Jefferson

Just got back from a great weekend in the Collegiate range. The CEO of our company gave us Friday off, so this was a 4 day weekend.
I drove up Friday morning. I went to the North Cottonwood Canyon Trailhead

From there I hiked 4 miles west to Kronke Lake. Kronke is a wonderful spot just north of Mt Yale. Then it was 2 more miles up and southwest to Browns Pass at (N 38 51.224, W 106 21.642).
From there it was down hill about 2.5 miles to my first campsite at N 38 53.051, W 106 20.982.

The campsite was in the Texas Creek drainage and was on the north side of a clear spot affording great southern views of Scorpius and Sagittarius. I woke in the middle the the night to incredible views of Orion and Taurus among others.

The next day I made for Cloyses Lake. This was a tough day since first I had to go 2 miles down Texas Creek before making my way cross country up to Pear Lake. There were often game/usage trails, but following them was like playing hide and go seek. 

From Pear Lake I crossed the Continental Divide and dropped down the "Lake Fork of Clear Creek" to Cloyses Lake. I was supposed to meet some friends here to camp, but when I got there they had not arrived, so I set up camp above the lake.

They finally showed up just as it was getting dark, so we sat around chatting and then went to bed. Again the stars were out and the weather was beautiful.

On Sunday Amber, Elliott, Ian and I climbed  Missouri Mountain (14067 ft). From there we traversed south-west to Iowa Peak (13831 ft). Just south of Iowa is Emerald Peak (which I climbed back in July). Once done with that we returned to camp. During this whole time it was raining and pretty chilly. Most of the 6 of us were neutral on whether to stay or not, but there were 2 votes to bag it and 4 abstains, so we headed out. We only had 1 4wd vehicle on this side of the mountains (my Jeep was still at the North Cottonwood trailhead). We piled the packs and gear 4 people and 3 dogs into the pickup and they headed down to to Rockdale. Elliott and I hiked the 3.5 or so miles down in a relatively short time. Eden and I headed to get my Jeep before it got dark while the rest of the crew made for Buena Vista to find a place to get some grub.

We ended up at a pizza place called Pizza Works. Great food, but slow service. Then it was home to the springs to sleep off my excessively sore muscles.
 

Off to the Wet Mountains. We'll be camping near Lake Isabel in the San Isabel National Forest, but that NF is huge, so if you care we'll be headed off to near San Isabel, CO. The camp site is just off the left of the map along 371 just before it dead ends.

This a tradition that has formed up among a bunch of my friends (mostly from Colorado College). About 20 adults and 10 kids (sometimes more sometimes less) go up and spend the weekend hiking, hanging out and playing games.

More when I get back.

Last week was a b**ch. By the end I was so stressed out from work that I was on edge like I hadn't been in years. My fuse was about 2 nanom eters long.

So, Friday I left work a bit early and headed for the mountains with a friend of mine. We drove to the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness area. We left my car at a place called Rockdale on the north side of the wilderness. We then drove down to the Pine Creek trailhead on the east side and hiked till it got dark. We camped in a nice little forested area about 3 miles in from the trail head.

On Saturday we had a very long day ahead of us, so we were on the trail by 7am. We hiked up through the absolutely stunning valley through which Pine Creek runs. This is a wide open valley with a wonderful view of several 14ers on either side. Unfortunately neither of us brought a camera, so no picts. (We were both trying to keep our packs light, and my camera is pretty heavy)

On the north side of Pine Creek were Mt Oxford, Mt Belford and Missouri Mountain, all over 14000 ft. On the south Mt Harvard stood out above all. Harvard is the 3rd highest mountain in Colorado. In addition to being a great mountain, Harvard is the source of a great annecdote from my great-great grandfather  Stephen P. Sharples.

When on top of the mountain we came to the conclusion that it was not as high as a peak to the north-west. So according to an agreement entered innto by the professors it was called Yale. It is about 14,300 feet high. The higher peak was called Harvard.

Family legend has it that Yale was named such because the first climbers of it were Harvard partisans and decided to save the name for the higher one they saw in the distance.

We continued up Pine Creek until we reached an area where we could climb to a pass between Mt Emerald (13904 ft) and Mt Iowa (13881 ft). The pass was 13345, so we left our packs in the pass and summited Mt Emerald. Then Elliott summitted Iowa while I took a break.

We then dropped into the valley of the Lake Fork of Clear Creek. (We had left my car at Rockdale at the bottom of this valley) We camped in a lovely spot in the valley.

Sunday we discovered that our campsite was in the shadow of Mt Iowa, so the sun didn't actually hit us till almost 9 am. I was not really psyched about the cold, so I stayed in my sleeping bag relaxing.

Once the sun finally hit I packed up, and Elliott packed up gear for a day hike. I had to be back at work Monday, but he had two more days, so he was intending to hike back to Pine Creek while I hiked down to my car. We headed up to a place called Lois Lake at which point we separated. He took his two dogs (Max and Brangwen) up to summit Mt Huron (14003 ft) while I explored the area around Lois Lake and then headed back down to my car.

