Steve is 50 !!

This was my present to myself on my 50th birthday! It was a real joy to hike to Chasm Lake junction (topo) by myself. I sprung the question on Mia in the morning - "Do you mind if I take a little hike, honey? without Julia and you? Please?" How could she say no .. on my 50th?

I was well rewarded with bitter cold but blue skies. A nice winter day on Long's Peak. I hadn't been close to the Diamond since my accident over 10 years ago. Nice to hike to 11.5k and not a bad time either - for 50. Hah!

Sorry for the ugly mug shot. I'm usually much more handsome but you try holding the camera at arm's length in a 60mph wind AND trying to capture oneself AND the Diamond AND look good when your face is frozen. Well the looking good didn't happen ..

I was back in plenty time for a shower and shave before we went to Radda Trattoria for dinner - Great Italian Food!

Getting together with an old friend - Al Torrisi

We haven't seen Al since we climbed at Rumney, NH last year. Good to see him and meet his wife, Deb.

Mia whipped up a great dinner. Deb and Julia hit it off when Deb decided Julia needed her nails painted. (Oh, man ..) Four bottles of wine and we woke up the next morning ready for a hike up Mt. Audubon (topo). Well, sort of. That wine plagued us a bit during the day. Good stuff. We hope to see Al & Deb again soon.

Flowers busting up the yard!

The wet, cool spring have the flowers busting some colors in the yard. I've made an attempt at photographing and naming them. Help me if you can.

Here's the flower pictures so far. I'll add as I find more.

Oh yeah, I think the flower to the left is a Western Spiderwort.

Almost June and still cool and wet ..

Mist over the front yard on May 29th. Still cool and wet. The grass, flowers and trees love it. We've had a few decently warm days this spring but not many.

Climbing above Boulder :: A great spring weekend (Sunday)

A day like this is what Boulder is all about. I spotted a little flatiron a few years back and thought - what a great easy climb for kids.

It was 3 shorter pitches and has an easy scramble off. Ideal for a first climb. We're calling it the Little Guy Flatiron. It's below Shanahan Crag. The hard part was the hike up. We were both worried when Julia wanted to be carried 10 minutes into the hike. Luckily, the bribes of skittles candy and whipping pine cones at the forest gnomes and fir cones at the elfs got us to the base of the flatiron.

I belayed Mia and Julia at the same time so they could climb together. Mia could assist Julia if needed also. We were all smiles as we reached the summit. What a fun day !!

More pics here!

Biking in Boulder :: A great spring weekend (Saturday)

Saturday morning we cruised East, on our bikes, along the Boulder Creek path. Julia was on the trailer bike behind Mia. The water was high and smell of new growth filled our noses. We enjoyed the nice views of the mountains and flatirons as we rode South. I've been in Boulder for 27 years but I still love the views!

After the ride, we strolled through the downtown farmer's market, bought some veggies, listened to the band and had lunch.

Later, we stopped by Sally Moser and her roomate, Mike's, party. South Boulder was rocking. The band was way more than good. The other draw was roasted pig. The hog tasted way more than good too. Ron was the roast meister. Sally, Ron & Mike - Thanks for the party!

To move or not to move ?

I've had an itch for the last year or so ... I need a new view, more acreage, easier accessible trails and still be close to the world class climbing mecca that Boulder is. A reduced mortgage would be a plus too. Julia wants more kids close by. Mia & I both want good schools and the fun downtown Boulder offers. Mia isn't so excited about moving since it's pretty dang close to perfect and the rec centers are great! Also as Julia gets older, she'll want to be driven more often to sports stuff, hang with friends etc. I could compromise with more acreage and views and less access to Boulder (I'm thinking western slope) but that'd be selfish and unfair to Mia and Julia. They are more social than I am. Boulder has a lot to offer even if it is too crowded and expensive.

What to do? This is a lose - lose situation for me. I like it where we are but I have this itch ...
Yesterday I convinced Mia to check out this place on Nugget Hill Rd, South of Jamestown. I knew it was too small but it wasn't too far OUT. I just had to see it. So we drove up. It looked pretty quiet so we drove up, over and down to the house (about 400' of driveway). It was empty so we felt ok snooping around a bit. The views were great. I really liked the feel of the place. We live in the foothills now but this is the real deal! We could check out the rooms thru the windows. Too small for us (1500 sq. ft.) but still ... No garage but it had some old leaky mining sheds for storage. It had some acreage but not very useable since much of it was somewhat steep. The real deal breaker was the private road up. (Private because it was too narrow to be maintained by the county.) Man, it was steep!! Mia said she'd be petrified driving down in bad conditions (and we have friends who have said the same about where we currently live...). If it wasn't south facing, it would be impossible for most of the winter. This would be a great place for a couple that didn't have to drive much and didn't have kids and weren't worried about resale value.

Anyway, it was an interesting excercise. I'm gonna keep looking though.

