to the
Edge of the Cedars museum and check that out. I get a new book: River
Flowing from the Sun, an Environmental History of the Lower San Juan.

We camp that night at the Recapture Lodge in Bluff and enjoy dinner
across the street at the San Juan River Kitchen, a new place that has
some tasty grub. Saturday morning looks nice and we head out, driving
along the John's canyon road looking for rock art. We see some nice
anthromorphs with duck heads (cool) and as we head back four fighter
jets buzz just off the top of the river gorge past us. I flipped them
off for harshing my mellow.

Moab Mike's Bed and Breakfast

We drove up to Muley point and noticed a wall of weather coming
towards us. I checked my voice mail and Mike says it's snowing in
Moab, he needs to rescue a friend on Deadhorse point and won't make
it. I'm glad because I really wasn't wanting to camp in those
conditions. We decide to to head to Moab instead of camping on Muley.
As we drive north on Cedar Mesa, the snow is thick and visibility
poor. All the way to Moab it's snowing. As we get into town I see a
guy in a Jeep, all bundled up and driving down the road. They're
right, I don't get that Jeep thing. Maybe some antibiotics will clear
that Jeep thing up? I hope so.

We spend the night at Moab Mike's Bed and Breakfast after dinner at
the Moab brewery. We tell stories and drink, until late in the night.
The next morning Mike made the breakfast he was planning on serving
up on Muley. It was an uneventful trip home, we got stuck in the ski
traffic on the eastbound I-70 but still managed to keep the whole trip
to about a 7 hour drive from Moab to Fort Collins. It was a good week
other than the weather and a great trip, we just scratched the surface
of Cedar Mesa, there's so much more to see there and I plan on
returning. Check pictures at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/timloco/tags/409cedarmesatrip/

Soup Report: Short Ribs and Celery

2008-09-02T17:57:00.000-07:00

I run into a recipe I like now and then and feel compelled to share it
with my friends.

I love this soup recipe, it uses weird produce and and a cheap cut of
beef and tastes awesome. I got this recipe from random web surfing
back in '99 - the article from the Arizona Daily Star entitled "Celery
root not pretty, but makes up for that in flavor", printed it out and
only a couple of months ago tried it out, slightly modified for a
pressure cooker rather than a dutch oven, saving about 3 hours of
cooking. I tried it again tonight and, damn - try this out.

------------------------------------------------------
Short ribs and celery root soup

1 tablespoon olive oil
1.5 lbs short ribs (4 or 5)
1 celery root, peeled, cut in julienne, and covered with acidulated water
1 carrot, thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper bought from the back of some dude's truck at the
farmer's market, seeded and cut into 2 inch long strips
1 medium onion from Monroe Organic farms in Kersey, CO
1 clove garlic from Goat Hill farms in Masonville, CO. The Polish
White is exquisite :-)
4 cups Fort Collins, CO tap water
1 teaspoon salt
dash of white pepper
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1 organic heirloom tomato, finely chopped
1/4 cup diced parsley
Plain yogurt or lemon wedges (Optional - I didn't have them either
time I made this)

Heat the oil in a pressure cooker and brown all sides of the ribs.
Pour off drippings. Add celery root, carrots, red pepper, onions,
garlic, water, salt, pepper, bay leaf and thyme. Put the lid on and
cook at pressure for 45 minutes. Remove short ribs with slotted spoon.
When ribs are cool enough to handle, remove meat from bones and
return it to soup in chunks, discarding bones and all visible fat. If
possible (ha!) chill soup for several hours or overnight to allow fat
to congeal, discard congealed fat.

Reheat soup to serving temperature. Salt to taste. Stir in tomato and
parsley. Serve with yogurt or lemon wedges, if used.
------------------------------------------------------

Walking in Beauty

2008-07-20T13:50:00.000-07:00

I burned up twenty bucks worth of gas today and re-visited Wild Basin, I had not been there since 95 or so and that's entirely too long. This is in the southern part of Rocky Mountain National park, a pretty wild basin with lots of water and waterfalls. Small burbling brooks cross the trail between nice rock work, the trail is like some carefully manicured garden path the first couple of miles. This place is like Rivendell from the Tolkien world - waterfalls all over, I half expected to see elven folk walking about but it was mostly tourists instead. Some of them looked slightly elvish though.

As I was walking along the trail I was thinking back to a translation of a Navajo blessing I read once, I couldn't remember it all so I had to look it up when I came back:

In beauty may I walk
All day long may I walk
Through the returning seasons may I walk
Beautifully I will possess again
Beautifully birds
Beautifully joyful birds
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk
With dew about my feet may I walk
With beauty may I walk
With beauty before me may I walk
With beauty behind me may I walk
With beauty above me may I walk
With beauty all around me may I walk
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk
It is finished in beauty
It is finished in beauty

I'm really glad that I can do this, walking in beauty. It's what sustains me, connects me to my Self. Here's some eye candy from the hike:

http://flickr.com/photos/timloco/tags/72008waterfallinspection/

This One Time, at Jam Camp...

2008-06-15T18:59:00.000-07:00

I just spent the last week at a 4 day "Jam Camp" followed by a 3 day Bluegrass and Roots music festival in Hotchkiss, Colorado. It was exactly what I needed right now in my musical education, a solid immersion in Bluegrass jamming, the etiquette of the jam, leading a jam in a song, taking a "break" or lead and a ton of other things. I learned so much that I'm not really sure how much I learned, I expect I'll be having "aha!" moments for months down the line. It was a fire hose of musical goodness.

The bluegrass jam is the People's orchestra. It's the most democratic of all group art forms that I can think of. If you've got the chops and you know the songs any jam circle will welcome you in and the music that comes out of the instruments (guitar, mandolin, fiddle, banjo and bass) can match the most beautiful classical string quartets. This is musical art as it has been for hundreds of years.

The camp was hosted by a band called Chele's Kitchen out of Bainbridge Island, Washington. They are a nice mellow patient group of pickers who hosted slow jams, helped run the camp and instruct. Another band, the Hickory Project, provided the instrument and other instruction. There were 25 students and 9 instructors so there was plenty of one on one time and good hands on education.

The first two days were mainly instrument classes, and some group jamming. The second two days they split us up into bands and had each band pick a couple of songs out and learn them with the help of instructors. We named our band "Hotchgrass" and in it was a fiddle player, a mando/fiddle player, two guitars and a banjo. The first song we learned together was an old classic, Tom Dooley. The second one was the Swallowtail Jig, a traditional Irish tune. On the last day there was a concert held for the local Hotchkiss folks ahead of the music festival and each band got on stage and performed their numbers as a warm up for the "real" bands that came on later. I took a small solo and nailed it which was good 'cause I was kinda nervous.

After the Jam camp the music festival started and campers filled up the campground, jam circles formed and much fun was experienced. I made my way back to my tent Friday after jamming in a slow beginner's circle somewhere around 3 am, and as I dozed off the most beautiful fiddle music was softly being played just 30 feet away or so and as I laid there I thought that I couldn't remember the last time I fell asleep this happy.

The venue for the festival is small and intimate, and not crowded at all. You could go right up to the stage and sit down front row. It was the same with the camping, not too crowded. It was also a pretty family friendly environment, with little kids running around having a blast.

Saturday night I jammed for a bit but my fingers were pretty sore and we ended up just listening to some world class musicians that had set up where the fiddle players were the night before. It was a tight jam, as good as anything I've heard. These folks all played really really well together and they sounded great. I passed out in my tent somewhere around 3 again and they were still playing. I don't think I got more than 12 hours of sleep total the last several days, I'm pretty tired.

I got totally turned on to a new artist for me, Diana Jones. She's just this awesome singer/songwriter and her performances were incredible. One of her songs, "Pony", brought a tear to my eye when I was listening and I ended up buying all three of her CDs she was selling. The headliners for Friday night was the Hickory Project, and Saturday night it was the Krueger brothers - and awesome 3 person band out of Switzerland. Uwe Krueger ran the guitar workshop Saturday morning and I was impressed by his practical advice and down to earth style. I went to a song writing workshop on Sunday before driving home and got my creative juices flowing. I'm looking forward to writing some songs in the future.

I look back and this last week and it was one of the best weeks that I can remember. About the only thing I can think of was my 35th birthday floating down the San Juan a few years ago but I think this one was better if that's even possible. Life is damn good. I took tons of pictures and I'll be trickling them out onto my flickr page over the next week or so.

San Juan River Rambling

2008-05-04T18:53:00.000-07:00

"I'm feeling a little uncomfortable." Caylon says, and for good reason.

There's a man naked but for a skirt of sticks, moving around the

campfire a few feet away, hooting and grunting, alternating between
pointing to the sky and to the ground, gesturing, trying to
communicate something that is being lost amid histerical giggles. I'm
laughing so hard the muscles in my stomach are getting a little sore.
His body is covered in charcoal and he has a headdress made out of
grass. His johnson peeks out between the sticks. I glance at the
nice Mormon couple sitting next me and bet they've never seen anything
like this before.

I think back to the start of the trip where Teresa says it's tradition
for the new people on the river to come up with a song or skit or poem
or something by the last night and perform it for the rest of group.
Wow, he ran with that idea and put my San Juan rookie song to shame.
The witchdoctor walks away from the fire, gesturing to follow him.
Other people get out of their chairs and follow. "What the hell, I
gotta see how this ends." I say as I heave my margarita soaked self
out of my chair and stumble off into the darkness. By the time I get
to where everyone else is I find out he has disapeared into the brush
and we all wander back to the campfire.

Not too long later he comes back to the campfire, dressed normally.
We applaud and he says "What's going on? I was back there sitting on
the can." He sits in his chair as if nothing happened. I think to
myself, that's the best river performance art I have ever seen. The
costume, the sheer ballsy (he he) performance, everything. Just wow.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one who at one point wondered if he had
crossed the line between creativity and just plain insanity, but
that's what the river will do to you and it all turned out fine and we
have a great story to take away from it.

That day on the river had been a cold float, the river was running at
4,000 CFS - a great flow, really ripping which was good because of all
the wind. We floated 17 miles or so from River House to Ledge Rapid,
stopping a couple of times to warm up and shuffle people between
boats. At one point Kristin, the cute red headed dreadlocked hippy
chick's lips were turning blue and she was shivering so I talked her
into tying up her IK to my boat and floating a few miles without
sitting in the water. It was the right thing to do as I watched her
struggle on the ragged edge of stage 1 hypothermia. The next stop we
got her in the dory after making Kristin sammiches with various group
members, trying to warm her up.

We had originally planned on camping at Chinle Wash the second night
because we had the permits to camp and hike on Navajo lands, but the
first camp was so nice and sheltered in the Russian Olives that we did
a layover. It was windy and a little cold, and Chinle was a pretty
exposed. I took that afternoon and went hiking back upstream to the
Butler panel, looking at the rock art along the wall on the way. I
scared up a red tailed hawk from the cottonwoods I was walking near
and watched it fly upriver. On the way back, I got back up onto the
bench above the River House ruin and poked around the various alcoves.
One of them had a nice deep pool of water, surrounded by ferns and in
these thickets of ferns wild orchids were growing.

All in all it was a fine trip despite the wind and cold temperatures.
I've seen the worst wind that canyon can dish up and as I was
struggling against it on the river I'd shout out "Is that all you got?
Bring it on motherfucker!" This made other people nervous, me
taunting the wind like that. I'm not very superstitious though and it
felt good to shout back at the elements like that. When we took out
on the fourth day I wistfully stared downstream and wished I could
keep going. Right now I'd be camping at Grand Gulch or Oljito wash if
I had. Maybe next year.

First Backpack Trip of 08

2008-04-07T07:07:00.000-07:00

My buddy John and I packed up the packs with camping gear and a lots
of tequila and hiked up into the mountains Saturday afternoon. The
last time we hit this trailhead was for a 20 mile through hike, this
one was just a few miles up to a nice aspen grove. It was a gorgeous
sunny afternoon but there was still a lot of snow on the ground,
especially in the shade. This area is in the Comanche Peak
wilderness right next to Rocky Mountain National Park. It's such a
nice place, you can get far enough away from civilization to not see
anyone for what's a very short drive. It's like nobody knows about
it, or nobody is crazy enough to go up there this early in the season.

The trail was just starting to get muddy but for the most part it was
hard packed snow that was starting to get a bit soft. The trail
follows the North Fork of the Big Thompson river which is mostly
under snow and ice still. There were few open spots where you could
see the river. I almost took my fly rod but when we got to the
parking lot it had been so windy I just left it, which saved me a few
pounds of gear because I wouldn't have been able to use it. We got up
to the area where the good camp sites are a couple of hours after we
left the car and set up camp overlooking a nice meadow on the south
slopes of the Bulwark Ridge. The snow had mostly melted off except
areas in the shade. After setting up tents and the kitchen we started
doing shots of tequila and enjoying the view. The mountains to the
west were enveloped in clouds, some kind of storm was hitting them but
it seemed to be sticking to the high peaks and not traveling our way.