I had to ford Clear Creek to get back to my car. It wasn't very dangerous, but I had to be careful. The current was strong enough that I chose to follow all of the fording rules. (Always face upstream, never cross your legs, etc) After the ford, it was a short 200 yard walk up to my car and I was free.

It's amazing how much clearer your mind can be after spending a weekend in the mountains. Life is good.

There's not really a lot to report this week. Work has been nuts recently. The project I've been working on for the past couple months is due to integrate in a week and a half or so. This means that we are frantically trying to get all the work done so we can thoroughly test it in time for its due date on the 17th. Things are looking promising on being done.

On a nice work note, I have managed to get work to pay for a trip to San Jose this month. It perfectly fits that they need me to visit our site in SJ, on the days just before my parents are throwing a part for a good friend. Since I was going to go to that anyway, it is a nice bonus that I can get my company to pay for it.

Gardening is going great. My plants are growing like crazy. I'll plant the last parts of my vegetable garden this weekend. Hopefully will take some time to get some pictures up when that's done.

Peace

Well, this year's Arizona Hockey Classic is over. Our team the Pikes Peak Posse went 1-1-1 in round robin play and did not make the playoffs.

The Women's team Old School made up of a bunch of our friends went 4-0 and took their bracket's championship.

The first two games were lots of fun, but at the end of the 2nd game I pulled a groin, and ended up sitting out our last game.  We won our first game, tied the second and lost the third. I don't know which is worse, getting beat or watching my teammates get beat and not being able to do a thing.

So the hockey didn't work out great for me, but the socializing and just hanging out was great. With over 80 teams, most of whom are staying at the same hotel, there are plenty of opportunities to meet other hockey players and just have fun. Scottsdale has a gazillion great restaurants and so that part of the trip was a complete success.

As for the groin, I'm taking it easy for a couple weeks as I'm told to "wait until it feels good, then wait to more weeks." It doesn't cause any pain unless I do something that specifically stretches the muscle like throwing a ball or skating.

I'm heading off early tomorrow to play in an ice hockey tournament in Phoenix, AZ.

For anyone who wants to follow, they don't have their results page for this tourney yet, but it will be under 2008 Arizona Hockey Classic on this page

If you want to follow, our team is the Pikes Peak Posse and we are playing in the Paradise Valley Division. Our first game is 9:50 PM Friday.

On the 18th my friend Elliott and I (along with his 3 dogs) headed up to the Waldo Canyon trail head to go for a hike.

It was pretty late in the day as I had hockey practice earlier, so we got started around 4:00 pm. Normally this is a 7 mile hike. You hike out a couple miles do a 3-4 mile loop and then hike back the same trail. On this day, however we decide to do the long part of the loop and then to head up towards the town of Cascade. This involves climbing up to a ridge. Once there we followed the ridge for a while and then found a trail that returns you back to the Waldo Canyon trail about a mile in. The ridge featured some amazing views, but the lighting conditions were not very good for taking pictures.

All in all I figure we did around 8 or 9 miles total.

While still on the Waldo loop, we had this great view of Pikes Peak that made for an awesome picture.

Meant to post about both of these earlier.

On May 11 I went for a hike with my friend Mark who is spending the year working in Denver before heading elsewhere.

We've both been busy so haven't had much time to hang out. Sunday was a beautiful day. Warm and sunny. We started out of Palmer Lake. We hiked up the trail to the second reservoir then up to a ridge which we followed out to Winding Stair Road. Hard to say how long we went, but line of sight it was a bit over 3 miles, but we were far from going direct, so probably in the 7-9 mile range.

As always there were some nifty rocks, so here's Mark...

Springtime is here at the base of Pikes Peak. I've been busy caring for the plants I put in last summer.

The raspberries are starting to grow (but probably won't produce fruit this year)
The Yarrow and Catmint are going gangbusters.
The Tulips are flowering.
The hops are climbing the trellis.
My mint, lovage, sage, chives, thyme and oregano are all producing.

For those of you who live in other places, this might not seem that amazing, but here at 6000 feet of elevation, spring comes late but no less beautifully.

Here is a shot of the tulips I planted along my fence.


And I also have this colorful visitor. He makes a lot of nice, and some nifty little holes in my trees. Luckily, I have vinyl siding, so he isn't knocking holes in the house.

Normally, a snowstorm in January in Colorado Springs means nothing. This one is cool though because of how it came in.

I was driving back from my roller hockey game an I spied what looked like steam from the power plant near downtown. This is something that I am very used to seeing, but tonight I saw it and it looked a little strange. Then I realized that it just kept going. Over 5 mins it gathered up looking like a great white wall. Up until this point I was driving parallel to the cloud, but I then turned towards it. In the span of 100 feet, I went from seeing stars above me to almost complete whiteout! A quarter mile later, the snow was already forming a layer on my grass. Clear to collecting snow in 1/4 mile.

How cool is that. I hope I never lose the sense of wonder and beauty that the world can inspire.