A Peek at Spring

I know we'll have some hard weather before it smoothes out for summer but right now it's spring. This last weekend we climbed at Shelf Road. Climbing was a bit cool to rainy on Saturday (see Julia climbing at right) but great on Sunday. When it started raining, we checked out the Marsh [Felch] dinosaur quarry .. which every climber drives by on the way in. Julia found a dinosaur tooth, Mia found a Stegasaurus fin plate and I found some dino skin. (Not really but that's what we told Julia.) Julia was really excited because she wants to be a palentologist and can even say it correctly. :-)

Sunday, I was feeling my oats and tried climbing Purple Toe Nails, 5.11b/c. Unfortunately, my oats bag spilled on the way up. We did some great routes though especially after I decided to stick with 5.10 .. for now.

Spring was popping up at home too as evidenced by the daffodils sprouting and hammock testing.

A great ski weekend (part 1)

We were invited to stay with the Wallaces at their cabin in Winter Park (google map) last weekend - and go skiing. It was not so easy though. We had just received a decent snow and the wind had picked up. The snow was drifting bad - covering the roads and shutting some down. The wind turned a 2 hour drive into a 4 hours. CO-93 was shut down by the drifts, so we took a parallel road to the East, Indiana. Bad choice. We should have went even further East. By the time we reached 72, I was sick of traffic. We drove West on 72 and quickly learned why 93 was closed. Sometimes we drove in a total whiteout. Scar-rey! We reached 93 and continued West. Up and up until we reached 119. Then South towards Rt 6 and Blackhawk. Lot's of whiteouts. Lot's of driving which would be fun if we weren't supposed to be in Winter Park already. Yeah, we were bringing the dinner!

Finally, we reached I-70 and drove 40 towards Berthoud Pass (topozone map). The pass was pretty nasty too. Lot's of whiteouts. Luckily no Californians or N'Yorkers were on the road. They were in the ditch long ago .. ;-)

Finally we found the cabin and life was good. A beer put everything right and we hit the sack.

The whiteouts on the drive up probably ranked in the top 3 worst I've experienced. The other two required head out the window driving - Yikes! (Good fodder for a future post)

The wind, the snow

Wind was forecast all weekend. Bad in some areas, very bad in others. We decided against skiing at Winter Park (official ski area site) on Saturday. This turned out to be a >very good move< since a large avalanche hit Rt. 40 near Berthoud Falls (Yahoo Map) about 10:30am Saturday. No one was killed but a few cars were tumbled down the slide path and their occupants sent to the hospital. If we had skied, we would have to drive all the way around through Kremmling to get home - and there were whiteouts that direction. Yep, we were lucky.

So far Boulder wasn't windy - even by Sunday. Sunday night was forecasted for 105 mph winds. But it was still nice so we drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park. A little sledding, a nice hike around Bear Lake etc. Well ... it was very windy up there. Our hike was 3 minutes long and ended as Julia started blowing away like Dorothy in Wizard of Oz. Mia caught her and we carried her back to the car. We found a scenic pullout for our bag lunch and enjoyed the view of Longs Peak and Mt. Lady Washington. (Click on image for full effect.)

It was also a good day to visit the new Fall River Visitor entrance. Normally we never do this stuff but when the wind blows ... Julia had fun trying on the pioneer dresses. We headed home and the drive had already started to drift. I was proud to get the Focus up after the 3rd attempt. It turns out I should have left it at the bottom of the drive.

The freight trains visited Sunday night. I knew we were hosed. That little 10" of snow we received on Thursday .. and we had neatly shoveled aside .. well it was DRIFTING bigtime.

By this morning, the drifted snow had setup as concrete in our drive. It was between 10" and 35" thick. About 20lbs per grain scoop full. (That's what I use for a shovel.) Normally we'd say screw it and pick away at it for a few days until we could get the Focus down. Today, though, was Julia's first swim lesson at the Rec center. We couldn't miss that.

Mia and I shoveled the 50 foot section that had drifted 35" deep. Then I chained up the truck and let 'er rip downhill. Pretty amazing what kind of torque a 1000lb diesel engine can provide when it's sitting on chains. Not much problem going down. Coming back up was like riding a bronc. The truck was jumping all over. Mia took a picture before action was even good. Still shows some flying snow though and the driver loving it. (Maybe the Dodge boys will sponsor me after seeing this - Hah!) Note that the air dam is no longer under the front bumper. I removed it before the snow could rip it off. Only a flatlander would design something like that.

Skiing Butler Gulch - last day of 2006

Our sitter gave us 6 hours and Mia & I took all of it!

Butler Gulch was great. Lot's of powder, no wind and not very cold. Even the trailhead access road was in good shape.

I'm finally getting used to my new ski gear - the plastic boots and fatter boards. The snow was over my prosthetic, knee high. (Yah, that's me to the right.) I'm starting to like skiing again. My eyes are wandering higher .. to the ridges .. like what we used to ski. I can feel the pull ..