As we were eating dinner, a huge flock of robins flew through our part
of the valley, there were probably a hundred at least flying through
in groups of 5-10 birds making all kinds of robin racket. I've seen lots
of cool wildlife in this area. One spring I was here a saw a grouse
and her baby chicks walk right through our campsite on the way to the
water. Another time we were throwing a wilderness bachelor party for
a friend (somebody brought porno mags in lieu of a stripper) a
deer walked just ten feet away from us, everyone totally still and
silent until someone coughed and scared it away.

After dinner, the ominous clouds started moving our way and we could
see snow falling just thousand feet up from us. That line of snow
moved farther and farther down until it was snowing in camp and I
bailed to my tent. I was geared up more for late spring than early
spring and didn't want to get too wet. My tent was starting to sag a
little from the weight of the snow when I dozed off. I woke up a
bunch of times during the night, it was so windy I thought my tent was
going to blow down or one of the dead snags around camp would fall
over. Not a very restful sleep, and it got a little cold - around 20
degrees or so. It didn't end up snowing very much though so that was
a bonus. When I woke up for the 20th time or so, it was starting to
get light. It was still very windy, and even when the sun finally hit
my tent it didn't get much warmer.

We had a leisurely breakfast and broke camp and headed on down the
mountain, stopping to peel layers as it got warmer. By the time I got
to the car I just had my long sleeve shirt on, it was so warm. All in
all a good first backpack and it can only get warmer up there - I'm
looking forward to it! I brought my little digicam, not the good
camera and I didn't take too many pictures but there's a few to get a
taste of what this area was like:

http://flickr.com/photos/timloco/tags/firstbackpacktripof08/

(I'm the only one on flickr who has used that tag)

A Taste of Redrock

2008-03-16T12:05:00.000-07:00

That's all I needed, just a taste, a sample of redrock goodness to tide me over until the April 29th San Juan float I'm on. I left Thursday after work to snow and blowing snow warnings chasing me to my friends on the western slope, Roger and Gail. Their house is halfway between my house and all things redrock and good. Monarch pass was a little greasy with fresh snow and as I was nearing the top of the pass I heard a loud BOOM! and thought I might have blown a tire but it was a bag of chips that had expanded and exploded over the passenger seat next to me. Road food covered the seat, spreading chip debris over guide books and maps.

On the other side of the pass I was amazed at the amount of snow still on the ground for it being this late in the year. Scrawny half starved deer nibbled on the newly exposed grass on the side of the road, and for every live one I saw there were at least three dead and decaying carcasses lying in the snow. It's a good spring for scavengers this year on the western slope.

Roger tried to poison me me margaritas made with Milagro, but I've got a strong constitution. Gail amused me by trying to get a baby chicken to ride her fat cat Molly. The cat was not amused but I laughed my ass off. They just got 20 chicks, which is good because a bobcat just
ate their last 5 chickens from last year. It's tough living on Log Hill Mesa.

I left the next morning bright and early, going on the San Juan Skyway over Lizard Head pass and following the Dolores river down to its temporary impediment, Mcphee Dam. The reservoir is topped off, full to the brim which means that river is going to run this year and I am going to be on it, I can't wait. I made my way to Muley Point and set up camp overlooking a thousand square miles of redrock ecstasy and sipped cold beer, contemplating the view.

As I was out taking pictures in the magic hour before sunset my friend Tom showed up and called my cell phone that I left in the car and let me know he was on Muley Point and where was I? I called back but all I got was voicemail. He never did show up that night at my camp, so the next morning after taking some more pictures I broke camp and drove around, finally finding him. The bomber of Arrogant Bastard ale lying next to the tent positively identified his camp.

I took Tom to a very special rock art site that I had been wanting to go back to for awhile. It has an image of a couple copulating and a woman giving birth. This is also Edward Abbey's favorite rock panel according to the folks who own the bed and breakfast in the Valley of the Gods that he stayed at. As we were approaching the panel, I remembered to turn my cell phone off, it seemed like the right thing to do. You need to climb over rocks and under overhangs, on your hands and knees like a proper rockrock supplicant. Near the panel is a small seep and a most improbable thing : a couple of small spruce trees, barely more than sprigs growing out of the parched ground. I remembered back to a ruin at Mesa Verde called Spruce Tree House and I know the ancestors of the people who once lived there still go there and preform their ceremonies, and I wondered if they still go here also. The spruce tree is the bringer of water.

We took our pictures and payed our respects, then wondered back to the cars and headed over to Bullet Canyon. We hiked the rim out to a point and saw some ruins, including a couple up a side canyon that I had not known about until then. I'm going to head back eventually but Tom is getting a permit and heading into Grand Gulch for almost a week, setting up a base camp and exploring from there. I left Tom at 6, and started the long drive home, I wanted to try and beat the approaching storm system. The roads were good until Frisco, then it started snowing heavily, and on the other side of the pass I got caught in in a line of cars stopped because they had closed down the interstate, a multi car accident with a semi jackknifed and wedged between the guardrails on either side of the road. After an hour and a half wait, they cleared up the blockage and I finished the drive home, collapsing on the bed at 3:30 am.

Single Again

2008-02-27T07:21:00.000-08:00

I've been kind of dreading updating this blog. Well, not really dreading, just putting it off. I broke up with my girlfriend last week and now I'm living alone. We had been together almost ten years, a big chunk of our lives. I won't go into details about the why, I'll just say I wasn't happy and neither was she and it seemed like the best thing to do.

But I'm looking forward to the future, I'm optimistic and hopeful things will get better. I've been hiking when the weather permits and I've got several thousand feet of elevation in this year already. I've been pickin' away at my guitar, I'm finally at the point where I can learn some melodies, just not play them that well :-)

1st hike of the year

2008-01-06T09:30:00.001-08:00

So my friend Mary Ann picks me up this morning, we're going to go
snowshoeing. We're heading out and she says "So, there's a winter
storm warning." I look west and see clouds towering over the
mountains. It's snowing pretty good up there. A while back I used to
really be obsessive about the weather, watching the maps and reading
the forecasts but for some reason I really stopped caring about it. I
carry gear for whatever weather and wear whatever is appropriate. I
didn't even bother to look at it for today, I saw that it would be
warm in town a couple of days ago and figured it'd be ok.

As we were driving west I could see the developing storm stuck on the
mountains, clouds piling thousands of feet above the obscured high
peaks. Down below, gusty winds scoured the car with road sand as we
drove up the twisty Poudre canyon. It was not looking like very great
weather at all and we ended up hiking a lower elevation trail called
Dadd Gulch rather than white out ground blizzard Cameron Pass. It's a
nice trail that's used as a stock driveway during grazing season,
bringing down the range maggots from the high meadows. We hiked up a
couple of miles through a light rain that turned into snow the higher
we went. The trail gained a modest one thousand feet, crossing and
recrossing a small burbling trickle of water that flowed under a
mostly frozen surface.

We stopped for lunch and I broke out the thermos of chai tea sweetened
with a squirt of Agave necter. We ate our sammiches and sipped tea in
the light snowfall and enjoyed the scenery before heading back down
the mountain. We didn't see anyone else until about a half a mile
from the trailhead, four hikers. It was a great first hike of the
year. Last year I hiked 218 miles and 56,828 feet of elevation. It's
not even close to my goal of 100,000 feet but it was loads of fun just
getting out. So far this year 1000 feet and four miles, a good start.

Here's three pictures from the hike:

http://flickr.com/photos/timloco/tags/010508daddgulchhike/

RMNP Traverse

2007-09-09T18:57:00.000-07:00

I had been thinking of a route that crosses the northern part of Rocky
Mountain National Park for awhile now, at least ten years I've been
thinking about it, every time I looked at that part of the map I said
to myself, "Self, you need to do that!" Well, I finally got around to
doing it, and it was so worth it.

My friend John and I started at the Dunraven Trailhead Friday morning,
strapped on our ridiculously heavy packs (mine was 39 pounds without
the water) and headed in under a gorgeous clear blue sky with cool
early fall temperatures. One thing I noticed right off the bat were
the enormous amount of mushrooms popping up everywhere. It must have
been just ideal conditions for them, we were surrounded by a plethora
of fungus, everywhere you looked there was some new and weird looking
thing popping up out of the ground. I have a little digicam that I
can get 7 centimeters away from the subject so I've been experimenting
with "bugs eye" views of mushrooms, with some success, but its hit and
miss - tough light, tough angles.

Ten miles and a good 2,500 feet of elevation later we end up at Lost
Lake, near the headwaters of the north fork of the Big Thompson river.
I was exhausted - the reserve tanks empty, I was running on fumes.
We took some pictures of a stunning sunset that evening, reflections
of the trees in the lake were gorgeous. Lost lake is a destination in
and of itself, but we had bigger fish to fry the next day.

I didn't sleep well at all that night, we must have been right under
some central flyway for the jets, and a lot closer to them than in the
city. Once the jets stopped flying over the wind kicked up and blew
all night long. I doubt I slept more than 4 hours despite my
exhaustion. After breakfast the next morning we broke camp and headed
west, to the dreaded Icefield Pass. We got brief glimpse of it
earlier and it looked brutally steep. Getting closer to it, that
first glimpse proved correct, it was steep as hell. The satellite map
just doesn't do it justice, the topo lines didn't look that close
together. It was a slog up big blocks of talus at first, not bad, but
then it got to loose scree, insane steep, and all at 12,000 feet
elevation. We made it to the top though, that was the crux move, it
was all downhill from there.

We wandered around the alpine wilderness, taking in views that went on
for tens of miles. It was pretty hazy from smoke I'm guessing, god
knows where but it was thick. On the hike down from Mummy Pass to our
campsite we heard a couple of elk bugling, what a haunting sound.

Our campsite at Mummy creek was a dandy, big chunks of mushrooms
pushing up the dirt all around, with nice views of the Mummy mountains
to the south. I mixed up Orange Gatoraid and Everclear for the
cocktails (hey, it's lightweight) and enjoyed a nice relaxed buzz and
soaked in the scene. Life is good. An annoying song gets stuck in my
head, John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy". Oh well, maybe
paradise isn't all its cracked up to be.

That night it gets pretty cold, I have to cinch up my sleeping bag and
put my hat on, then I sleep like a baby for a good 8 hours at least.
John is already up and has a couple of cups of coffee in him before I
roll out of my tent. We take our time breaking camp and hiking back
to the car we have stashed, 90 miles by road for the twenty we've
walked. We get to the truck just as rain starts, and as we roll into
town it's cold and cloudy, people are wearing sweaters and it smells
like wood smoke. Summer is over, and I got one more good backpacking
trip in before the end.

Berry Inspection

2007-08-11T16:10:00.000-07:00

I took a quick walk up a couple of my favorite areas in the Big
Thompson drainage today. I started off on the North Fork, walked up
it a mile or so, just checking out the berry ripeness. It is high time
for currants and gooseberries, with raspberries just starting to kick
in. I'm going back tomorrow with my magic berry picking bucket and
getting some. This is so cool, going out and grazing on the hillsides
and making yummy goodness out of it. I think back while I'm doing
this on how people have done the same thing at the same spot for
thousands of years now and I feel a real nice sense of continuity.

Part two, I hike up the Gravel Pit trailhead of Crosier mountain, one
of three trailheads on the mountain and the only one I haven't hiked
up yet. It's steeper than the other two, and has nice views up and
down the valley. I only hiked up to where it intersects the
northernmost trail, had lunch and turned around. As I was walking down
the trail, I heard a lot of gunshots. At least 3 or 4 different
calibers that my ear could pick out. It got louder and and louder
the closer to the parking area I got. A pretty blonde woman is walking
up the trail and I say to her it sounds like world war frickin' 3 over
there, pointing with my thumb. She says, yes, we're having fun!

I get to my car and there's only one other car there, it has a "Mit
08" sticker and another that says in small letters on top "what part
of" then in big letters underneath "Death to America" then small
letters underneath that "do you not understand?" God what a
stereotype, gotta love Colorado. My homies out practicing their aim
:-) We like our guns here, no doubt about it. The Coloradical's idea
of gun control is not dropping it!

I took some flutterby pictures:

http://flickr.com/photos/timloco/tags/northforkbigthompson/

Chokecherries and Rattlesnakes

2007-08-06T21:36:00.001-07:00

I've been telling myself for several years now that I should enjoy the bounty of nature and pick myself a mess of berries, make some jam and alcoholic beverages. I always seem to miss the peak of the year when everything ripens but this year is different. Last Saturday, slightly hung over, I wandered around Indian Meadows up the Poudre canyon for several hours, just picking currants. Those are very tiny berries, my efforts amounted to a scant pint - but it was good to get out and walk around. The sap from the leaves and stems of the berries is slightly piney, it's a really nice mellow scent and the berries are also subtly flavored. I'm going to match them with some raspberries and make some jam.

