2015 Sierra Challenge, Ultra Run, River Trip... the busy time has come

As the title suggests, things have gotten busy, after Wanderlust I made a weekend trip to San Diego to see some friends and participate in the Slack-Pocalypse (I walked 2.78 miles on a slackline - lots of laps) or as reported on Gearjunkie.  Then it was on to Utah for the Kat'cina Mosa 100k trail run race and the OR show and back to CA to do days 3-9 of the Sierra Challenge. I missed the first 2 days due to the OR show and recovering from the run. I skipped the last day to pack up and start driving up to OR for Jason's 40th birthday Deschutes River trip. This was a heap of packrafts and other watercraft on the river for 4 days of fun and paddling (the paddling was fun too mostly). Busy busy. It will take a while to catch up with pics, but here are a few. Hopefully one day I will have proper trip reports written up and posted.

Julie and Willow acro in San Diego

parking lot cooking with JD and Chris

Bob and Robert traversing N of White Mtn

Bob, Jeff, Rob, Robert, and myself on a peak N of White Mtn

Milky Way from near the Taboose Pass trailhead

sometimes things get weird on the river

our flotilla, we had one more packraft to start out.

Chip paddling through a rapid

group shot the last morning

Bouldering and Boating

It is finally cooling off a bit here, so that means bouldering season is beginning... or at least that time of the year when you fall off your old warm-ups and re-realize that bouldering is hard and your fingertips are soft. In any case I have been out a few evenings and mornings and it is starting to get good.

Julie tops out the Green Boulder

Andrea climbs the Hero Roof

Andrea on the Tut Boulder

bonus for evening bouldering = sunset

Julie got a new boat, so we went down the Owens River from Pleasant Valley CG. Unfortunately the water was running pretty fast and the willows had grown a bunch since the last time I went down so the current really wanted to take you into the willows. I was able to mostly avoid this with more experience with swiftwater and avoiding willow entrapment. Julie wasn't prepared for this and got swept into the overhanging branches a number of times. After a few swims we swapped boats which helped, but not enough. Despite traveling down river for a while Julie had a pretty short walk back to the put in because of all of the meanders. I continued on to the take out with my pack raft. I saw a Great Blue Heron, lots of ducks, a coot, a kingfisher, some fish, and lots of yellowish warblers and swifts.

Julie paddles

Julie paddles her boat "Supernova"

Sorry I didn't get any pictures of the heinous willow tunnels - I was too busy trying to not get trapped myself.

another Buttermilks sunset pic

short Owens River Packraft (7/10/11)

I got a pretty late (Yogaslacker) start on a packraft trip on the Owens River. I parked my truck at the Five Bridges bridge over the Owens, then I biked up to the Pleasant Valley Campground with my raft. This was into a headwind and took about an hour. Then I switched to raft mode (20 minutes) and cast off downstream at 5:17 pm. The water might have been a little higher than last time, but not by much. I didn't stop at all and made it down to the bridge in about 2.5 hours. I surprised a number of great blue herons and a hawk when I came around corners, but there were less little flitty birds than the first trip. The new packraft handles well without a bicycle on the front. It is definitely narrower than my old raft was.

I also got my spot tracker back (Thanks Frank), so here is a link to the spot track from this trip. You can see how squiggly the Owens is for some of this stretch.

Link to Tom's spot track of this short Owens River packraft trip

new 2011 Alpacka packraft test drive

I got a new toy, a 2011 Alpacka packraft. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be any running white water around here right now, but I took it out on Lake Mary for a little test drive.

My new 2011 Alpacka packraft

 There are 3 big obvious differences between this new raft and my old (2004?) model.

1. The spray skirt is fastened on top with a zipper and has a big side velcro opening. I am not entirely sold on the velcro, but the only real advantage of my old sprayskirt fastening system is that it wouldn't break when it ripped off - which it did in almost every big hole I hit. You could also completely remove it for lighter warmer flatter water. This one zips off for that though.

2. Next up is the large pointy stern on this boat. This looks a bit odd, and takes more air to fill up, but I think it provides a bit better tracking and also helps trim the boat without a pack on the front. The downside might be that it could spin a bit slower in whitewater, but that is probably way offset by the advantage of not flipping over backwards nearly as easily.

3. The inflation valve is in the back which allows for 4 lash points in the front instead of the 3 on my old boat. This should make strapping a pack on the front much easier, especially if I am rigging it so that I can wear the pack with the boat up in the air for mid-length portages.

the front of the raft with Mount Humphreys in the distance

There are a number of smaller improvements like a back-rest and having the inflation bag actually thread into the valve. The new raft also seems to have larger tube diameter all around and is slightly skinnier. I can still sit cross legged, but it is a bit tighter, and the sleeping pad is a little harder to wedge into the floor.

It seems like a vast improvement over my already awesome older boat and I look forward to paddling the new boat in whitewater and doing some longer trips in it. (and for now I still have my old boat too, so if anyone wants to try out a packraft trip with me, lets go. (I only have one paddle though, so you need to supply that or else one of us is stuck with the hand paddles)).

bald eagle off in the distance

I also checked out the birds out there including osprey, ducks, grebe, vultures, ravens, great blue herons, and bald eagles. Another interesting sight was a tree full of APS workers learning how to trim trees.

tree full of trimmers learning the ropes

Black Canyon Trip Teaser

Sam and I were in Vegas and somewhat stymied from some objectives by weather, motivation, and just being sort of exhausted (at least for me). After a day of playing on slacklines in a park, we decided to try a packraft trip down the Colorado River through the Black Canyon. I had always wanted to do this paddle but wasn't excited about paying an outfitter or doing a bike shuttle. This trip had the added benefit of lower elevation (warmer), hot springs (even warmer), and packrafting, which would hopefully give some of our other muscles a break.

