Bishop part I, 2011

I headed to Bishop. On the way I stopped near Cadiz to search for trilobites. As my sister says "Everything is better with trilobites". Unfortunately I only found busted pieces of them - mostly head segments - at least that was what I could identify. Still, it was fun poking around amongst the rocks and definitely better than not finding anything. Then I headed on passing through the Alabama Hills for some pics of Mt Whitney etc.

In Bishop I headed up to the Buttermilks to get schooled by the boulders. I am weak and my skin is soft. I am working on it. I think I can safely say that I am projecting some of my old warm ups though... Well, maybe they weren't quite warm ups back when I had some power.

Once my fingertips were worn down I took a break in town with electricity and internet and did some running and hot spring soaking. Then back out for some wearing down of the skin closer to the base of my fingers at the Happy Boulders. The first day there I managed to do a "Happy Half Hundred" - 50 problems - mostly pretty easy, but a fair number were high enough that falling at the top really wasn't an option. Actually I think I might have done 51 or 52 problems. In between climbing I sat in the shade and read a book.

Petroglyphs on the volcanic tableland

The next day I headed up Pine Creek to ski or hike. It turned out to be hiking up to the Gable Lakes. Mostly I was on a rocky trail but by the end I lost the trail in the snow. I could have used the skis up there. I don't really know what to compare it to but it seems like there is an awful lot of snow in the high country. There was a lot of mining stuff up Pine Creek. I think this was the major tungsten supply for the US during WWII.

I admire the Gable Lakes basin

Mining stuff in Pine Creek

After another day of bouldering at the Happys (this day was too hot) followed by a run and a soak I watched the Mule Days parade.  Not surprisingly there were a lot of mules, a few horses, and some of the local school marching groups. There were no motorized things in the parade until the street sweepers at the very end.

Steamer fire engine in the Mule Days parade

Tomorrow it might be cold and rainy. I can deal with the cold, but I could do without the rain, and the nearly constant wind is a little frustrating at times. Maybe next week I'll do a pack raft trip on the Owens River.

Grand Canyon archaeology exhibit plus

On 5/10/11 I took a drive up to the Grand Canyon to take some pics and to check out the opening of a new exhibit in the Kolb Studio on the recent archaeology that they had done in the canyon. Dawn Kish took most of the photos for the exhibit which is pretty cool and you should check it out if you can.
Here are some links to the show...


http://www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/art-exhibits.htm

http://www.nps.gov/features/grca/001/archeology/index.html

Grand Canyon Archaeology exhibit near the end of the opening

I was originally thinking about running down to the bottom of the canyon and back, but I got lazy (and the sleet and snow on the drive up worried me and I wasn't sure how long it would take). I ended up driving to desert view and checking out the watchtower there (pretty cool even if we weren't allowed onto the roof) and taking a heap of pictures there and from the overlooks on the way back to the GC village. The stormy weather over the north rim was pretty cool, but the clouds just sort of thickened up towards the sunset so that was a bit disappointing.Still, if you want to get a nice sunset you need to get out when there is a chance, but it doesn't always pan out.

Watchtower at Desert View

Bike ride - Walnut Canyon and Fisher Point

on 5-8-11 it was rather windy, but I opted for a bike ride anyway. I went through Flagstaff to the SE side and then went down a dirt forest service road to Walnut Canyon. That took about an hour. Then I hiked around the island loop trail there and took some pics. There sure were a lot of little cliff dwellings in that area.

Walnut Canyon overlook

there were little walls and rooms all over the place

Walnut Canyon dwellings

On the way back I cut down a chunk of the Arizona Trail on the N rim of Walnut Canyon to Fisher Point, then down to the base of the Fisher Point where I had biked from the other side a number of times in years past and then back to Flagstaff.

View from Fisher Point (trail ends up in meadow below)

Trail Junction below Fisher Point

There was one section that looked like a bunch of salvage logging after a fire near the end and a number of other areas where there had been some serious forest thinning. The front suspension helped a lot on the washboard and rocky sections, but I took one little canyon near the end too fast and really slammed my back wheel into a rock. This dented in the rim a bit. Luckily I didn't get a flat, but the tire was so far out of true that I had to unfasten the back brakes. Once I hit the pavement I could feel the dip in the rim with every revolution. :(  I guess that is my project for tomorrow.  I don't know how far I went in total, maybe 25 miles or so with more than half of that on dirt road or trail.

