My Blog?

Canyoneering around the swell

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:06:30 -0600

Pictures from the Canyons
On April 24-25 Andy, Molly, Rachel and I headed out to Utah for a little canyoneering. We tried to start in Little Wildhorse, but found the canyon overloaded with small human like creatures that insisted on yelling and screaming. Instead, we went over to the left fork of Blarney in the North Wash area. This was a slightly more technical canyon with a few rappels. That night we drove over to the camp near the top of Baptist Draw. This is a gorgeous camp (great views) but it was also pretty windy.

The next day we went down Baptist draw and the lower section of Upper Chute. This is a moderatly long day, so we were pretty tired when we got back to camp and found our tent blown over by the wind! Well, at least it was well guyed down so it didn’t actually blow off the cliff. The last day, Andy, Rachel and I dropped down Baptist draw again then hiked up the upper section of Upper chute. I had never been up the upper section before, and it was rather pretty. It was also deeper and darker than I expected, with a good number of sections requiring fun stemming over water (assuming you wanted to keep your feet dry).

Climbing in St. Vrain

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 12:21:15 -0600

Photos
Ken, Kristen, and I hit up the St. Vrain canyon outside Lyons to do a little climbing. I highly recommend the 11c around the corner from the climb pictured here (right leaning diagonal crack up a largely vertical face.)

Africa

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 14:05:52 -0600

Photos
Andy, Molly, Rachel, and I took a big ol’ trip to Africa recently. We flew out through Amsterdam, and on into Kilamanjaro airport in Tanzania (incidentally KLM is not so good at keeping track of luggage, mine was a week late!). Once there we had a few days to get any late baggage (though this wasn’t enough), then we went off to Kilamanjaro. We took about a week to climbed Kili via the Machame route, then headed out on Safari. We a week seeing Tarangire Nat. Park, Lake Manyara Nat. Park, Serengeti Nat. Park, and Ngorogoro Crater Conservation Area. In Tanzania we used the Tropical Trails tour company and we thought they were fantastic.

Next we took a bus through Kenya up to Uganda (after nearly getting left at the TZ-Kenya border at midnight I’m not so sure I would recommend that in the future, TIA.) Once in Uganda we went on another nearly week long safari. There we spent time in Queen Elizabeth National park, went trekking to see chimpanzees, and the Uganda trip finished with a trek to see mountain gorillas! Great stuff all around. I’ve put up some pictures for now, and I’ll try to put up more descriptions in the future. That is the problem with big trips like this an Nepal, you come home with 5000+ pictures and it is hard to sort through them all, much less organize and describe even the best.

North Ridge of Democrat

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 06:33:06 -0600

Photos
The weekend after hiking South of Leadville, Rachel and I met up with Andy for a more technical scramble up the North Ridge of Democrat just South of Breckenridge. This involved a beautiful hike from Montgomery reservoir up the glacial valley Platte Gulch, then a bit of a loose rocky scramble up the ridge on the North side of Democrat to the summit. We had planned on continuing out over Cameron and Lincoln, but thunderstorms advised us to drop back off the ridge into the Platte Gulch for the hike out. The drop down was a bit steep, but the hike out was beautiful.

Hiking Missouri, Belford, and Oxford

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 06:25:36 -0600

Photos
Back in July, Rachel and I hiked three 14ers South of Leadville, CO. We backpacked in to Missouri Gulch on Friday evening, then climbed Belford and Oxford (and the oft overlooked Peck’s Peak) along with hordes of other peak baggers Saturday. On Sunday we had a quieter go at Missouri before packing out and heading home.