Inflating the rafts at the mouth of Goldstrike Canyon

Late that night we camped along route 93 in AZ and the next morning (3-24-11) we packed up our gear and left the PLC (the Peace Love Car) at Willow Beach and shuttled up to the Goldstrike Canyon trailhead in Nevada. There we hiked down the canyon, inflated our rafts, paddled upstream a bit past some hot spring grottos to the steam sauna (a manmade tunnel into one side that had a hotspring and was full of hot steam). We paddled almost up to the restricted area sign before turning around and heading downstream exploring side waterfalls, canyons, hot springs, and so on. The water was very clear and cold in the Colorado and a lovely greenish color. We soaked in Boy Scout Springs and then at Arizona Hot Springs. From our web research we concluded that most of the interesting stuff was in the first 3 miles, so we spent most of our time there. Also we were hoping that the vicious upstream winds would die down in the evening. We remained in the Arizona Hot Springs 'til around 5 pm and then headed downriver (it was hard to leave the hot springs).

Looking upstream from near the sauna cave to the Rte 93 bridge

Sam enters the Sauna Cave

Sam setting up his packraft-cam

Sam in a little side canyon

The wind didn't really die down, although sometimes it wasn't as bad as others. The current was quite strong, so as long as you were at least keeping your paddle in the water you made some downstream progress (mostly), but in a few spots we had to paddle hard just to make any downstream motion. Every once in a while it seemed like the wind was really stopping, but then it would pick up again. Sam counted 1400 paddle strokes for one mile at one point. We had around 10 miles to go to the take out, and at first we could see the mile markers, but then it got pretty dark. About the time it got truly dark, the lights of Vegas provided a bit of glow on one side, and shortly after it was truly dark we were able to see the lights of Willow Beach in the distance. In true Yogaslacker form we were cold and it was dark by the time we got back to the PLC (a little after 8 pm).

Willow Beach when we got there - note duck in lower left

We semi-dried our gear and packed up and headed back to my truck where I crashed for the night and Sam continued on heading N and E towards North Dakota. It was a highly successful mission even if Sam did consider it a rest day. Hopefully I can get some of the pics from the waterproof camera or Sam will be able to put together a video from what he got that day.  If I do it again I'll take more food and enough gear to camp out.

Sam advancing (or retarding?) the timing on the PLC

As usual this is just a teaser report and more will be posted on the web page eventually. here:
RRR , Las Vegas, and Black Canyon trip report

Here it is: link to  Red Rocks Rendezvous plus trip report

San Juan River Trip Teaser

I was able to go on a 6 day San Juan River trip from Sept 22 through the 27th, 2010 (thanks Dawn). We had a diverse and fun group of people that had some sort of Flagstaff connection. Many were photographers too, but all you will see here are a few of my pics. Between all of us, we probably captured most of what we saw though.

Dawn rowing the first day (with Kurt and Laura)

I met the group at the Goosenecks overlook where we camped for the night. The next day we went to the put in in Mexican Hat and started rigging the rafts. We had 3 oar rafts, 3 inflatable kayaks, a hard kayak, and my pack raft for 13 people. While we were rigging it started to rain. Hard. Soon there was a red mud-fall across the river and the river started to have red streaks and rise. It probably came up close to a foot before we were all loaded and ready to go. I don't remember the name of the first rapid, but it was a lot more than I was expecting. I completely filled my raft (no spray skirt didn't help) and thought I was going to flip at one point. In fact one of the inflatable kayaks and the hard kayak did flip. After that it was easier going and we even saw the sun for a bit around lunch time. That night it rained hard again which brought the river level up again and then it dropped and came up the next morning. we spotted another inflatable kayak floating down the river in the morning and rescued it (and used it for the rest of the trip). After that we got mostly sunshine and warm weather and the river gradually turned a tan gray although it remained extremely silty for the rest of the trip.

This stick was only sticking out a few inches the last time I saw it (before it washed away)

Honaker camp at night

On day 3 we had a layover at Honaker and hiked up the trail a ways. Most of the trip was at a fairly relaxed pace with plenty of delicious food (I probably gained 5 to 10 pounds - a real float and bloat). There was plenty of time to take photos, blow bubbles, and hang out.

Kat under the shade umbrella

Kurt blowing giant bubbles

Honaker camp

Dawn points out where it is (along the Honaker trail)

Raechel running Government rapid (with Nick)

We saw plenty of bighorn sheep including one male who was busy managing his harem. Also lizards, beaver, dogs, great blue herons, toads, primitive man, stick men, and a few birds. There were also plenty of tracks in the fresh mud.Primitive Man

Bighorn Sheep

Stick Man

The Milky Way from our last camp

All too soon it was our last day and we had to pack up and paddle down the increasingly sand-barred river to the take out.

A good time was had by all, and we would have happily continued had that been an option.

Check out my San Juan River Trip web page here

Caught in the vortex

Lately I have been caught in the Needham vortex. Various events keep coming up that I will leave "right after" they are done. Birthdays, visits from relatives, etc. Someday I will achieve escape velocity, but not today. It is easy to get lulled into another day or 2 or 3 or whatever here. One of the projects I have been working on is hand paddles for the packraft. These aren't particularly nice for actually paddling anywhere, but the size and weight saving over regular paddles are significant and hopefully that will be worth it for the upcoming TMF expedition. TMF = Too Much Fun - also known as a sufferfest.