2005 B-sides and Rarities

After an entire winter in Colorado without hitting the slopes, we finally caved and decided to see what all the fuss was about. Amy and I both learned to ski back east where ice and corn snow are the norm. Loveland is fairly small by Colorado standards, but blew us away. Amy had a very fruitful lesson and I spent a while exploring the highest ski lift in North America. Fantastic stuff!

Amy on the easy stuff (before her lesson).

On the Divide at the top of Lift 9 (12,700').

On a bitterly-cold Sunday morning, we drove down to Morrison with Pam and Jack to check out Dinosaur Ridge. On one side of the ridge are an extensive set of fossilized dinosaur tracks from several different species of various sizes. The whole ridge is tilted up at about 40 degrees, so it's all laid out like a panorama in front of you. There are also fossilized ripple marks from the bed of a shallow lake. On the other side of the ridge, you see the strata edge-on and there are bones and prints from brontosauruses. The bones are pretty hard to make out without the benefit of the signage, but the prints are huge! Geology is nifty!

Saurapod tracks on the east side of the ridge

Amy and a bronto track on the west side of the ridge.

With the advent of summer, we organized a big social outing in the Wild Basin part of RMNP. Pam, Jack, and Julian, Fernando and his friend Manolo, Nahum and two of his CHAOS friends, Chris and Josh, Amy and I hiked up to Ouzel Falls and had a nice lunch. About half of us continued on up a fire-cleared moraine to Ouzel Lake, then retreated as the weather turned snowy. It was a very nice and social outing.

Fernando at Ouzel Falls

Above the falls in the fire-cleared area. Beautiful and sunny, at least for now.

We planned a big backpacking trip near the Maroon Bells for the July 4th weekend. Unfortunately, the road to the trailhead was closed by a massive avalanche and we had to walk an extra 2.5 miles to get there. When we got to the trailhead, we had to ford a knee-deep, fast, frigid river. But the scenery was spectacular and the wildflowers stunning! We hiked up into the Purity Basin (south of the Bells) and camped at 11,100' in a beautiful meadow filled as far as the eye could see with glacier lilies. The next day, we retraced our steps and got to the car just as a spectacular hail and rain storm hit. After motelling it for a night, we returned and did a lovely hike up the Oh Be Joyful valley and took lots of wildflower photos.

At long last (by Amy's reckonning), we got a dog. Her name is Luna and she is roughly a year old black lab/pointer mix with far too much energy. We joined Peter and his parents (visiting from Pennsylvania) on a hike up to Lake Dorothy. The weather and scenery were spectacular and everyone had a great time (especially Luna).

Luna near the 4th of July mine ruins

On the Divide at Arapaho Pass

What a difference a month makes! On the first of October, we hiked up to Lake Dorothy and it might as well have been summer. At the end of October... we drove up the long Rollins Pass road for 15 miles with the aim of doing a short hike to Forest Lakes. When we got there, it was covered in snow with more arriving every minute. Luna loved the snow and went tearing around at a great rate. Amy and I went more measuredly as the eight inches of snow filled up our sneakers. The lake was about half a mile from the otherwise deserted trailhead and we saw not a soul all day. After circumnavigating the lake and gazing up at the fog-shrouded cirque above, we headed back to the car. It was a short trip, but very rewarding. I'd love to bike the Rollins Pass road at some point, but it will have to wait until next season, as winter appears to have arrived!

After a quiet Thanksgiving at home, we set off for Great Sand Dunes National Park. The Dunes is the only national park I know of where dogs are allowed and it is apparently a great place to visit in the off-season. While it's not all that far away, the roads are such that you must approach from the south and it takes about 4.5 hours.

It would be a trip of spectacular photography. We got there at sunset and the lighting on the dunes was perfect. The dunes look very incongruous against the sharp spires of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Millenia of blowing sand from the south west have piled up against the western side of the range creating North America's tallest dunefield. We drove over to the campground where perhaps a dozen other campers were spread out in fifty or so sites. The temperature dropped down to around zero that night, but we were all snug in our sleeping bags (and Luna in her pile of coats and blankets). As warm as we were, the nights are long and the first light came as a great relief.

Off to the dunes! We drove over to the main trailhead about a mile distant and started across the wide sandy wash toward the main dune mass. The scale of the dunes is difficult to gauge since they come in all sizes and there are no convenient trees or other scale indicators and it seemed to take forever to get there. The day was calm and cloudless. When we finally reached the first dunes, we discovered that walking on sand can be quite difficult. In some places, the sand is packed pretty hard and the going is easy, but in others the sand is very soft and every step becomes real work. Our goal was the top of High Dune (which isn't actually the tallest, but is the most obvious from the south-eastern side) and we took a traversing path up one dune and across another.