This afternoon I took off work a little early and drove up the Poudre again, this time for chokecherries. It is high time for chokecherries in the lower part of the canyon, dark little jewels hanging from bushes all over the place. I drove up and pulled over, walked a ways up the side of the river, picking berries, putting some in my mouth and some in the bucket. I rigged a cut out gallon jug on a belt that I could bend the branch down and just pull them into. It was perfect rattlesnake habitat, so I stomped around, easy enough for a big guy like me, shaking bushes and being obnoxious. I did this until I had a good two gallons then went back to my ride.

I was driving down the canyon thinking about what a good haul it was and how perfect I hit it when I thought about my camera and felt in my pocket and realized it wasn't there. I pulled over, got out and searched my rig but it wasn't in there. It must have fallen out of my pocket when I was picking. I turned around and went back up the canyon, parked and started walking upstream to where I remembered taking it out last - a perfect specimen, a small bush just loaded with berries.

I was walking fast and not really looking because I knew it wasn't there, when I heard the ominous rattle of a a snake. I froze, and looked behind me on the right to see a HUGE rattlesnake coiled up just a few feet away from me. I have never seen a rattlesnake this big. It was as thick around as a Heineken keg can, it sounded like a box of marbles shaking its tail, smoke was coming out its nostrils... Ok maybe not that dramatic but it still made my heart skip a beat. I had walked right past it, not more than a foot. It was perfectly hidden right off a slight game path, in the high dry grass.

I leaned forward to get a better look (!) and it went back like it was going to strike, then I took a step back and said, ok it's cool, I'm outta here, no worries, and walked away down the river with the new found buzz only a slight brush with death can give you. I walked all the way down to where I turned around and didn't see my fancy waterproof digital camera, then walking back up dejected and paranoid about where I stepped, I saw the bush! I looked down and lo, there was my camera! I walked back up the same way, slightly hoping to see the snake again and take its picture but it was long gone.

I got home just in time to change my poison ivy exposed clothes and head to the Mexican restaurant where my favorite Mariachi band is playing. Drinking my psychiatric medication, I request "Cascabel", a kick ass song whose name means rattlesnake but I don't understand the rest of the lyrics. It is long, and involves great solos from the small guitar guy and the bass player, and cool string plucking from the fiddle players. Life is good. I'm making chokecherry jam, and a cherry stout that uses sour cherries and chokecherries. If I get enough, I'm making chokecherry wine. But next time I go out I'm wearing gators as an extra layer of protection, them snakes give me the heebie jeebies!

RIP Tim Donlon

2007-06-28T11:12:00.000-07:00

My good friend Tim Donlon (AKA The Evil Other Tim) died last night in a motorcycle accident. They say he hit is head on the curb and died instantly. He never wore a helmet, whenever I gave him shit for it he'd always say, "Hey man, when it's your time, it's your time. "

I guess it was his time.

I've known him for a good 15 years, gone camping and fishing with him, and really enjoyed his company. Once we took a road trip to Portland Oregon and saw a Grateful Dead show with some other friends, that was a fun time.

Sometimes it was hard to be his friend. He drank a lot and he'd be really intense, in your face. He was opinionated, and when he had his mind set on something you couldn't change it no matter what. He was also a gifted guitar player. I recently picked up the guitar and decided to learn it, and he gave me pointers. He would come to the "Jam night" every other Thursday at my friend Steve's house, and we'd all play some guitar and sing some songs.

It's funny, I didn't really notice the light in him except now that I think back on it. He was a beautifull person despite his flaws. I'll always remember his sense of humor, how he cared about me and Tammy and other people.

Tim Donlon, you will be missed!

The Sand Juan River

2007-06-21T10:08:00.000-07:00

"We have the substance, now we shall intoxicate the infidels!" Jethro holds up my aluminum fuel bottle style flask containing the Everclear.

John ululates like a insane mullah and I add my feedback, "Allah akbar, motherfuckers!"

Jethro opens the bottle and pours it into blender.

"Whoa!" Michael says.

"Whoa! Whoa! That's plenty!" I say. A healthy dosage of pure ethanol pours over the ice. Jethro puts in several scoops of orange Gatorade, puts the lid on and pulls the cord. The blender is like a regular blender, except his is attached to a 2 stroke motor, like a weed whacker. This allows a good deal of torque to break up the ice chunks and makes a nice smooth final product.

Thirty seconds or so of canyon shattering noise later, the Orange Jihad is finished and poured into glasses. It burns just a little, and is surprisingly refreshing in the extreme heat of late afternoon at the mouth of Grand Gulch on the San Juan river in southern Utah.

By the time the drink is finished, Ray is completely toast.

"I love this river! I love the San Juan!" He exclaims as he falls backwards on the boat we are all sitting on, sits up, then falls sideways and starts mumbling incoherently. Somebody gets his PFD and we help him put it on, just to be safe.

This was actually the second drink, Jessica had some pink lemonade and vodka that we had been experimenting with, we added some leftover pineapple juice and chunks and some Everclear to make a peach colored concoction we named "Peach Stupid" although it didn't taste anything like peach at all.

This is our last night on the river, and I'm a little melancholy. It's been such a good trip and I don't want to leave it but this is the way these things go, all good things must come to an end.

We put in a week earlier and 70 some miles upstream on this gorgeous river. The flow was good, 2500 cfs or so when we put in, and it went up and stayed around 3000 for the whole trip, which made for great rowing. I hiked up on Comb Ridge the first day and caught some gorgeous light on Lime Ridge and the Mules Ear. The next day we floated down and parked on river left to hike around the diatreme that's next to the Mules Ear.

The camp that night was at Ledge rapid, a tasty little campsite that also happens to be the home of a couple of clever ravens who have learned that the river runners are good sources of food. These birds are so smart they've figured out how to open zippers.

We floated down the next day and stopped at the boat ramp that's in the only town along the way, Mexican Hat, to get more ice so the precious beer would stay cool. That night we camped at a nice spot just upstream from the Goosenecks and the Tabernacle. It rained most of the night, a nice light rain that added up to a quarter inch or so, good enough to make everything damp and cut down on the ubiquitous dust.

Tuesday morning we floated on down to Honnaker. The upper camp was taken already but the one right down from that one was open. This was going to be our layover camp, and a fine one it was. Not very shady but we set up some tarps over the kitchen, and the river water was really cold. I would walk upstream for 10 minutes then float down to where I started in about 20 seconds. There was a big rock right downstream from camp where I would swim into the eddy and bob around until the first stages of hypothermia started setting in, then get out and overheat before repeating the process, all afternoon.

The next day I hiked the Honnaker trail to the top of the rim. This is a steep, switchbacking trail that goes from the river all the way up to the top of the canyon. It was built a long time ago to support gold mining. The mining was never profitable but the trail remains. The views are incredible, the trail not for the faint of heart or acrophobic. After I got back to camp I tried to rehydrate with little success, I think it might have had something to do with the fermented malt beverages I was using.

Friday we said goodbye to our 2 day camp at Honnaker and floated down to John's canyon, which I think is my favorite camp on the river, the upper camp at this site anyway. I floated around down to the plunge pool beneath the canyon and hid out in an eddy for awhile, cooling down. Ray and Michael hiked around and got up to the level where the canyon pours over and waved at me. I was holding on to a tamarisk root, trying to keep from floating away in the strong current. After awhile I got tired and wandered back to camp and tried to rehydrate again. We watched a bighorn sheep wander around on the steep rock of the opposite bank and sipped cold beer, waiting for the sun to dip behind the canyon wall.

The next day we hit the hardest rapid on the river, which is not very hard, Government Rapid. We stopped for awhile and people took the ducky through before floating on down to Slickhorn gulch for some day hiking and lunch before finishing up the day at Grand Gulch where our campsite was and the Orange Jihad was poured.

Saturday morning I was not quite as melancholy, I was looking forward to a nice shower and seeing Tammy again. I had to work on Monday and had to go through all my gear anyways. The float out was uneventful and other than a slight delay while we made fixes to the truck. I will never buy a Chevy truck! We made it to civilisation by Saturday night, moteled it and drove home the rest of the way the next day.

2007-05-28T15:22:00.000-07:00

I went to the cathedral of
Chasm Lake today, a beautifull alpine tarn nestled in at the foot of
Longs Peak. On the way up, 2 F-16s went in between Longs and Meeker
(the peak to the south of Longs), below the level of the tops of the
mountain, flying sideways when I looked up. By the time I got my
camera up they were long gone:

Mt. Meeker is nice, this is a view of the north side of the mountain,
there is a route to the top you can see called the Dreamweaver
Couloir, I always wanted to climb it but I doubt I ever will:

Longs peak is a special mountain for me. I've been on top of it 4
times now, I never get tired of it. The scenery is so rugged and pure
alpine:

I had to take the obligatory picture of a "park" Marmot - watch out
for these, they'll drag your pack away when you're not looking:

And finally, an alpine wildflower:

Needles District Trek

2007-04-14T22:47:00.000-07:00

I sit here at the keyboard and try to recall the trip, knowing that I can't really convey the sense of awe when standing on top of the slickrock looking over the insane geology/geography or the way my jaw dropped when standing at Cathedral Butte looking down on the canyon I was about to hike or the sense of calm the last night sleeping next to the river, the best nights sleep I have had all year, but I will attempt it. It was one of the best backpacking trips I have ever been on and I should share it as best I can.

The trip was a long time planning and out of the 5 originally going 2 dropped out leaving Mike, Steve, and myself to hike from the head of Salt creek canyon through the Needles and down to the Colorado river to be picked up by a jet boat and taken back to Moab. Forty three miles, starting in the Ponderosa at seven thousand feet and ending three thousand feet lower at the river. There was a surprising amount of uphill getting in between the different canyon systems, and an amazing amount of water - I have never seen that desert so wet.

We started off at the foot of Cathedral Butte, the Salt Creek Canyon trail winds down in switchbacks coming off the ridge, rapidly losing altitude. The weather was threatening and just about the time it was going to unleash the rain we found a nice little alcove, its ceiling blackened by fire long ago. We sat inside and watched the rain come across the valley towards us, cracking jokes and enjoying the spectacle. Lightning flashed all around us and thunder was immediate, these strikes were very close. Once the storm was almost done we were asking each other, "what's that sound?" and then looked behind us as a small creek was starting to flow through our shelter. We got our packs out of the way of the water and watched it flow through the alcove and pour out the front. By that time the rain was done and we hit the trail again, going down through the smell of wet sage and other desert plants.

Not far onto the floor of the valley the water becomes very noticeable, a huge marsh stretches across the canyon and we walked across it, feet sticking in the muck and hands getting scratched by thorny plants as we tried to find the trail with the help of an occasional cairn. There are a lot of archaeological sites and we poked around a little at some of them, including a very large midden with some nice big pieces of pottery and worked flint. We left these as we found them and walked on towards our assigned camp, SC1, a nice little spot nestled in the redrock about 5miles downcanyon.

We walked around a little before heading back and setting up our tents and getting dinner started. The weather was looking wet again and we had barely enough time to get dinner made and hustle into our tents before the skies opened up with a deluge of hail, rain and wind. There was a brief lull and we went out to enjoy the spectacle of huge waterfalls pouring off the cliffs all around us before it started raining more heavily and chasing us back into shelter. It rained all night long, intermittent thunder and lightning, unrelenting rain, the sound of water running all around me. I woke up closer to morning and it was quiet and I drifted off again before finally getting up just as the sun was starting to come up. It was clear and blue, everything wet, all of the potholes in the slickrock around camp full to the brim with rainwater. I laid down and stuck my face in a good one without any sand in the bottom and sucked up that clear cool goodness to quench my thirst. It would become a familiar motion before the end of the trek.

We broke camp and headed down the canyon in the beautiful clear blue sky and heady scent of wet sage. There was a large ruin that Mike wanted to photograph and we stopped there and investigated. Mike was a hiking animal, carrying a large format camera and lenses in addition to his backpacking gear. His pack probably weighed 60 pounds at least. This ruin was big for the canyon, probably a dozen rooms on a ledge that could only be gotten on to by a ladder or some serious climbing. A raven floated around lazy circles, watching us.

After that we continued down canyon, stopping at some rock art along the way, All American Man and the Five Faces panel. We hiked a long ways down the canyon, about 10 or eleven miles only to find out the campsite we wanted was already taken. We found a mediocre one across the way and set up. I put my tent under an overhang and didn't bother with the fly because it was so well sheltered, I only wanted to keep the "little goddammits" out of my face. During the night it rained again but nothing hit my tent.

The next day was bright and sunny and we hit the trail for another long one. This time from just inside the "horse" zone to the Peekaboo trail to Lost canyon, about 8 or 9 miles. This part of the canyon was dramatic. At Peekaboo there is a large cave, actually a fissure between the rocks that has been hollowed out, and a lot of rock art, some of it new stuff put on top of archaic art that is probably a couple of thousand years old. People have been here a long time.

We hopped up onto the slickrock after looking at the cave and loading up on water that we really didn't need because of all the rain but it was good to have just in case. As with the case in other transitions between canyons there is a ladder put in place, otherwise the route just wouldn't be possible without some technical climbing. On top of the slickrock was another world, a gorgeous place of eroded solidified sand dunes, crazy hoodoos, views out to 50 miles or more, views down into strange canyons loaded with sage and mystery.

