Browns Lake (2011-07-15)

(Actually, this is Timberline Lake, not Browns Lake)

Earlier this spring, Christine and I sat down a picked a few weekends for backpacking.  Getting a new puppy meant we had to modify our plans, but we still went out for a long weekend up to Browns Lake in the Comanche Peaks Wilderness.

We had out first vet appointment for the new puppy on Thursday and he told us it was okay to take him hiking as long as we let him decided when he needed to stop and rest. That help us decided to do the the hike to Browns Lake - it's one we've done several times so we knew it well.

At first, Banksy did a lot of running back and forth and we did our best to keep his energy moving forward.  After a little while he got the hang of things and just wandered up the trail, usually following Kuzca's lead.  It's been great to have him learn from watching her.  He's already learned so much, like how to get the morning paper.



We hiked at a pretty slow pace and took some breaks along the way. When we got close to the lake, we could see that our favorite camp site was taken.  Bummer.  We ended up going to a site we hadn't camped at before a little further away. On the way there we had to cross a small stream.  Instead of taking the log bridge, the puppy decided to try and walk through it.  His first (unintentional) swim. He made it to the other side and we dragged him out, no worse for the wear.




Banksy - damp and resting



At our campsite, we quickly learned that it was prime-time mosquito season. With the big snow year we had, things were still damp at altitude and it was a perfect breeding ground for mosquitos. At this point, they were only moderately annoying, but it'd get worse.

The next morning we started to head out for some fishing and hanging out by the lake, but we ran into the people that were camped at the site we wanted. They were headed to another lake, so we decided to move our camp. We normally wouldn't go through the effort, but our camp site wasn't that great and we really like the other one.

After relocating, I put together my fly rod and tried to catch some food. The only bites I had were from fish that were too small to even take the fly. I've always had good luck fishing at this lake, but I got totally skunked this time. Maybe there was such and abundance of food (bugs) that they weren't really interested in my fake flies.

While I was fishing, Christine was hanging out, reading, and trying to keep bugs off the dogs. The bugs had gotten really bad. As soon as you stopped moving, the bugs would swarm you. Christine was actually able to get the dogs to lay down and let her cover them with jackets. That worked pretty well, and the dogs took a nice nap in peace.



If you know Kuzca, you know she must have been pretty tired for her to allow stuff to be put on her.

The mosquitoes got *really* bad in the evening. If we didn't have a puppy with us, we probably would have just packed up and hiked out. Any time you'd sit still, you'd get swarmed by bugs. We actually walked around as we ate our dinner so we wouldn't get eaten alive. And when I wasn't eating, I was swatting bugs off of the dogs. It's enough to drive you crazy. We couldn't wait to get in the tent for the evening.

The next morning the bugs were lighter, but still a nuisance.  We had some leftover biscuit mix from an earlier dinner, so I tried my hand at baking. It worked pretty well and we had a nice morning biscuit with our breakfast. Without wasting any time for the bugs to feast on us, we packed up and headed out.

The hike is around 3.5 miles, and that turned out to be a bit too far for Banksy after all the playing he did all weekend. We noticed he would sit or lay down any time we stopped, so we decided to take a break for a while and snack. The worked for a bit, but he soon got tired again and we had to go to plan B - carry him. He's a bit of a snuggler and doesn't mind being picked up, but no matter how you look at it, carrying a 30 pound dog is tiring.

At first we took turns carrying him in our arms.  Then we put him in a small backpack that I had with me and I carried him in front of me.




After doing that for a while we took another break and the dogs totally passed out. The is another moment where if you know Kuzca, you understand how unusual and cute this photo is:




We were close-ish to the car at this point, so I hiked out, unloaded my pack, and hiked back to meet the family.  For most of the rest of the way, I carried Banksy in my pack.





Soon he'll be too big for me to do that, so I hope he doesn't want to make a habit of it. We're all looking forward to our next trip, which will hopefully be less bug filled.


More photos on Flickr

Dark Canyon backpacking

Morning view

Christine and I took a long weekend to do some camping in Utah. We started our trip with a little drive through the rain and snow to Moab, Utah. Stopping in Moab was a last minute decision, and all of the camp sites close to town we saw along the way were full. It's a popular time of year to go to Moab (before it gets blazing hot) and there was also a XTERRA triathlon that weekend. Gearheads to the rescue. We stopped in this excellent gear shop to pick up map, and they recommended a BLM area down the road for some free camp sites. We found a spot and it worked out great.