I spent the morning and early afternoon hiking Blodgett Peak just outside of the Springs with my friend Elliott and a couple of his friends. If I manage to do so, I'll try to write up a post about that later. The part that is really cool is that after that I took a nap and then spent the evening setting up my brand new toy.

I bought a ROKU-Soundbridge-M1001 a network music system that acts as a stereo component, playing music as through your normal system. As we speak I am browsing through the thousands of Internet Radio stations that you can configure to play in your soundbridge. You can also play content from a media server on your home computer. I have begun the long task of ripping my CD collection to Vorbis.

This is just too too too cool.

Just got back from a lecture at Colorado College by Joel Salatin, the owner of Polyface Inc a farm in Virginia that concentrates on sustainable farming and local food systems.

Some people may know if him from Michael Pollan's book "The Omnivore's Dilemma", but Joel Saltin is a self described lunatic environmentalist libertarian christian capitalist. His message is about setting up sustainable and transparent food systems.

He rails about the industrialization and distancing of food production. The industrialization of food production leads to large mono-cultures instead of self sustaining ecosystems. Stacking large amounts of livestock on top of each other greatly increases the prevalence of disease in the food chain and leads to unhealthy land.

By "distancing" I refer to what Mr. Salatin describes as the loss of a direct relationship with where your food comes from. By hiding the where food questions, the current food establishment is able to do many things that are either unwise or unethical. Joel points to some of the more egregious examples of the industry's excesses such as feeding the processed remains of cow carcasses to the next generation of cows, a practice which many scientists believe has fostered the propagation of Mad cow disease.

Salatin was a very entertaining speaker and most of what he says makes sense. He does have some rather extreme views that I think are overdone. He seems to equate science with government and corporate control. (Hence the Libertarian bent) In my opinion, his issue is with corporate funded science, not with science as a whole.

His talk didn't really tell me a whole lot more than I got out of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and visiting his web site, but his call to arms is one I think we should all take into consideration each time we consider what to eat. By local whenever you can.

With the exception of cleaning up a few bits of leftover rock, the landscaping project is done.

Here are a couple shots of what I did with the 18 tons ?!?!? of rock that were delivered at the beginning of summer.

The Front of my yard after rock has been applied.


And the side yard.

The last few weeks have been madness (hopefully more on this later, but we'll see)

This post is a summary of my Desert Southwest trip that I took at the end of September.

Got back late last night. Great trip. I'll be posting more later on today after I do some image selection.

Off for a one week road trip down into the Southwest. Headed for Grand Canyon, Bryce and Capitol Reef National parks.

Pictures and reports when I get back.

Take a look at the linked comic, and then click next to see the second of the sequence.
http://www.homeonthestrange.com/view.php?ID=211

So I've been continuing my landscaping project. 18 tons of rock is a !^&@&!@ing lot.

As of today, I think I've passed the halfway mark on moving rock. Once that is done, I'll still have to acquire and plant a mess of low water plants.

At least the plant part is fun.

My Garden survived a hail storm, and at this point I have
Lettuce, Mint, Chives, Thyme, Dill and Parsley all producing enough to be used.
Still waiting for the Tomatoes, peppers, basil, and lemon cucumber. (will be a while on these)

I also planted some lovage this year. I'm looking forward to trying that. It's supposed to be similar to celery.

aufwiedersehen

PS: In an amusing note, live journal's spell checker didn't understand "aufwiedersehen" and suggested that I use "overdosing."

Ah, traveling to Phoenix for an ice hockey tournament. Yes we were skating on frozen H2O when the temperature outside was over 100F.

We had a blast and I'll try to get some pictures up as soon as I get some. My digital camera is on the fritz, so I'll have to get phots from others.

Our team was the Colorado Springs Posse. We won our first two games and then lost our third. This was enough to get into the playoffs, but we then lost in the semifinal game.

I'm now back in Colorado Springs. My co-worker Melinda and I went for a nice little 8.5 mile mountain bike ride in the  sloppy wet sand and mud that currently covers the course for the 24 hour bike race we are riding this weekend.

Somehow riding in wet sand is just a bit harder than riding on nice firm packed sand.

Hopefully the course will dry out a bit before the race starts Friday at 6.

Cheers

I just got back from participating in this year's Ride of Silence.

Every Year on the 3rd Wednesday of May, cyclists around the world gather for rides to remember those who have died or been injured while riding on public streets. We do this to raise awareness and ask that we ALL share the road. Cyclists, Motorcycles, Pedestrians, Truck drivers, Cars and all other users.

So on this day I remember several people who are gone but never forgotten.
Abigail Frederick - My good friend Catnip's mother who was killed in an accident along a country road near Whitefish, MT in August of 1991.
Jennifer Nesbitt - A college friend with whom I used to play bridge. Killed in a bicycle accident with a truck on Uintah Street in Colorado Springs in September of 1993.
Joseph Nordby - A friend and coworker who was killed when he was hit by a cement truck coming blindly out of an alley in September of 2000.

To those, and to any others whom I have forgotten or just did not know, tonight's ride goes out to you.

The weather today was overcast and we had some rain during the ride. Perfect for the feelings going through everyone's mind.

Peace