We hiked down off of the slickrock into Lost Canyon, our campsite that night was LC1, tucked into some gambel oak out of the wind. We were whipped but managed to stay up late enough to see a few stars. It didn't rain that night but it got pretty cold, in the morning there was frost on my tent and my water bottle was slushy with ice.

We hiked up Lost canyon, a beautiful paradise inside a paradise. Strong springs gush out of the ground and keep the vegetation lush and green. On top out of the canyon and on the slickrock we took pictures and had lunch, enjoying the scenery. Afterwards we climbed down into Squaw Canyon before heading up again on top of the slickrock via a couple of ladders to Elephant canyon then to Chesler park where our next camp was.

Chesler park is amazing. The last time I hiked in Needles I went here and was impressed, but this time was different. We had campsite CP1, looking out onto the park, and the Maze in the distance. Again the weather was threatening, but we didn't get any rain until later on into the night. At one point I woke up and the sound of the rain had changed, it was snow. I woke up to a winter wonderland of shrubs covered in the wet white goodness, with light dancing off the remote fins of sandstone in the Maze and puffy clouds floating through the early morning mist.

Our last full day of walking, we heading out to the Devils Kitchen area where Mike had stashed some water just in case and a small bottle of tequila for our last night. The Kitchen was a lot like the other areas we had been to, redrock, slickrock, sick views and incredible scenery. We went out of this area into the Grabbens, wide valleys in between walls of rock towering over the valley floors. A fault had cut into these, making it possible to hike across them on the way down to the river.

The last leg of the journey was lower Red Lake Canyon, a steep route down to the river through a large talus field. It was slow but we made it down to the river and found a good beach the jetboat could get to. After dinner it started raining again and we retreated to our tents. The sound of rain and the sound of the river lulled me to sleep, a deep rest that I didn't drift out of for a good 9 hours. It was a lazy morning breaking camp and waiting for the boat to pick us up. We talked about the great spots and the fact we had perfect cool weather for hiking, plenty of water, and nothing bad happened. In short it was a perfect trip and one I will remember for a lifetime.

Is This Thing On?

2007-03-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

Yea, I know, no update on this for awhile. What can I say other than my motivational level has been pretty low lately. I've been snapping away at stuff and putting it on my flickr page, going on hikes and enjoying life as much as I care to, so I'm not a total lump. I've got 19,000 feet in so far this year, a great start considering how snowy it's been. I've got a backpacking trip planned to Canyonlands the 8th-13th of April, I'm *stoked* for that. I was thinking about a quick shakedown trip for this weekend to make sure I've got all my gear together (I always forget stuff on my first trip of the year) but it's snowing pretty good out there now and I'm not sure if I want to camp in the snow. I know, what a pussy ;-)

New Year, Same Goals

2007-01-01T16:36:00.000-08:00

My total elavation for last year ended up a little over 55,500 feet. It was a spectacular year and one where I really grew in different directions artistically and personally. A great year over all and to top it off, record breaking snowfall at the very end, 2 big storms that dropped close to 3 feet total here in 80521.

I'd love to get out there and start on this year's 100,000 foot attempt but Tammy's bug can't even make it to the trailhead there's so much snow. This year I'm going to try and get more elavation early on to save some weekends for rafting. I think the rafting season on the Poudre should be great as long as it keeps snowing like this and takes time to melt.

update

2006-11-30T12:10:00.002-08:00

I haven't updated this blog in a while. I've been so busy, I've got so many irons in the fire I had to let a couple of them go because one in particular has been sucking up a great deal of my time: photography. I've been really getting into it - creating it, looking at it, reading about it, immersing myself in it. I turned a spare room into a "camera obscura", essentially a giant camera, an aperture on the window casts an inverted view of the front yard onto the walls on the opposite side. I've rigged it up so I can switch out the aperture or cover it up entirely for a dark room. I bought a really cool medium format camera cheap off eBay. It's a Yashica Mat twin lens reflex. I've been shooting black and white film, and developing it myself and scanning it in on my film scanner, which brings me to my next free time taker. I've got an Epson Perfection 4490 scanner, and I've been scanning in all my old negatives, I'm about 3/4 of the way done. I've posted a few to my flickr page. The scanner itself is fairly good and does what its supposed to but the software that came with it is absolutely horrible, the worst software I have ever had the displeasure to deal with. Most of the pictures are pretty much snapshot ho-hum, boring composition but every now and then I've seen a nice one. Here's a cool one of my friend Dave at Bridal Veil Falls from 93 I think:

One problem with my older pictures are that they're not labeled, and the pics themselves don't have datestamps on the back or index prints like the newer ones. Also, a lot of the negatives were just loose in a folder so I've been putting them in new plastic sleeves after scanning them. It's a fun project and great to see these old pics again. I have been to some really cool places.

So - archiving my pics, taking new ones in medium format with the honorable Yashica and a Holga - yup, that's right, a plastic fantastic toy camera with a plastic lens, light leaks and everything. This thing is tres cool, already one of my pics made it onto flickr's "Explore" page on Nov 21st.

Last but not least, I got my Nikon D50 back and it's working fine now, they fixed it in warranty. The repair paperwork said "RPL Encoder" so I guess that's what was wrong. To tell you the truth though if that camera wouldn't have broken I don't think I would have gone down this manic photography path to begin with. It all started with me being bummed about my camera breaking. I pretty much said to myself, I don't need no fancy electronic doodad to take a good picture. I challenged myself to take a good shot with crappy equipment. That's when I built the Quaker and bought the Holga which led to the honorable Yashica. It's been a steep learning curve and I've still got a lot to learn yet but I'm having loads of fun doing it.

So, while all this is going on, I'm also taking two writing classes. One is fiction writing, and another is fiction reading from a writing perspective. It's cool and I'm probably not giving it all the attention I should be. It's definitely something I think I'd like to pursue in the future. Maybe I'll post some to this space when I write something good.

OK, now I feel better about my non-updated blog! Back to scanning in negatives :-)

Look, Ma, No Lens!

2006-11-02T16:56:00.000-08:00

Having a blast with my pinhole camera. I've run out of the first run of 25 pieces of film, but I just put an order in for 100 more 5x7 pieces of black and white paper film. This is so cool! I love developing my own pictures, it's like magic watching the image slowly appear in front of my eyes while I'm swishing the exposed film around in the tray. I'm getting better with my exposures but I still wasted probably half of the film I've used so far, either over or under exposed. It's cheap though, a box of 100 is $12.99, a good price for the amount of entertainment I'm getting. The images are extremely wide angle and the depth of field is pretty good. No doubt, these are not the same caliber as my Nikon D50 (which is still in the shop, grrrr...) but pretty good for a paper cylinder with a small hole in it. Amazing. I'm going to make some more pinhole cameras, maybe something that uses 35mm or wide format next.

Warm Glass

2006-10-29T16:25:00.000-08:00

Well, I think I've got a new hobby, fused glass, or "warm" glass. This is an art form where you take glass of different colors and melt it just enough to where it all flows together into one piece. I took a class last week and made some stuff and I love it. I've got some tools for cutting glass, now I'm going to get some raw material and make some more stuff. I've got some ideas and I'm going to experiment some more. The materials and the tools aren't cheap though, why do I always seem drawn to the expensive hobbies?

Creativity Binge

2006-10-24T12:59:00.000-07:00

I'm on a real creative bender lately. I'm taking a fiction writing class, a fiction reading class from a writing perspective, just finished a fused glass class, and I'm starting a photography experiment - a pinhole camera made out of an oatmeal box.

Yup, that's right, an oatmeal box with a hole in it, that's a camera. Crazy huh? I decided to do this after my dope ass Nikon D50 crapped out on me, it won't autofocus anymore. So, I sent it in to the shop to get fixed and in the meantime I'm getting along with my second string camera, my old Nikon Coolpix 4300. I got to thinking, I don't need no stinkin' fancy camera to take good pictures. And I'm going to prove it to myself by going old school. I'm making this pinhole camera and I've ordered the fixin's to develop my own film from it, so it will be all DIY.

In addition to this, I've ordered a $20 plastic fantastic medium format camera - a Holga. These are (in)famous cameras - total pieces of crap, the first thing you need to do when you get one is take it apart, seal the light leaks and put a shim in the film holder - this is just to get it to work (sort of). Once you've done this you might or might not get a good picture, I've seen some outstanding shots from them and a lot of what you would call "artsy" pictures.

We'll see what kind of goodness comes out of this binge, keep your eyes peeled to my flickr page!

Ypsilon and Spectacle lakes

2006-10-15T20:28:00.000-07:00

Another brilliant hike in the Mummy mountains today. I liked that trailhead so much last week John and I hit it again this week, this time going up to Spectacle lakes at the base of Mt. Ypsilon. This was great, we had the trail to ourselves most of the day, we only saw a few other people who were going up when we were almost all the way down.

There was a light layer of snow on the trail towards the top which was great for animal tracks. We saw several different ones, some Turkey, some canine of some kind, and a couple of rodent sized tracks. The trail, for lack of a better term, between Ypsilon lake and Spectacle is steep as hell but the view was *so* worth it. My knee felt better than last week also, so hopefully it's on the mend, whatever was wrong with it.

Stats:10 miles and 2,300 feet elevation gain. 54,544 YTD.

Lawn/Crystal Lakes

2006-10-08T07:05:00.000-07:00

I've wanted to hike this trail for years but just never got around to it until now. It goes into the heart of the Mummy mountains, and this is a range of peaks that I need to explore. The trail starts off in Horseshoe Park, a popular destination for the fall elk viewers. Every year when the elk are in rut, thousands of people descend on the park to hear their bugling and watch them fight each other. It's a good show, and we heard them bugling when we got to the parking lot around 8 am or so. The trail follows the destructive path of the Lawn Lake flood that happened in 82, when an earthen damn high in the mountains gave way and sent 220 million gallons of water down the valley, scouring away the path of the Roaring river in a deluge that was 18,000 CFS. This is a dinky little creak that probably never sees more than a few hundred CFS during the peak runoff. The scars of it are still very visible.

The trail switchbacks up the mountainside to Lawn lake. You can see the breach in the dam and the lowered shoreline still. It's very visible and will probably take centuries to get looking like it did before this affront to the scenery.

We had first lunch here and watched the ominous clouds spit small amounts of snow at us before it started clearing up. After that, we hiked the rest of the way to Crystal lake. This is a gorgeous little lake in the base of the cirque at the floor of Mt. Fairchild.

The hike up was pretty quick, but I was kinda tired on the way down and my knee was a little achey, it felt like maybe 4 miles going up but more like ten on the way down. The total mileage was about 13 miles and 3,300 feet elevation gain, this takes me over 50,000 for the year for a total now of 52,244. See all of the pictures on my flickr page.

Abbeyfest X

2006-10-02T06:52:00.000-07:00

A summary and the statistics: 4 states, 1,106 miles of highway, 800 feet elevation and several miles of hiking, 438 pictures, 20 or so friends, massive amounts of tequila and one memorable weekend!

Tammy and I took off Friday morning and drove the fastest route to Bluff, UT - I-70 to UT191, stopping at a few spots for photo opportunities. The scrub oak are peaking in color right now near Glenwood Springs, I've never seen them that colorful. Whole mountainsides are adorned with red, yellow and orange.

We made it into Sand Island around 5 or so, set up our tent and went into town to get some dinner. When we came back the party was rolling. Roger and Gail showed up and margaritas were made and intoxication ensued. Surprise visit in the form of Amy and Brian with their two little tykes, it was great to see them again - the last time I saw them was at Abbeyfest 6 at the Hidden Splendor in the Swell.

I should give a little background here. The Abbeyweb is a web site dedicated to the works of Edward Abbey, a brilliant author and a lover of the desert. We all met on the mailing list for this web site, and once a year we all get together in some spot in the desert that Ed liked so much. It's a mellow group of folks who like to walk around in the desert, take pictures, talk politics, enjoy nature and life in general. A good group, and I'm proud to call them my friends.

Saturday morning came way too early, my head was aching from all that tequila the night before. The folks who were rafting down the San Juan got an early start and were on the water by 8 or 9, while the rest of us who were going hiking got a more leisurely start to the day. The hiking group went to Comb Ridge - the Processional panel, a gorgeous fascinating panel of ancient rock art. I went to the top of the ridge and got some great scenery in, and afterwards we hiked to another spot called the Wolfman panel.

On the way back to camp, Dave saw somebody lying in the dirt on the side of road. We turned around and went back to him, hoping he wasn't dead - which would seem to be a good possibility in the desert heat. Turns out he was just dead drunk. He looked like a Navajo, dressed up in nice clothes and a bolo tie. We went into town and got some help for him and by the time we were back at our campsite a local deputy had picked him up. The person at the Recapture lodge where we called for help said it was Shiprock Fair days and there's a lot of drunk native Americans wandering the highways right now. It's sad.

