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

Indian Creek teaser

I finally got out to Indian Creek. First with Stacy and Stephanie, then with others I met up with at the Creek (mostly Alf and Bob). It started out quite cold with a bit of snow but by the end it was quite toasty in the sun.

Lots of gear makes the leads less scary

Stephanie starts up the Incredible Hand Crack

Stephanie and Stacy hike up - we made Stephanie carry everything

I head up Chocolate Corner

For the first week we were mostly climbing thin hands and fingers with climbs like Coyne Crack, Scarface, and Swedin Ringle. After that we tended to the wide - up to full on offwidths - like SC memorial, Big Boy, Big Daddy, Right Arm, and Sinestra... Good times. I even have a little bit of skin left and definitely feel like I have improved my technique a bit.

Alf 2/3 up "Big Daddy" - embracing the wide

Donnelly Canyon - Donnelly and Supercrack walls

As usual a more complete trip report can be seen on my web page here: Link to Tom Grundy's Indian Creek trip report

Igloo

It snowed a lot here, more than knee deep. So when it warmed up enough to make a bit of softer snow I worked on an igloo. It wasn't really good packing, so first I made a big pile and dug out the middle. Opposite that the TOGs and my sister were working on another igloo, but it didn't get roofed over until a few days later when I started with cut snow blocks. That only got me part of the way, but then I built a bunch of blocks by packing wetter snow into plastic tubs and used that to roof it over and then roof over the part in between the 2 other rooms. Eventually it all started to melt, but it lasted a long time as a multi-room igloo with a window. Here are some pics. The first is before the final arch over the doorway, and the night ones are after some serious melting brought some of it down. When I color corrected for the orange street lights it really brought out the blue in the LED lights I stuck inside.

Igloo with the larger room to the right.

Partially melted igloo at night

cold weather

It got cold here, with the low supposed to be -11 F and the high the next day of 10 F. [SARCASM] This is proof we don't have to worry about global warming anymore [/SARCASM]. I went out with my camera in the morning and took this image of some water dripping out of the aqueduct drain over a little creek.

 Aqueduct drain

Then I headed overland to Longfellow Pond. The snow was cold enough to squeek. Someone had cleared the snow off of an area to skate, but the ice was pretty atrocious (bumpy and the surface was hardened partially melted and frozen snow). I took a panoramic image to try to turn into a little planet. I need to work on how I fill out the middle a bit more, but as a proof of concept shot I think it worked out ok. This is from approximately the center of the cleared ice in the middle of the pond. Processing it did bring my computer to its knees though, maybe 4 GB of memory isn't enough after all.

Planet Longfellow

New Header

I made a new header image for this blog and uploaded it. I am not 100% happy with how it worked out, but maybe 85%, and I think it is a big improvement over the boring blue rectangle that was there before.

The image is a composite from Wyoming. On the right I am climbing the SW arete of Lost Temple Spire in the Deep Lake area of the Wind River Range. Dawn took the photo. The background is the Teton Range from the summit of Teewinot. The Grand is on the left and Mt Owen is on the right I think. I was going to put a climbing silhouette on the left too, but decided that didn't work out so well. Maybe some day I'll get ambitious and make some different header images and make them switch or something.

In case I do change it, here is the header image I'm talking about.

Sledding fun

A winter storm blew through a few nights ago with enough snow to cancel school for 2 days. The snow started out wet and heavy and weighed down and broke many branches. The second day the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and we went sledding over on the aqueduct. First we had to get all bundled up and walk there trading off carrying the sled.

Then P and T headed down the hill. 

But what goes down must walk back up.

Just heading down the hill became a bit boring. Someone had built a kicker at the bottom so of course the goal was to jump off of that. Unfortunately steering was not so easy with these sleds.

EEEEEEEEEK!!!!!!!!

Liftoff

Houston, we have a negative on that orbit, brace for impact.

OOF!

In addition to sledding people slid and tumbled down a shorter steeper hill. A good time was had by all (at least some of the time). As far as we know no children were permanently harmed in the making of this blog post.

lamest guarantee ever

Check out this guarantee on some batteries I recently got from China...

That's right, they will repair or replace any device damaged by these batteries provided the batteries have not been charged by the user or device. Of course it does caution you to charge before use.

I am going to get my sister to charge them for me, so I'll be fine.