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

Mt Humphreys Triathlon with Sam (4-23-11) teaser report

Sam was passing through so we decided a mini-sufferfest was in order. We really wanted to test out the new pack-rafts, but I couldn't find any close by rivers that had good flows (I am not really tuned in to these things though, so maybe I missed something good). So we went with plan B - the Mt Humphreys Triathlon. This was entirely made up and involved biking from 7,000 feet in Flagstaff up to 9,500 feet at the ski area (about 14 miles) and then skinning up on skis as far as we could go (we really hoped there was enough snow left). Then on to the summit of Mt Humphreys at 12,637 ft. The reverse would be gravity assisted and hopefully a lot quicker and easier.

Sam preps his bike in the dark

We started at 6 am and made it up to the ski area in about 2.5 hours. Most of the snow was gone, but we only had to walk a few hundred yards to get onto a good patch. From there on up we had enough to skin up above the top of the lift (~11,500ft). The snow was pretty icy, and rather dirty in places. We hoped it would be a bit softer for the descent.

Sam skinning up

Once we stashed the ski gear it was a pain to traverse over to Humphreys but we did manage to tag another peak along the way. By the time we neared the summit the wind was really blowing. I don't know how hard, but I was unable to walk in a straight line at times and without ski poles I think we would have had to crawl. I am guessing somewhere around 60 mph for the gusts, maybe 70? When I turned into the wind it felt like sticking my head out of a car window on the freeway. We were very glad to have ski goggles on. Sam was hurting from the altitude (having recently been in North Dakota), but I was ok this trip. On the descent it started snowing/sleeting/mini-graupel. This was blowing up at us as we were near the ridge line. Once again we were glad for the goggles.

It was cold and windy, and Sam was feeling the altitude

Sam does a handstand in strong winds

We didn't have any fat pills, so we had to settle for beef and cheese sticks

Unfortunately things had cooled off and the snow was still pretty icy for the descent and for some reason my legs were really tired. Some of it was fun, but some was more of a chore threading my way between the rocks, trees, and grass. We had to dodge through the woods at one point which was a little exciting. Luckily it wasn't very steep there. The bike ride down from the ski area went quickly, although Sam went a lot slower the way his skis were strapped on his pack like an air-brake. We actually had a tail-wind for most of the rest of the way back to Flagstaff.

The total time was around 11.5 hours. We weren't hurrying at all on the transitions though.

Once again I'll try to post a more complete trip report soon, plus I think we might have enough video footage for a mini video.

Here is a link to the trip report page: http://www.electricant.net/grundyman/mthumptri2011.html


here is the video...

youtube Video of trip up Mount Humphreys, Arizona

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAgkd9K6Ii4

Grand Canyon Hike teaser report

On April 5th, 2011 I went for another annual Grand Canyon deathmarch. This time I heeded the parks warning and didn't hike all the way down to the river and back. Instead I hiked down the Hermit Trail to the Tonto Trail and then out to Plateau Point and up the Bright Angel Trail. Since the total was somewhere around a marathon, I don't think that is what the park service had in mind. I started hiking shortly after 5 am and finished just before 6 pm. Needless to say I was a bit sore and tired. I added up the mileages on a map I found and it came to 26.2 miles, but someone else reported it was 27 miles without the extra 1.4 miles out to Plateau Point. In any case it was a rather long way with at least 3500 feet of elevation loss and gain.

taking the shuttle bus in the morning

The weather was mostly excellent although it was quite cold waiting for the shuttle bus at 4:30 in the morning and things were a bit hotter than I'd have chosen a bit after noon, but all in all it was excellent.

Some of the Hermit Trail was in  pretty bad shape (because of rock fall?), but for the most part the trails were in good shape and easy to follow. I didn't have to deal with mules all day which was very nice, although they had still left their mark on the Bright Angel Trail.

I saw a lot of wildflowers, but the cacti hadn't really started blooming yet. I also saw lots of lizards including a collared lizard running on its hind legs and a bighorn sheep.

typical Tonto Trail scene

collared lizard

monument spire or something like that - only a 4 hour approach to this choss tower

bighorn sheep

nice overlook

sunset from the night before

As usual this is just a teaser report, and I hope to get a real trip report up soon.

here is a link to the Grand Canyon Hike trip report

Rubber Ducks - lost at sea

With the recent publication of "Moby Duck", the travels of a heap of rubber ducks and other toys lost at sea in 1992 have been in the news lately. I remember finding a rubber duck in Thailand, but alas it wasn't one of the famous ones, which are quite distinctive and have probably all faded to white by now. I am disappointed to see that most of the images used to illustrate this tale are of the classic rubber ducky and not the ones lost at sea in this incident. This includes the cover of the book in question.

Here is a link to a story about the bounty on the ducks that includes a photo.

And another link to a story showing the fading toys

rubber ducky on Tonsai Beach, Krabi, Thailand (1-15-2010)

close up of the duck