Saturday night was a much mellower affair, a potluck with some really yummy grub cooked up. We need to make an Abbeyweb cookbook because, damn, that's some tasty camp food I've had over the years. There was a chile verde stew, a green curry, and a pasta dish, and enough desert to make me gain another couple of pounds. There was enough food to feed a group twice as big as ours.

Tammy and I took off pretty early on Sunday, I wanted to take the long way home and get some pictures of Cumbres pass, I hadn't been there in ten years or more. I was not disappointed - the scenery was spectacular. The drive home was long but we got there around 9 or so. I wish I could have spent more time out there but I didn't have the vacation time. Anyone want to hire me to take pictures of desert scenery for what I'm making now at my computer geek job?

The Big South trail

2006-09-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

rumors of the Aspen peak were greatly exaggerated. The Farmer's markets are open until the end of October, so there was really no excuse to stay in town yesterday. I drove up the Poudre canyon again, this time the clouds had lifted and the sun was out and it was a beautiful day to be alive. I hiked up several miles of the Big South trail, taking lots of pictures while I was at it.

Just a perfect fall day. The snow was melting, making this pitter-patter sound with an occasional soft "thump" of a larger chunk of snow falling off the branches. As I walked I had to keep my camera under my fleece jacket to protect it from all the water. The air smelled of wet pine needles and aspen leaves. The pictures turned out well.

Tack another 900 feet on to my probably unobtainable 100,000 foot goal to take me to 48,144 YTD elevation.

Hello, Fall 2006

2006-09-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

Tammy and I went on a drive up the Poudre canyon yesterday to see the aspen in all their glory. It's a little past their peak actually and the light was kinda bad because it was pretty cloudy but we did see nice colors and it was good to get out and welcome in the changing of the seasons. We're going to hit the farmer's market today for the last time and get a bunch of winter squash, the last of the locally grown produce we'll be able to get for sure until next years farmers market opens again.

Goodbye, Summer 2006

2006-09-21T15:12:00.000-07:00

I have mixed feelings typing that in, we're only a couple of days away from the first day of fall. There's a chance of snow tomorrow night and a winter storm watch for the mountains tonight. So, I had to get down to the CSU trial gardens before those blooms got nipped too bad, I hadn't been down there this year yet. I was not disappointed - the show was incredible, the light was pretty good and the place wasn't that crowded. I blew through a few hundred pictures and culled 28 to put on my flickr page.

So, on to aspen turning color, then the tasty Octoberfest beers (which I'm not drinking anyway), the harvest - weird kinds of winter squash, baking things because the kitchen isn't getting hot as hell, interesting weather, new TV shows on, friends getting together... It's all good.

The Big Cheese Onion

2006-09-20T19:55:00.000-07:00

This is a staple of my diet when sweet onions are in season. It's super easy and tastes great. I got it from the recipe book "Healthy Cooking for Two (or just you).

for 1 serving, take 1 sweet onion, slice off the top and bottom so it stands up. Put it in an oven proof dish and pour a splash of dry sherry on top, cover it with aluminum foil and bake at 425 for 45 minutes or until a knife can pierce it easy. Take it out of the oven, uncover it and put a mixture of several tablespoons of bread crumbs (I'm using whole wheat Panko style) and a teaspoon of melted butter on top, then put several tablespoons of cheese (I use Gruyere usually but Cheddar is fine), then put it back in the oven until the cheese melts and it is GBD- Golden Brown and Delicious.

Dreams Inside of Shared Dreams

2006-09-19T04:48:00.000-07:00

I have trouble sleeping lately. Not trouble sleeping per se, I sleep fine, but I wake up at 4:00am on the nose and can't get back to sleep. This morning was one of those mornings. However this time I remembered a string of really vivid dreams I had right before I woke up. So, I'm sharing.

My dream landscape has these certain themes that get revisited, one of them is this gorgeous redrock scenery that has a river flowing through it. It's not a place that I've actually been to, I think its more of a mashup of the southwest and the places I like to go to. My story starts there.

In my dream this morning I am walking through City Park here in Fort Collins, on my way to the Daylight Donut shop (which recently closed after 30 years in bushiness) and I run into an old friend of mine, Kathy, and her daughter. In my dream, I remember another dream I had in this desert scenery where I had met her and her daughter. Kathy punches me on the arm and says "Get outa here! We were just talking about a dream we had where you were in it!" We talk about the details of the dream and although they don't quite match up it's pretty obvious we shared the same dream. We go into the crowded donut shop talking about it and the folks in there are fascinated by our conversation of this shared dream.

unfortunately I don't remember the details of the shared dream other than remembering it was set in this desert scenery. In the dream Kathy said it was Sinaloa, Mexico. I've never been there though, so I have no idea what it looks like. It was cool though, this dream inside of a dream inside of someone else's dream. I wonder if on some level we're all dreaming shared dreams sometimes. It sure was nice to have a dream donut also, I haven't had a donut in almost a year. It was this heavily frosted greasy little fat pill that's making my stomach growl just thinking about it. I must make breakfast now!

Caprese "Sammich"

2006-09-14T15:12:00.000-07:00

I harvested my basil today, most of it anyway. I grew several different kinds but the one that did the best was called "compacta" it made small leaves but tons of them.

the most interesting and good looking one was a frilly purple variety.

This is the type I used to make Caprese Sammiches. This is a super easy, super yummy appetizer type dish. Simply cut slices of fresh from the garden tomatoes, put on top of them some fresh mozzarella- this is that mozz that's squishy and new, packaged in little tubs full of liquid. Sprinkle with basil, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. Let it sit covered in your fridge for an hour or so to let the flavors mingle.

New Orleans

2006-09-04T06:30:00.000-07:00

I'm here in Marrero, a suburb of the Big Easy. It's not for vacation but for a death in the family. Tammy's step dad Jesse passed away after going in for what they thought would be a routine surgery, a procedure to fuse some vertebra in his neck. The surgery went fine, but 24 hours later his breathing slowed and his heart stopped. They brought him back, but he was under long enough to suffer brain damage and he never woke up.

We went to the mortuary yesterday with Charlene (Tammy's mom). It was quite a shock. I had no idea death costs so much. He's going to be cremated, no service at the funeral house - the least expensive option - and that will cost $2,000. They had to embalm him before the cremation which doesn't make much sense to me. He didn't have life insurance or a burial policy, none of his affairs were really in order, it's a mess.

So, with this example of what not to do I'm going to get a will set up, a living will also in case I go into a coma. You never know. I'll probably live another 50 years but shit happens.

One of Tammy's relatives took us on a tour of the destruction of the city yesterday. It was slightly goulish, I really didn't want to see what I'd already seen in pictures but I'm glad I went anyway. Pictures do not convey what I saw. So sad, entire neighborhoods abandoned and gutted, with some of the ubiquitous FEMA trailers in front of the occasional house where someone is trying to rebuild. This is what a community looks like when it is dead and rotting, this is what the end of civilization must look like.

Red Lentils and Rice

2006-08-31T19:32:00.000-07:00

I love this recipe, and I made it tonight. I got this recipe from the cookbook "The Versatile Grain and the Elegant Bean". This is the shit Esau sold his birthright for. In Armenia it's referred to as Vartabed Abour or "Priest's Soup", because the priests there like that parable so much. I figured hey what the heck, I'll document my most recent attempt and share it with the world. You must follow this recipe exactly for an excellent soup.

Start off with the mis en place ready - this is for a half batch, enough for one or two people:

3 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup peeled split small red lentils, picked over and washed
1/8 cup long grain rice, either white or brown
1 medium onion, thinly sliced and separated into rings
1 tbs finely minced parsley
salt to taste
1/8 tsp cayenne
1/8 tsp paprika, plus additional for color
1 tbs olive oil
1 tbs butter

heat 2 cups of chicken stock to the boiling point. Add lentils and rice. On the way, spill half of lentils on stove, yourself and mostly on the floor.

Pour remaining lentils from fancy shmancy mis-en-place container back into measuring cup and re-measure out 1/2 cup and pour into saucepan. Return to boil and simmer for ten minutes more. Add two thirds of the onion and cook for twenty minutes more. Add the remaining chicken stock, parceley, salt, 1/4 of a ripe jalapeno because you forgot you're out of cayenne, paprika and cook for ten minutes more.

While that other stuff is cooking, heat the oil and butter in a cast iron pan add the remaining onion. Saute over medium heat until the onion is brown and crisp. While this is cooking, turn on fan to get rid of smoke caused by lentils that are now on fire under the burner. Drain onion on paper towel.

While ingredients are cooking, take the seeds out of the rest of the jalepeno and put peanut butter inside for a tasty h'ordeuvre. Weep silently as brutally hot capsaicin rips your insides out like that creature from Alien. Have the neighbor stop by and shake his head watching you cry and take pictures of your soup.

Serve soup in large bowls sprinkled with the brown onions and a few grains of extra paprika for color.

The "Me" project is complete

2006-08-31T15:17:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a trip down memory lane. It was cool to scan these old pics in and clean them up a bit in photoshop and put them out there. It's a 92 picture set:

http://flickr.com/photos/timloco/sets/72157594262344595/

Blast from the past.

The "Me" project

2006-08-30T20:01:00.001-07:00

Started on a new project today, what I am affectionately calling the "Me" project. My mom was quite the protraitist and I've got these great old pictures of me and my brother and sister that I have scanned in, now I'm just sorting out what's going online and getting them uploaded. For now here's a taste, heh heh, my first cake:

Geotagging!

2006-08-29T10:51:00.000-07:00

Flickr just added a way cool feature, the ability to pin your pictures to a place on a map. I've got most of this year's pics tagged already, just look in the "additional information" part of the picture page and it will say "taken near xxxx" click on "map" to see where the pic was taken.

Ypsilon's back side

2006-08-26T17:34:00.000-07:00

rmnp118
Originally uploaded by timloco.

I was going to hike up this mountain today but the weather sucked and as you can see there's a lot of brand spankin' new snow on top of it. So instead I drove around and took pictures.

Bananna

2006-08-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

Bananna
Originally uploaded by timloco.

I'm going to pickle them in sliced rounds for sammiches and stuff.

Black Krim

2006-08-23T19:42:00.000-07:00

Black Krim
Originally uploaded by timloco.

It's excruciating waiting for this one to ripen, it's supposed to be a deep purple almost black color, an eastern european heirloom

Flattop, Hallet and Otis

2006-08-19T18:14:00.000-07:00

Another 4:00 am wake up call this morning but there was no pressure to meet anyone else so I hit the snooze button several times. I didn't get to sleep till 11:30, but this is hiking, it's a good reason to drag my ass out of bed at that ungodly hour. I made ambitious plans to hike several mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park and needed to get an early start. A cold front had moved through and increased the chances of thunderstorms, so it was important to get down off the mountain early.

On the way into the park I stopped and took a picture of a coyote on the side of the road, it looked like it was yacking up something. Cute. I drove up Trail Ridge road a bit just to get some pictures of the gorgeous clouds that were clinging to the mountains before getting to the trailhead. I started hiking at Bear lake at 7am. On the way up Flattop mountain I passed 8 people, I must be recovered from that month off of hiking. I hiked in and out of the clouds, watching the local wildlife: Pika, Ptarmigan and a snowshoe hare. On the way up Hallet peak I noticed someone was following me up the mountain.

I took some really dramatic pictures on top of Hallet and waited for the other hiker to show up. I took his picture with his camera and learned that this was the first mountain he'd ever been up on. He was a total tourist from Maryland, wearing jeans, carrying stuff in his pack that he didn't need. I made a split decision and invited him on the rest of my hike: Otis peak, then down Andrews glacier. I figured if he made it up this far he should be good to go, might as well show this Maryland farmer what the Colorado mountains are all about.

Otis peak was totally socked in, the view was a bust. We walked down to the top of Andrews glacier and the view wasn't much better, but it was interesting, the last time I did this it was sunny and bright, so it was totally different. We made it down the glacier with no difficulties and down the trail past Loch Vale and ended up at the Glacier Gorge trailhead. We only had to wait about ten minutes for the next shuttle bus to run by and give us a ride to ours cars at Bear lake.

Total elevation for this hike was 3,878 feet according to my topo software. That makes 47,244 for the year so far. Getting there...

Mount Lady Washington

2006-08-13T15:17:00.000-07:00

4:00 am: Hit the snooze button but can't go back to sleep, end up getting up before it goes off again. 4:30 am: Make coffee, oatmeal. Call Steves home number and leave a message telling him to get his ass outa bed. 4:40: Call Steve again. No answer. 4:50: Call Steve's cell. No answer. 5:00 am: Ring Steve's front door. No answer.

Well I guess I'm doing this hike alone. That's OK, I like to hike by myself - nobody that's waiting for you, you don't wait for anyone, go at your own pace, it's good. I get to the Longs Peak trailhead around 6:00 or so, the parking lot is already full and people are parking on the road that goes up to it. It's a popular place but most of these people are on the way to Longs Peak itself. I'm going to the big pile of granite in front of it, mount Lady Washington. This one is 13,200-some feet, a respectable altitude with a 3,806 foot elevation gain.