The next morning we packed up and headed out. Our trailhead was near Natural Bridges National Monument so we decided to do a quick drive through there and check things out. We would have done some hiking there, but they don't allow dogs on anywhere except the paved trails at the scenic overlooks. Our national institutions are taxonomically racist. :)

Scorup cabin at sunset

Our hike took us into the Dark Canyon Wilderness, from The Notch down to an old cabin. It's a bit of a shock to the knees to start the hiking season with a mile of downhill, but we stopped frequently to stretch and things were mostly good once we reached the floor of the canyon. The trail was pretty well defined for the first couple miles, but then it became faint and it was more a matter of bushwhacking along a small creek. It was slow going and tiring, but eventually made it to our destination: Scorup Cabin. The cabin is part of a cowboy camp that dates back to the 1930's.

We found a great camping spot near the cabin and next to the nearby stream, where we sat and soaked our feet in the cool water. It was really a nice place to hang, and best of all there was nobody else there. In fact, we didn't see anyone else from the time we parked the car at the trailhead until the time we got back.

Our original plan was to hang down in the canyon the next day and explore the area, but with the amount of time it took to make the hike down we decided that we should just only stay one night so we didn't have to hike out and drive all the way home in one day. We spent the next morning lazily lounging about camp before packing up and heading out.

Once out of the canyon, it was already late afternoon so we decided to drive back to Moab and camp again. We camped at the same BLM area, and this time the rest of the place was vacant. Ah, solitude once again. We sat in the back of the wagon and drank some beers while we cooked up some dinner. A great way to end the weekend.

Sometime last year Kuzca finally figured out that she gets baths after backpacking, and she'd refuse to get out of the car. We pulled a quick one on her this time and drove directly to a dog washing place. Here she is "recovering" on the couch from her bath.

More pictures here.

Weight weenie

When it comes to camping, Christine is a weight weenie.

As we were packing up to leave, she was debating on whether or not to bring her flip-flops for lounging around camp. She decided not to bring them because she didn't want the extra weight. (I don't know how much flip-flops weigh, but I'd guess you measure it in ounces.)

Later that night, she pulls an electric toothbrush out of her bag. It was awesome. We all have our favorite luxury items. Hers is a toothbrush.

(Mine is a wife. Does that count as a luxury "item"? I don't care. I don't like going camping without that bit of luxury. But I am glad I don't have to carry her...often.)

Browns Lake

Christine and I got out for our first backpacking trip together in a long time. Looking through my old photos, I think our last trip may have been the Grand Canyon in October 2007. Wow. After that, Christine’s hip was beat up pretty good and she had hip surgery almost a year ago.

Clear Lake

I headed for the hills over the weekend and went camping at Clear Lake in the Colorado State Forest State Park.

Colorado Lake Hikes

I just got my copy of the hiking book that used a few of my photos, Colorado Lake Hikes (Second Edition).

I have the first edition of the book, and while it has some good hike information, it severely lacks pizazz in the map and photo department. That's putting it lightly. The maps were terrible and photos were nonexistent.

The second edition is awesome. The entire book is done is full color, and each hike includes at least one photo of the lake. Additionally, they included a small topo map of each hike. This is something that I've always wanted hiking books to do, but it rarely happens (and I'm not sure why). They also added a good overview map that shows you where the hikes are located, and hiking pages are color coded to correspond with the colored number on the map. That's a nice little touch that again I wish more books would adopt.

It would have been cool to have my photos published in even a crappy book, but I'm really happy that this new book is so nice. It's fun to see your name in print under the photograph and also in the list of acknowledgments.

(If anyone is in need of a good hiking book for Colorado, I can order copies of the book at half price. Let me know.)

Published photographer (soon)

I just found out today that the Colorado Mountain Club is going to use 3 of my photos in their upcoming book Colorado Lake Hikes. I have the first edition of the book, and it has some good information. The maps are abysmal though, so hopefully they've taken care of that. Regardless, it'll be cool to see some of my photos in print.

They're using my pictures from these three lakes:

Pingree Park

Our first camping outing of the year was to the Pingree Park / Comanche Peaks area north of Fort Collins. We chose the location this time because there are several good car camping spots.