Somewhere in there, the wind started up and we began to see the dunes in action. Scrambling up the thirty-degree dune face in soft-shifting sand into a blinding sandstorm was quite exciting. Blowing snow above treeline is bad enough, but blowing sand hurts. Amy and I were at least wearing wind gear and glasses, but Luna was having a bad time of it. Eventually we got to the crest of one of the larger dunes and I accomplished one of my life-long goals: walking along the razor-sharp crest of a big, Sahara-style dune. Just astonishing! We called it quits at this point and headed back down. Down was much easier than up, but it still took a while to get back to the cars.

My parents visitted for a week before Christmas. Among other festivities, we headed up to Nederland and hiked to Lost Lake. It was fairly cold and snowed most of the time, but everyone made it and had a great time.

First lunch on the way to Lost Lake

Second Lunch at Lost Lake

Our second annual Christmas Eve snowshoing trip! The Crater Lakes are a series of four lakes in a nice cirque east of the Divide. They are accessed by a small trail off the major South Boulder Creek trail and are, reportedly, very nice. Amy and I attempted to find the Crater Lakes two years ago but quickly lost the trail. According to various people, the trail has been improved and better marked. This time we'd try it again with the help of Luna, Peter, and my GPS.

We arrived at the East Portal TH to high winds and bitterly cold temperatures. The first part of the trail went by quickly and we quickly reached the coordinates where the old topo map shows the Crater Lakes trail splitting off. No side trails were in evidence. We continued on a quarter mile and found a small bridge with a sign with an arrow pointing west labeled "Trail". This was pretty close to what some maps show, so we followed a series of orange blaze marks through the beautiful, untracked woods.

Next thing we knew, we were back on the main trial headed back toward the car! Nuts with this. I had the coordinates of the lakes programmed into the GPS and it said they were half a mile (in a straight line) distant and 500' above us. How hard can it be? Peter and I alternated breaking trail up an increasingly steep hillside. We would come across potential trails, but every one of them quit after a dozen yards or so.

In a quarter mile, we gained most of the 500' of elevation between us and the lakes, switchbacking through steep and deep snow before emerging on a ridge. We followed easier terrain toward the supposed position of the lakes and, just when it appeared that all hope was lost, we came to the southernmost lake. Let's hear it for modern technology! The wind howled across the frozen lake, but the view and sense of accomplishment were worth the hard work. Crossing the lake and the narrow ithmus separating it from the larger northern lake, we took shelter behind some trees and ate a hurried lunch. Luna enjoyed going tearing around on the ice, but wasn't much enamored of the wind.

Heading back down, we were faced with the choice of retracing our circuitous ascent route or simply bushwhacking down the stream drainage to the main trail. We opted for the latter and found ourselves at the lowest of the four lakes. What followed was an increasingly steep trudge through deep snow as we paralleled the drainage, easy enough on the way down, but it would have been hell to climb up! We regained the main trail and got back to the cars in good order. Total mileage: 5.5 miles.

I plotted out our course (hot off the GPS) on a topo map and compared it to the summer trail. Apparently we crossed it a number of times on the way up, but I never recognized it as such. Oh well!

Amy, Peter and Luna crossing the northern Crater Lake on our way out

Looking up-slope from the middle two Crater Lakes. The wind was whipping down this slope, so we opted not to climb it.

It is unusual to have such a string of beautiful weather the week between Christmas and New Years, even in Boulder. Highs were in the 50s and 60s and it was uncanny! On Boxing Day, we headed to the Riviera in Boulder Canyon for some toproping. We, in this case was Chris, Josh, Caroline, Peter, Amy, and I. Unfortunately, once we found the place, we discovered that the toprope anchors were only accessible by leading. Fortunately, I've been feeling strong in my leading. I jumped on Chouette (5.6) and had a nice mixed sport plus trad climb to the two bolt anchors. Once that rope was rigged, I looked at Topless Etiquette, a 5.8 sport route that I remember being pretty difficult on top rope a few months back. But I had momentum and it was liberally bolted, so I jumped on before the jitters set in. No problem! Nice climb. Everyone got in between two and six climbs before the sun set below the south side of the canyon (at 1:30!) and we headed for home. It was a short day, but it's cragging in late December!

Me leading Topless Etiquette (5.8)

Chris, proud father-to-be, all racked up with no place to go.

On New Years Eve, Kristie, Fabio, Peter, Eileen, and I headed to Eldo to do some climbing. It wasn't quite as warm as the last trip, but it was still unseasonable for the last day of the year. We'd planned to do a couple routes on the West Ridge, but approaching the climbs, Kristie suggested a trio of routes on the Whale's Tail instead. No problem. Kristie traversed across the sketchy terrain to the beginning of the routes and hauled up our packs full of gear. I lead Clementine, a grungy, short 5.4 on the south edge of the rock while Fabio warmed up on West Crack, a beautiful 5.2 crack route, and the West Dihedral, a shorter 5.4 under a nifty roof. By the time we were all up top, the wind had picked up impressively. Various antics followed as we rigged rappel ropes and got down. For the rest of the day, we climbed casually and worked on gear placement and anchor building. It was a great end to a great year of climbing.