On the way up as soon as the radio reception went out I was listening to Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here CD, so songs from that were going through my head as I wandered up the trail. I made really good time even up to a little past the point where you go off the trail and start heading up the mountain but at around 12,800 or so the altitude really started dragging me down, that month off of hiking kinda took its toll. No big deal though, I just took it slow and ended up on top of the mountain none the worse for wear. When I was staring at the Diamond, the cliff face that is the east side of Longs, Shine on You Crazy Diamond was going through my head. But I re-arranged the lyrics to say "climb on you crazy diamond". I crack me up. I had the top of the mountain to myself as I ate first lunch and took a variety of pictures.

I descended on the east slope of the mountain, it was steep and just big boulders so it was a little slow going but I made it down to the trail without incident. On the way down I noticed a lot of orb web spiders in between the boulders. I was trying to get a picture of a web and I noticed a big fat slow fly that looked kinda like a wasp but really wasn't. I grabbed it and tossed it into the spider web and it went right through it, but the fly actually came right back to me! So I grabbed it again and this time it stuck in the web. The damn thing was almost as big as the spider itself but that thing went to town on it, biting it and wrapping it up for later. Gruesome but totally cool.

There were a lot of people going up when I was going down, not really sure they were going to make it to where they wanted because the afternoon storms were already starting to roll in. I was glad to be off the mountain. This is one of those bad boys where if you're above treeline after 2 or 3, you're in trouble.

On the way home the soundtrack was Pink Floyd's Animals followed by the Thievory Corporation laying down some phat bass riffs and crazy slightly pyschedic sitar music. Tammy's little bug doesn't have a subwoofer which is a real bummer with that CD.

Check out my flickr page for a set of pictures I selected.

Elevation total for the year is now 43,846 feet. I need to get hiking!

Momentous Events

2006-08-09T05:42:00.000-07:00

Well a little bit anyway. Ate the first tomato from my bucket garden , it was good. AND I went on the first hike I've been on in more than a month. Just went up the Timber trail at Lory state park to the Well Gulch trail and back to the trailhead, about a 4 mile loop and 900 feet elevation gain, which finally puts me over the 40,000 mark for elevation for the year. I took that month off going to Yellowstone and floating down the Green river and it set me back for my elevation goal but I'm back baby, and expect much mountain scenery to be added to my flickr page.

Elevation YTD is 40,040 feet.

Mmm, mmm good

The mountain mohagany seeds are coming in nicely

So are the chokecherries. Them's good eatin'

The wild plums are a little early yet.

The Margaritas have Returned to Normal Size

2006-08-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

On Mondays at our favorite Mexican restaurant they have a mariachi band. It's great fun to listen to a full band with horns and violins and the big bass guitars. This place also has the BEST margaritas in northern Colorado, it's what I have based my standard recipe on. The last time I was there was the Monday after my week long raft trip. I was damn thirsty and those margaritas seemed smaller than they usually did. Most times just two of them is enough to make me a little nervous about my ability to drive, but that time I downed three of them and felt like I didn't have any at all. Looking back on it I think my alcohol tolerance had been bumped up on that river trip. It's shocking the amount of it that's consumed on an average float.
So last night we went there again to listen to the mariachi guys and enjoy some tasty beverages. Lo and behold, the margaritas were back to their normal size. After two of them I had a little buzz on. I guess that means my re-entry to civilization is now complete. It took two weeks.

Here is my standard margarita recipe, the OTM (the One True Margarita)

2 parts mid grade 100% blue agave tequila (my standard is Sauza Hornitos)
1 part Cointreau or Citronge (Citronge is cheaper and tastes just as good IMO)
1 part fresh squeezed lime

mix them together, then pour over lots of ice in a glass with a salted rim. The ice and salt are very important, it's just not the same without them. It's got to be ice cold because it's martini-strong and the salt is a nice balance to the tartness of the lime.

Some people don't like the strength and go with a 1-1-1 mix instead, and some people don't like how sour it is (it's hard to find good limes in Colorado). So what you can do there is add a splash of 7-up to sweeten it, or instead of lime use a half lime half lemon mix.

I've introduced this recipe to good people who are now degenerate drunks with rotting livers because of it. Enjoy!

Putting up the Harvest

2006-08-06T20:59:00.000-07:00

One of the things I've been trying to do is eat more locally grown foods. Towards that end the last couple of years I've been going to the farmers markets and buying foods in bulk and preserving them myself. I was on call this weekend so I couldn't go hiking up in the mountains. It turned out to be a good excuse to stock up the pantry.

On Saturday there's a dinky little farmers market in a parking lot a couple of miles from my house. There usually isn't a very good selection and I was really looking for peaches but ran across some excellent little cucumbers, perfect for pickles. I was out of dills so it turned out well. I put up 4 pints of sweet garlic dills and 8 pints of garlic dills. I also had enough left to try out something I've been wanting to try, traditional lacto fermented pickles. This is what they used to do back in the day, let the cukes ferment in a brine with a bacteria that makes lactic acid, thus lowering the PH to a point where nothing can grow in it. Nowadays it's just easier to put in some vinegar and call it good. We'll see how it turns out.

On Sunday it was time to hit the big farmers market on the east side of town. This one's got everything, including three different peach vendors. I scored some sweet sweet organic west slope peaches, just in perfect condition. They were pretty pricey but the only organic ones there and they were just perfect looking. I got a half bushel or so, it made 8 quarts canned. Not enough to last till next year. I also need to perfect my peach handling technique, I still haven't gotten them to where I've seen pictures of just perfect peaches floating in peachy goodness. Mine are kinda ragged and they're not packed in the jar tight, they're floating in light syrup. Oh well, they do taste good. Maybe one day I'll put up some county fair prize winning specimens.

I Need to Write More

2006-08-06T15:22:00.000-07:00

Originally I put this blog up mainly to keep track of the hikes and stuff I'd been on, a place for trip reports. But... There's so much else going on in my life and if I want to write more I need to, well... write. So look for more stuff on this site other than just trip reports. Some of it might be interesting, some might not be. But it's my stuff. Welcome to my world!

Desolation/Grey Canyon, Utah

2006-07-24T13:15:00.000-07:00

Mile 88 - A nice camp with a wide sandbar that willows and tamarisk are starting to overgrow, but for now it's a delightfull spot other than the mosquitoes which are alarmingly thick. They chased everyone into their tents pretty early, but people were pretty wiped out from rowing in that hot hot weather. It got over a hundred, and not much wind so it was really humid right next to the water. We didn't launch until the crack of 11 or so, so not much mileage made today.

This is a great group of folks . We're going to row an easy 10 or so miles today and score the first campsite at Stampede Flat. It's a nice spot, hopefully we get it but if not there's several in that area. The river is running about 3500 cubic feet per second, a nice muddy brown color and warm, but cool and refreshing compared to the air temperature. It's cloudy today and slightly cooler than yesterday at Sand Wash, but the mosquitoes are much worse. Only my hands, face and feet are exposed and they've been chewed on pretty good.

Mile 78.5, Opposite Stampede Flat - Nice campsite. John ran his first rapid today, Little Rock House Riffle, which was actually bigger than Little Rock House Rapid. There's a nice beach here, with Tammies and Box Elder trees for shade. So far the bugs aren't quite as bad as yesterday but they're still pretty annoying. We're still in the wider open parts of the canyon, tomorrow it narrows up a bit.

Mile 66.5, Cedar Ridge - We're at the third of 4 campsites downriver from Firewater rapid, another nice beach.It rained overnight, enough to wake me up and make me put the rainfly on. The mosquitoes are a little better but I left my screen open a little and several made their way into my tent overnight. When I squished them in the morning they were all bloated with my blood. Damn beasts. It looks like fair weather clouds, some remnant patchiness from last night's storm. I don't think we'll be able to get in a layover day, just not making a lot of miles with these slothful late morning starts and mellow days. It's all good.

Mile 57.5, Steer Ridge - We had some rain today, not much, enough to cool things down a bit. I was swimming in front of camp and a dragonfly landed on my nose right before it started. I was at eye level with the water and it was cool, the drops hit and little columns of water came up on the splashback, looking like a forest of little clear mushrooms all around me. I waited out most of the rain then went back to my tent to put on clean and dry clothes. Then it was time for cocktails and dinner. The bugs are finally better, mosquitoes gone but the deerflies are out and looking for vengeance on the ones I killed a couple of years ago when I was last here. The rapids have been pretty easy so far, easier than when I did it last at half the flow.

Mile 50, Three Canyon - Most of the rest of the group is taking a short hike. I am lounging around in indolent decadence, a cold beer in hand and writing this. Life is damn good.

Mile 46 - Trail Canyon - Another brilliant camp. It rained again a little bit, long enough to interrupt the croquet game and kick up the humidity. The sunset was gorgeous afterwards. Later on that night we sat on the beach and watched dramatic lightning to the north and east.

Mile 31, Range Creek - Once again we score a sweet campsite. Long miles today but we had downcanyon winds most of the time and hardly had to row, which is so good because it was freaking hot today, I think the hottest so far. It's my turn to cook, I made taco salad and a peach cobbler which was good. We played leapfrog with a small trip today that flew the Colorado and American flags on their two boats, later they passed us by and a very attractive woman threw cold beers to us. Life is good on the river. Us Coloradicals look out for one another.

Mile 22, Rattlensake - Where did the time go? Got into camp around 2:30, served up lunch, then swam around in the eddy in front of camp for an hour or so, until I was good and pruned. I still have ice in my cooler but only 4 beers, 3 for today and a launch beer tomorrow. Several people are drinking river temperature (81 degrees) Pabst Blue Ribbon. Nasty.

This has been a great trip, everyone got along, nothing bad happened, the vehicles made it to the takeout OK, and we all got home safe. What more can you ask for? OK, maybe a little more flow and cooler temperatures. I think next year I'll try to get an earlier season permit.

Yellowstone!

2006-07-02T10:12:00.000-07:00

"Is there any place to camp where there aren't any bears?" The woman had pulled up to the campground host's site and rolled down her window to ask this. We said we haven't seen any. I'm at the Brooks Lake campground, lucky campsite #13. There are views of some spectacular hills to the north and east, the adjective doesn't really do them justice and to call them hills is downright insulting I'm sure. They are the Pinnacle Peaks, raw and eroded, sheer cliffs of banded rock with crenelations like some ancient castle ruin. They are left over from powerfull volcanic eruptions a half a million years ago.

The mosquitos are thick, they've already chased Tammy into the tent but haven't really been bothering me too much, the chemicals I've slathered on seem to be doing the trick. Bad weather has been threatening ever since we got here, thunder and spits of rain but dinner is cooked, eaten and cleaned up. The campsite is pretty immaculate and that's a good thing, this is bear country and not wimpy black bears but GRIZZ country. While I would love to see one I wouldn't want to see one raiding my campsite in the middle of the night. The vegetation around camp is typical 9,000 feet elevation montaine forest - limber pine, doug fir. There's a snag south of the camp with holes all over it, a woodpecker condo. I saw a white breasted nuthatch go into one of them. A Clark's Nutcracker just landed in a branch on a tree next to me and inspected the meager offerings of the clean camp before flying off to easier pickins'. I'm drinking wine out of a box in a plastic cup. The thunder is really picking up to the northeast of us and I'm concerned the cheapie tent we're using might not be up to the task if it rains too hard but we'll cross that soggy bridge when we get to it.

It's Monday evening. It ended up raining last night, a good long soaking shower with lentil sized hail and lightning less than a mile away. Tammy asked me what kind of danger we were in and I answered truthfully, I have heard of people dying in their tents from lightning. She was sorry she asked. It all ended well and the Kelty Yellowstone 4 tent performed admirably, we were dry and comfy. Tonight's camp is a totally different thing, we are in Grants Village, in campsite J-332. There are 450 campsites here. It's pretty crazy, I've never been to a campground this big before. We didn't cook dinner, this little village has a restaurant, and about any amenity a village can offer like groceries, a post office, auto repair, and live entertainment in an amphitheater which we will blow off in lieu of getting liquored up in our campsite. The guy who sold me the site (for the princely sum of $18.00) said that a adult male Grizz had wandered through the campground the night before, so keep a clean camp.

Today we took tons of pictures of the Tetons, then toodled up north to the West Thumb geyser basin to take more pics before getting a campsite. The trees - I remember more of them from when I was here in 84 before the fires. Now most of the tall trees I've seen are burnt matchsticks, and the rest are small, hardly more than 20 feet tall. But, it has opened up the views, you can see farther off the road and that's good for the wildlife. The wildflowers are loving it also, at least where the young trees haven't crowded them out. Lewis falls and the geysers were cool but what really sticks in my mind today are the Tetons. There are amazing mountains.