As the first trip of the year, it was time to try out some new gear. First, the new tent:

Kuzca's Backpack

I've had these videos sitting around for a while, but Flickr's recent addition of video sharing has prompted me to try posting them.

For as many cool places as she goes after she puts it on, Kuzca absolutely hates her backpack. She acts like she can't move after you put it on her. It's quite amusing (to us).

Cheeseburger in a Can

Just in case you weren't into the bread in a can, now you can get a cheeseburger in a can:



The company also makes powdered red wine. Sounds like a good camping meal to me.

*edit: Here's the link to the burger page.

Copper Lake , Crested Butte

I've always heard that Crested Butte is a beautiful place, but I had never actually been there until last weekend. Christine and I took Friday off to go backpacking to Copper Lake.

Update

I've been a super duper slacker lately about updating my LJ so here's some crap that's being going on:

Christine and I went backpacking with Nat and Carolyn up near Steamboat a couple weekends ago. I had gotten sick that week, so it maybe wasn't the best time to be backpacking. I think I may have had a fever the first night, but I felt reasonable afterwards. As far as high mountain lakes go, the one we hiked to (Long Lake) wasn't all that nice, and we ended up hiking down from the lake to go to a better camping spot near a river. That was our warmup trip for the year, so now we're ready for bigger and better things.
(Take a look at the map for the hike. Looks normal at first. Then you see that map is orientated with North pointing down. The elevation profile is in the lower left, and you can see from the "You are here" text that the profile reads from right to left. What kind of messed up person drew this map?)

Last weekend we went climbing with Livia, Carol, Tyler, and Jamie. I haven't spent much time in the Independence Pass area, and I had forgotten how beautiful it is up there. I think we'll have to plan some other camping trips up there. The climbing was cool and I led 3 routes (a 5.8, 5.9, and 5.10a). Our camp site had plenty of available wood so we had a fire each night. We are still put to shame when it comes to car camping accoutrements, but we're getting better. We at least thought to bring s'mores this time.

My weekend - or How Not To Get Anything Done

I had grand visions of getting a lot of stuff done this weekend, like posting honeymoon pictures, or getting through all my mail...

Right after work on Friday, Christine and I packed up the Subie and went up to Pingree Park for some car camping. It was a little cold, but we really wanted to get one more night of camping in this year. Kuzca sure had a good time running around outside. We warmed up by the campfire in the morning as we nibbled some bagels and then took a short walk. It was quite nice.

We did most productive thing of the weekend when we got back home. Cleaning and organizing the basement has been on my list of things to do for a long time. It was nice to finally tackle that mess. We ended up with a whole carload of stuff to donate to Habitat for Humanity. As we drove over to drop it off I was happy knowing that there would be one less car load of stuff next time we move.

I figured Sunday was going to be "do crap around the house" day, but the weather had other plans for me and I ended up spending almost the whole day on two wheels. In the morning I went on a group bike ride for a few hours. I'm still regaining fitness after taking a lot of time off the bike and eating massive amounts of food in France and this ride was a good speed for me. When I got home, Christine and I went on our first motorcycle ride together. It was a lot of fun and it was cool to watch Christine get more comfortable on her new bike. By the time we got home, I had a message from a friend who recently bought a Harley Sportster. I initially turned down his plan of going for a ride, but then I decided it was way too nice to do work around the house. I rode down to Lyons to meet him and play some pinball. They've added a bunch of new pinball games because they moved their video games to another building.

I did manage to make it through some mail and bills later in the evening, so the day wasn't a total loss. :) Really...I'm going to get some stuff doing during the evenings this week.

Backpacking to Browns Lake

Christine and I took Friday off and headed for the hills. Her, Kuzca and I drove up to the Comanche Peak Wilderness and hiked in to Browns Lake. Bucket had to stay home because we didn't think he'd be able to make it. :(




I first went to Browns lake a couple years ago and have wanted to go back for a while now. You're only allowed to camp in designated sites at this lake, and we had our choice of site since we were getting there on a Friday afternoon and nobody else was there yet. We, of course, chose the most choice site. It had a great tent spot that was hidden in some tres and a separate kitchen area complete with fire ring. We even had a perfect bear bagging tree close by.