"Life is short, so make it count." We're watching a show on TV in the Travelor's Lodge in West Yellowstone on the History channel, we surfed onto to it totally by accident. It's "Mega Disasters" a show about the Yellowstone Caldera and how it blew its shit up 600,000 years ago. While the geo geek was describing pyroclastic flows Tammy asked me, "How do you protect yourself from that?" I said you don't, you die, shit happens, I hope it doesn't happen when we are here. She said she would rather die in the explosion than try to live through the starvation of the aftermath. I agree but if I was far enough away to live I would do my best to survive. The TV show said it killed camels 1,000 miles away from the dust but I could walk that far.

Today we started off at the mega campground cooked coffee and tea, had cold cereal before breaking camp and sending out postcards. We went to the Old Faithfull area, the Biscuit geyser area, Upper and Lower geyser basin, the Paintpots, the Firehole river, etc etc. It's good to have a lot of time and be able to take any pullout you want and take as many pics as you want. Tammy's knee gave out about two thirds of the way through and she would wait in the
car and read while I would mingle with the Asian language speakers, Europeans and the minority of Americans. My observations on the fitness of the different nationalities : the Americans are fat as shit. The younger Asians are almost as fat, but the older Asians and Europeans are fit and thin. The scenery today was good and all, but really what intrigues me is what's under it all. I imagine what's going on under my feet, far down to the magma chamber. Also what intrigues me is the shared experience, what everyone sees and smells and hears through their own senses, this collective experience, this enrichment of us all - the reason we are here.

Wednesday - lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Well at least bears anyway. Wildlife galore today. At one point on the Chittenden road to Dunraven pass we saw five wolves and one Grizzley all from the same spot at the same time. We also saw today a black bear, a coyote, elk, deer, moose, a marmot, tons of birds, etc etc etc etc. To see the wolves and Grizz made it though. We're camped tonight at the Indian Creek campground. It's smaller, not more than 70 sites or so and its alot quieter. Today we had breakfast in West Yellowstone then worked our way north to the Norris geyser basin. Tammy's knee was in pretty bad shape today so she stayed in the car most of the time while I walked around and took tons of pictures. I pretty much stopped at every pullout between West Yellowstone and Mammoth springs. The Norris geysers were very cool, very lively, more so than the Old Faithfull area. It is very active with a bunch of geysers packed closer together. One of them is Steamboat, the world's tallest at 300+ feet but it only goes off once a year or so. We scored the campsite after Norris then went north to the Mammoth springs area. I remember more water the last time I was here, Minerva Terrace was dry and didn't have the cool bacteria to give it color, it was all monochromatic shades of grey and white. After Mammoth we headed east and had dinner at the Roosevelt Lodge rather than cook at camp late at night. On the way back to camp we stopped on the Chittenden road and saw the charismatic megafauna. Seeing those creatures was like a drug, a hit of mainline nature with the wolves and chased down with a shot of Grizz. We took a picture of some Buffalo on the way back to camp that I think will turn out well.

Thursday - he's a lumberjack and that's ok. Night number 2 at Indian Creek. Felt like a layover day so we paid for another night. The guy at the camp next to us has a mullet and a muscle shirt and earlier I heard him yell at the boy he was with "Why the fuck do you yell so much?" He's chopping wood right now to feed the rather large fire he has going. He's loud and obnoxious. Maybe it was a bad idea to pay for another night.

We took it easy today and went down to the Madison river to do some fishing, we each caught a fish before we went into West Yellowstone to get some groceries and have lunch. I tried to teach Tammy how to use my fly rod and she did pretty good, didn't impale herself on the fly which is good even thought it was de-barbed. After lunch we hit the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Tammy's knee was feeling better and she limped along to some of the views. It was pretty cloudy so I didn't get the happy light for good pictures but the subjects made up for it. The view did not suck.

After the views we went back to the Chittendam road again to see what we could see. We weren't disappointed, we saw 2 black bears before it started raining. After that it was kinda late so we had dinner at the mercy of the Xantrex corporation again, at the Canyon village. It was kindof a mickey mouse operation compared to the Roosevelt lodge, the prime rib was only available in "well done". I had the spinach ravioli and Tammy had trout in a pine nut crust. We're really roughing it here in the wilderness.

We had really quiet neighbors last night so I guess we get the loud ones tonight, keeping things in balance. So what if the neighbs are obnoxious, we are still where the cool shit is and tomorrow we break camp and try for a spot in the northeast part of the park, but it's iffy with the long weekend coming up, it might be crowded.

Today was an easy day We broke camp early after the obnoxious neighbor came over and talked to us. He turned out to be a nice guy. He's a contractor by trade, but he used to work for Waste Management. They're heading to Cody tomorrow. We headed up the Chittenden road once again. This time we saw two Grizzley bears and two wolves, a black and a grey. After that we went through the Lamar valley to this campground. We scored the site bright and early before the hordes showed up then went out again to see the sights. The Lamar valley is gorgeous, a serengetti like plain of bison and wide open views. It's too bad that's really all that's left in the lower 48 of habitat like this. Wildlife inventory today, 2 Grizz, 2 wolves, 1 coyote, 1 osprey, shitloads of buffalo and assorted birds. The weather was partly sunny with puffy little clouds casting shadows over the scenery. Tower falls was excellent. I kept saying things at the viewpoints like "Too bad about this crappy scenery" or, " They should clear cut these trees and put in a strip mine here". That statement went over well at Artist's point yesterday.

Friday night, our last night in the park. A slight melancholy feeling as I write those words. We are at the Pebble Creek campground near the Lamar valley. Our next door neighbor has invited us over to share his fire. He's a nice guy, a retired auditor for Ford. He's spending ten days at this site then maybe going to the Glacier area for the next month. I want to retire!

There's a deer in our camp right now, ten feet away from us. She looks kinda skinny, I can see her ribs. It must have been a tough winter.

On Saturday morning we woke up early, before sunrise to the sound of thunder. It rained a little then stopped and a rainbow appeared while I was getting breakfast ready. I was totally embarrassed when I accidently set off the damn car alarm at 6:45 am. It beeped three times before I fumbled with the remote and turned it off. Luckily everyone was still in their tents and I don't think they knew it was me who did it but I could feel the pyschic vibrations of grumpy campers.

After that early start we saw everything we planned on seeing that day. We originally wanted to motel it somewhere outside the park that night but we got out early enough that we just headed straight home and got there about ten o'clock Saturday night. I took about 1,100 pictures and put 80 of them on my flickr page.

Weekend Adventures

2006-06-18T15:24:00.000-07:00

I was quite the weekend warrior the last couple of days, driving up over Cameron Pass and going fishing with Tammy, and hiking up a 13er on Sunday. I feel like I'm maniacally stuffing as much fun as possible into my days lately, not that there's anything wrong with that of course because I'm having a great time.

The lazy Saturday fishing expedition was a bust for fish but we saw some killer scenery. The Lake Agnes trail starts in the shadow of the Nokhu Crags, one of my favorite local landmarks. The trail itself is .8 miles and 480 feet up. Tammy's knee held up great, I had to help her in the steep parts and our choice of footwear (sandals) was not quite appropriate for the snow we ran into, but we got there and managed to cast a few times into the raging, howling gusts of wind that blew our casts all over the place. We took a few pics and headed back to the car and took a few more, here's my favorite:

The Sunday church service was held at Mt. Audobon. Pastor Tim preached to his furry alpine friends the Pika and Marmot, with a special guest appearance of a cute Ptarmigan couple. This mountain is 13,200 feet, with a nice gentle trail up that's 4 miles long and 2,700 feet elevation gain. The views were incredible, and the wildflowers were dazzling in their exuberant display. Mama nature does her thing very well here. Closer to the trailhead I heard some sirens and soon heard a helicopter, it was the Flight For Life guys doing their thing unfortunately. I talked to one of the rangers and it turns out someone had a heart attack. Thinking about my abdominal fat and low HDL levels I quietly thanked Ma Nature for not doing that to me also.

Pics of Mt Audobon are on my flickr page.

Total elevation gain for the year is now 39,140 feet.

Twin Sisters mountain

2006-06-11T15:19:00.000-07:00

A gorgeous mountain south of Estes park, this one is right east of Longs peak and gives great views of the eastern face of that mountain, called The Diamond. Oooh, ahh :-) It's 7 miles round trip and 2, 647 feet elevation gain. Wildflowers were out in force, including a beautfull specimen of Alpine Columbine. Check the pics on my flikr page

35,960 feet elevation YTD.

Lookout Mountain

2006-06-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

I hiked 13 miles on Sunday. It kicked my ass.

The hike was Lookout mountain from the Dunraven trailhead. The first part goes up and over the Bulwark ridge, gaining about 700 feet then dropping 950 feet before gaining another couple thousand or so. My topo software says 4200 feet total. I saw a parasitic orchid, great views, and ancient bristlecone pines. It's getting pretty dry up there though, I hope the monsoon moisture comes through this year or there will be some fire issues.

Oh well, the cycle of nature turns without our involvement or ability to change anything. I think even all the carbon we are putting in the air is a natural consequence, the climate change we are initiating is something that we could not control and even now really can't do much about. We just have to adapt. It's too bad so many species can't adapt and will go extinct. It will be interesting to hike this trail again after it burns to get some before/after pictures. I hope the bristlecone pines on top of the mountain survive. I think they will, they've been there for a thousand years already and I'm sure they've seen a fire or three.

Next weekend I will hike up Twin Sisters. My elevation total for the year is now 33,313 feet.

My Weekend Utah Adventure

2006-05-30T06:01:00.000-07:00

My friend Paul told me a couple of months ago that a 6 hour drive to Utah wasn't worth it for just a 3 day weekend. He almost had me convinced, when my buddy Steve said he needed to go hit the desert I almost didn't want to go. What the heck I was thinking, I'm not sure. But I finally came to my senses and got a permit for a side canyon on Grand Gulch in Cedar Mesa for the Memorial Day holiday. We left Friday afternoon after a half day of work and packed in a ton of fun in a few days and now here I am Tuesday morning trying to remember all the details.

The drive out was uneventfull, except for all the cops that were out. They were thick, it seemed like every ten miles there was another one with somebody pulled over. In spots they were gathered two or three, like a pack ready to hunt. The signs on the side of the road mentioned the "high visibility" enforcement. Steve drove the speed limit most of the way.

We car camped Friday evening at one of my favorite isolated areas, Harts Mesa. The views of the Abajo mountains to the south were excellent, the weather was a litttle breezy but comfortable. Steve talked me into drinking a cold beer, something I've been abstaining from while trying to lose some weight. My first beer since October, it was good.

Saturday morning we hit the trailhead to Bullet canyon on Cedar Mesa. The plan was to go down Bullet, camp out a couple of nights down in there and explore, then come out Shiek's canyon. The hike in was a few miles, nothing to hard but it was pretty hot, probably in the low 90's. The canyon cuts down through a thick layer of sandstone to make some nice smooth walls that tower over the ground. There's still plenty of water in the canyon, slowly drying tadpole filled muddy puddles and one scummy spring. At one point we hiked through the "Rose Garden", about 50 feet of thick wild rose bushes that were in bloom, perfuming the air with an exquisite scent, almost as good as the cliff rose that was at the head of the canyon.

We made it down to the main attractions of the canyon in a few hours. The first is Perfect Kiva, a nice little set of ruins in an overhang with a kiva that is in great shape. I talked to a couple of other hikers and they said the BLM had actually reconstructed it and that's why it looked so good. Oh well, so much for authenticity. But there were some nice handprints on the wall and some other rock art. It didn't suck, I'll put it that way. The next ruin down the canyon a bit is Jailhouse ruin. This one has some interesting pictographs above it, a shield or something like that. The ruin has some sticks across one of the windows that looks a bit like bars on a cell, I think that's why it got its name. A nice ruin, we had it to ourselves and I took a lot of pictures.

We hung out for awhile in the shade before heading down to look for campsite. Jailhouse spring had plenty of water in it, covered with bugs and slime and decaying vegetation under the water. After filtering it I drank some and declared it good. It was slightly hard but relativly sweet when you compare it to other desert sources of water and it was almost completely clear. The dinner tonight was going to be my legendary backcountry pizza. That's right, pizza.

I have this contraption called an "Outback Oven". It lets you do some low level baking over a campstove. Steve volunteered to bring this 2 pounds of gear up if I cooked it, so I had to oblige. I made the dough and put it in my warm pack to rise as I walked around camp taking pictures of wildflowers. When I came back I started assembling the pizza, the dough, then some Boboli sauce in its convienient little packet, some string cheese, and finally some slices of natural cured italian sausage. It looked good in its raw state and my stomach was grumbling.

I got the stove ready but noticed it was really hard to pump up the fuel bottle. It seemed like no matter how hard I pushed on it, it resisted and didn't put any air in the fuel bottle. I figured it must have been pressurized already and tried to start it up. The best I could get was a weak intermittant sooty flame, hardly good enough to make a pizza on. I messed with it for awhile, getting frustrated and then Steve tried to help. I had just tested this new fuel pump last week in my backyard and it worked fine then. We took apart the pump, trying to figure out where the fault was. The best we could tell is it was the check valve that lets air into the fuel bottle, it wasn't moving. We tried and tried different things for probably an hour before Steve managed to mess with it enough to allow a little bit of air through it. We could pump it up a bunch and it would get just slightly presurized. Looking at the flame, I knew it wasn't enough to cook that pizza for the 45 minutes it needed but it was probably enough to boil some water. So, we cooked up Sunday night's pasta dinner instead. The water hardly got hot enough to make bubbles on the bottom but they were Japanese soba noodles that cook fast. After about another hour of cooking, we finally had some passable noodles to mix with the spicey peanut sauce. Perseverence, patience and a bit of luck got us a hot meal that night but our trip was cut short in the process.

After dinner, sipping tequila we figured we could probably stretch out our food and eat a little less and still do the loop, but I had a brilliant flash of wisdom and suggested hiking out the next morning and going to my favorite hot springs in southwestern Colorado instead. You know, when life gives you lemons you make lemonade. Steve thought it was a good idea.

The next morning it was almost chilly. It was a fast hike out with the cooler weather and we were at the cars by 11:30. Steve had never been to Muley Point and neither had my new camera so I made him take right turn and we went. We pulled up behind a Explorer with California plates, a couple of women had just arrived also. I took off with my camera and started taking pictures immediatly like some paparazzi of the redrock. Later I was talking to one of the women, her name was Kathy, her friend was Jay and they were from San Diego. When I mentioned where we were from she said "Oh yeah, the company I work for has a big office there in Fort Collins". It turns out she worked for the same company I did. The four of us ended up talking for nearly three hours there, admiring the scenery, telling our stories, laughing and just having a great conversation. It was one of the high points of the trip, connecting like that with some total strangers that were really cool. We reluctantly parted, they were going back to Mexican Hat and we were on our way to Orvis Hot Springs.

We drove out via the LaSal road through Paradox valley and on the other side of the Dallas Divide I called my buddy Roger up and he met us at the hot springs. The water felt great, nice and hot. It was pretty crowded in that pool though, we must not have been the only ones with a broken camp stove. After a nice long soak we went to a local resteraunt, the True Grit, and had steaks. Completly satisfied, we went up on the mesa where Roger lives and had margaritas. We ended up sleeping that night in his house that he and his wife are building. It's just rough frame and some pressboard now, but it was out of the wind and comfortable, smelling of pine sawdust, much better than the tiny cabin with 4 cats. We slept in their new house before they did.

The drive home was filled with excitement as we saw even more cops than we did on the way out but other than that it was good. We made great time and were home by 5 or so. I was tired, so much fun packed into such a short timeframe but it was so worth the 6 hour drive. There are people on the east coast that would probably kill to be able to drive just 6 hours and be there in the redrock eye candy.

The elevation gain on the way out of the canyon was maybe 900 feet, so my total for the year is now 29,113 YTD. Pictures from this trip are on my flickr page.

West Whitepine mountain

2006-05-21T18:41:00.000-07:00

I hiked up this little gem today. I got a late start, didn't hit the trailhead till the crack of 11:30, but its only a few miles to the top, and a steep trail it is. It follows a 4WD road that is gated off in the spring because it can get a bit muddy. It wasn't muddy at all though, it was bone dry in fact. The view on top is ok, but there's too many trees to get a nice panorama. Also, whoever named this doesn't know their trees. All I saw were Limber pine, Aspen and Douglass Fir. The trail is 1,986 feet. Total this year is now 28,213. Picture son my flickr page.

getting higher

2006-05-14T06:16:00.000-07:00

It was time to kick it up a notch yesterday and get plenty high - 11,200 feet. Signal mountain is right next to the Mummy range, north of Estes Park and west of Loveland. The Bulwark Ridge is it's eastern flank, and that is the route we walked up. The trail is pretty steep, pretty much an unrelenting uphill slog through pine trees so you really don't get that great of a view going up except for a couple of spots. But, once you bust out of the trees, whooo boy what a view. The trail is 6 miles to the top of the mountain and about 3,100 feet elevation gain. We did both summits and had to hike uphill a little more to avoid big snowfields so it was more like 3,400 feet. On the way down we saw something I had never seen before, a male grouse doing his courtship thing. His throat sack would puff out all red and it sounded like rap music from a distance where you can only hear the bass, this "whooom whhhoooom" noise - way cool stuff. 26627' YTD. Pictures on my flickr page

Getting High, Part 11

2006-05-11T20:26:00.000-07:00

Sometime before lunch while I was sitting in a boring meeting I gave
my inner puritan and his goofy belt buckle hat a hard backhand slap
and I ditched work, sending an email right before lunch saying that I
had some last minute personal business to attend to, I wouldn't be in
the office this afternoon, so sorry. I went home and packed my pack
and hit the trail. My excuse was that I didn't have a good picture of
the mountain I hiked last weekend from the top of Horsetooth mountain.
I had plenty of other excuses, spring wildflowers, work sucking,
gorgeous weather, etc etc. No excuses to stay in the office that's
for sure.

I saw a couple of new things for me, a black squirrel for one, cute
little guy hopping along the trail about twenty feet in front of me.
Also some kind of brown bird with a black head hopping around in the
scrub making this nasally "kree kree" noise. I took a ton of
pictures, there are so many flowers in bloom right now. The light was
kinda bad and there was a lot of haze so the landscape pics didn't
turn out so great. Everything else was just peachy though. Whenever I
ran into someone on the trail who asked "how's it going?" I would grin
and say "I'm supposed to be at work!" That guaranteed cheers or
smiles and laughs, Everyone approved. An excellent afternoon.

Pictures on my flickr page.

23,327' YTD.

Getting High, Part 10

2006-05-07T16:02:00.000-07:00

Stone Mountain was the designated view spot today, hiked in about 4 miles and 2,165' of elevation gain. I went with John and Tracy, and my neighbor Mary Anne. Pictures are on my flikr page.

22,127 feet, YTD.

Getting high part 9

2006-05-01T08:10:00.000-07:00

Hiked to the top of Mt. McConnel yesterday for a wimpy 1,262 feet elevation gain. I slept late and bagged this peak instead of not doing anything :-)

Pictures on my flickr page

19,962 for YTD.

Getting high, part 8

2006-04-22T15:48:00.000-07:00

Hiked a couple of mountains to the north and northeast of Greyrock mountain today. I was off trail and saw a lot of wildlife. Some Turkey vultures flew low enough that I could see their red heads. I shouted up at them in my best Monty Python imitation, "I'm not dead yet!". Also a flock of Pelicans flew over me when I was on top of one of the mountains. I've never seen that before when hiking. Later on aI scared up a grouse which scared the crap out of me, making this big racket right next to me and flying up into a tree. Also saw a cottontail rabbit, and assorted raptors, a Golden Eagle, a Red Tail hawk, and some kind of falcon maybe a peregrine. Pictures on my flickr page.

Total was 7.5 miles and 3,100 feet of elevation gain. That makes 18,700 feet YTD.

Getting high, part 7

2006-04-16T16:12:00.000-07:00

I'm on call this weekend so I had to stay close to town and go on this hike in the local state park. Spring has sprung good over there, I saw Pasque, Field Mouse Ear, Spring Beauty's, Yellow Violet, all kinds of fruit shrubs are in bloom, flutterbys are fluttering, it was so nice. I think I got a little sunburn. I went up the Well Gulch trail to the Timber Trail to the West Ridge trail, then bushwacked down to the Mill Creek trail in Horsetooth Mountain park, then over to the West Valley trail back to the car, maybe 7 or 8 miles and 1500 feet elevation gain. 15,600 for the year.

http://parks.state.co.us/default.asp?parkID=86&action=park

http://flickr.com/photos/timloco/sets/72057594108817251/

Getting high, part 6

2006-04-02T17:47:00.000-07:00

Hiked Lory state park, the Timber trail to the Well Gulch trail, *and* Greyrock mountain, for a total of 2,740 feet.

14,140 feet for the year.

Update for March

2006-03-21T14:07:00.000-08:00

It was brought to my attention yesterday that I haven't updated this blog all month. <> that means I haven't gone hiking at all this month, because that was one of the things I wanted to do with this blog is record my hikes and progress towards my 100,000 foot goal. Oh well. I need to get outside but the weather has been kinda icky lately.

Here's an update on Tammy, she's much much better than the last time I updated this site. She's doing her physical therapy and they're getting her a knee brace to help with her recovery. Her lungs are better, she's breathing better, and she's on the mend. She's still going to need to take blood thinners for the next 5 months, which means limited diet for vegetables that have a lot of vitamin K. For those of you who know her, you know how picky of an eater she is. Now with this restriction on top of the South Beach diet it's really hard to cook for her and I.

Well, that should do it for the update. Now if I can only get out there and do some hiking!

Getting high, part 5

2006-02-27T08:24:00.000-08:00

Went up the Timber trail to the top, then back down Well Gulch trail in Lory yesterday. 1,200 feet elevation gain, about 3 or 4 miles. 11,400 feet for the year. My camera died sometime during the hike. I think the last picture on it will be me hugging a big 'ol tree.

Tammy update

2006-02-22T09:34:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a little while since I've added anything to this, I've been busy taking care of Tammy. Her knee threw up a blood clot that got lodged in her lung, causing her great pain. It's a serious condition and she spent a few days in the hospital. She's home and recovering but it'll be awhile. She's going to be on blood thinners for the next 6 months. Her lung will eventually heal and her heart wasn't permanently damaged, so that's good.

Getting High, part 4

2006-02-14T06:08:00.000-08:00

Another hike in Lory on Sunday. Went up the Well gulch trail to the timber trail, over to Arthur's rock and took the overlook trail back. About 1,700 feel elevation, maybe 5 miles. 10,200 feet, 10% of my goal for for the year and the year is 12% done.

Getting high, part 3

2006-02-08T09:42:00.000-08:00

Hiked up in Lory State park on Superbowl Sunday, the Timber trail up to where it intersects with the Well Gulch trail, then down that one to the West Valley trail back to the car. About 4 miles or so, and 900 feet elevation gain. So, 900 feet for Febuary so far and 8400 feet YTD. Weird plant science experiment going on up there.

Tammy had her stitches taken out yesterday. Originally they said she wouldn't need physical therapy but her knee is pretty stiff and sore, so the dr. prescribed some PT to get it going well. She has another appointment in 4 weeks to check on the progress.

Tammy is on the mend

2006-02-04T15:51:00.000-08:00

She's still in a good amount of pain and her range of movement is limited but I think she's getting better.

On a side note, I got new hiking boots and a new pair of trail running shoes today.

more on Tammy

2006-02-01T10:09:00.000-08:00

Just took off her bandages and got a good look. The incisions are
fine, no seepage but the whole knee is still pretty swollen and sore.
I wrapped the ace bandage around it again, her pain shot up a bit to a
5 out of 10 or so during this but its iced and elevated and doing OK
now. Taking it slowly...

Tammy is...

2006-01-31T14:44:00.000-08:00

In a haze of pain killers, nodding off on the couch watching movies.
She's been saying things like "it only hurts when I..." So I say
"Well don't do..." The swelling seems to be a little less but its
hard to say because it's all wrapped up yet. No sign of infection,
her temp is a little below normal. We change the dressing tomorrow
and the surgeon said to wrap the ace bandage around it again to
minimize bleeding in the knee. Her pain is in the 3-4 out of 10 range
when she does something wrong but elevated and iced it's fine, no
pain.

update on Tammy's Knee

2006-01-31T06:32:00.000-08:00

She's doing well, her pain level is up a little bit compared to yesterday but still under control with some good 'ol Vicodin.

Tammy's Knee

2006-01-30T13:57:00.000-08:00

Tammy had knee surgery this morning at 10:30 and is recovering well. The dr. removed the Plica and snipped away at some other tissue in her knee. She's kicking back on the sofa and her pain is well under control.

Getting High, Part 2

2006-01-29T06:26:00.000-08:00

Hiked up in Lory State park yesterday, the "bring your lunch" hike, about 8 miles and 1,500 elevation gain. so, 7500 feet for the month of January. Not a bad start. I saw a Townsendia in full bloom. Freaked my shit out to see that in January. Global warming, whatever. I'm looking forward to planting a lime tree here in CO. Here's a picture of the flower.

Getting High

2006-01-27T14:52:00.000-08:00

One thing that I want to do this year is hike more. So I've set a stretch goal of hiking 100,000 feet of elevation gain. It's ambitous considering I only made maybe 20,000 last year if that. So far, I've hiked Horsetooth Mountain on 1/2 and that is 1200, next on 1/7 was a biggie - Crosier Mountain at 2,780, next on 1/14 was Greyrock mountain at 1,979. So almost 6,000 so far - not good enough, I should get more elevation in per month if I'm going to do this. One more hike tomorrow, Mt. McConnel should get me to 8,000 or so for January.

OK, I've got my own Blog

2006-01-26T10:01:00.000-08:00

OK world, here it is. I figured this would be a good way for my friends and family to keep up with what I'm doing.