We planned ahead and picked up a backcountry cookbook so we could try some new food. For our Friday dinner, we chose a sloppy joe type of thing that turned out great. Most of it was a mixture we made before leaving and stored in a zip lock. Then we made some biscuit dough at the campsite and cooked it with the rest of the food. Mmmm, warm biscuits. And another plus was that we made it with soy crumbles instead of hamburger, so it'd be acceptable to any vegetarians we camp with.

For Saturday we had two dinner plans: Fresh fish from the lake, or prepackaged dehydrated meal from REI. We had heard the prepackaged food was actually pretty good these days and we wanted to check it out. It turns out that we were able to use both dinner plans because I caught some fish, but we were still hungry for more food.




The fishing was slow at first, but then I found the fly they wanted. After that I pulled in (I think) 5 really nice fish. One of them was full of eggs, so I decided to throw it back and hopefully help preserve the future of the lake. My good gesture was rewarded with several more fish. I'm generally a catch and release fisher so it felt a little strange to be keeping a couple. I don't think I've kept a fish since I was younger. Again, we had planned ahead and brought some spices to make blackend trout. I haven't cleaned a fish in a super long time, but I guess I did alright cleaning these two. The end result tasted soooo good. I wish we had taken some pictures. I should have maybe kept another one of the fish, but we filled our bellies with some prepackaged beef stew. It was quite good, so I think we'll try some more of those meals. They're great for cleanup because you cook them in the pouch so there's no pot to clean.

Here's the cute shot of the weekend:

Grand Canyon rafting Trip

9/1/05
Today my dad and I started our Grand Canyon journey with a scenic drive from Fort Collins to Durango. Having just made the drive using the "usual" route a few months ago, I thought it'd be fun to drive some roads I hadn't seen before and also see some new scenery.

The trip from Fort Collins to Glenwood Springs was mostly non-noteworthy with the exception of the detour I took up Lookout Mountain in Golden. That's a really fun road to drive and has some spectacular views. We made pretty good time on I-70 to Vail because I was following an Audi at 90-100 miles an hour.

From Glenwood Springs, we headed south on 133 to Carbondale and then west over McClure Pass. Lots of great views of Mount Sopris and the surrounding peaks. A short ways after the pass we stopped in Paonia for some lunch at a diner. With full bellies, we continued west towards Olathe and stopped in a winery for some tasting. Afterward, we went south on 550 all the way to Durango.

550 is an extremely fun and scenic road that goes through Montrose, Ouray, Silverton, and Durango. The twisties were great fun to drive through and I'm glad there wasn't too much holiday traffic yet. There's nothing like double clutching from 4th to 2nd on a hairpin in the mountains an accelerating to 90 on the straights.

We arrived in Durango around 4 and checked into the lovely Ramada. Oddly enough, I ran into an old Agilent coworker in the parking lot who had ridden here for a motorcycle rally. Now I'm off to find some grub.



9/2/05
Day two started with another 5AM wakeup. Virtually nothing was open in Durango at that hour so breakfast had to wait until Cortez. The dark drive to Cortez was a little hypnotizing, but I'm glad my reflexes were awake because a deer decided to walk out in front of me. A quick slam on the brakes followed by a swerve and we were good to go.

From Cortez we headed through the four corners and down to Canyon de Chelly. The scenery was great and we drove through and stopped at all the "scenic overlooks". I'm a little scenic overlook'd out now.

Until we got to I-40, all the roads we traveled were 2 lane highways with with little traffic and loooong straights. Consequently, we made pretty good time. (It didn't hurt that I was doing over 100 occasionally.)

We checked into our hotel in Flagstaff and then headed out on the town to pick up my fishing license and check out the observatory. I'm not too into astronomy, but it was pretty cool to tour the observatory where Pluto was discovered. I'll spare you the details, but it's an interesting story.

At 7 we had our pre-trip meeting, and it looks like I'm the youngest person on the boat. I'm probably half the age of most of the people actually. I'm a little surprised because I was expecting a little younger of a crowd since this is a hiking focused trip. Some of the people have actually hike the canyon before, so I have high hopes that they're prepared to hike.

Off to bed now. I have lots of pictures already, and I'll post them up after I get out of th canyon (on 9/12). Take care of the real world for me while I'm gone.