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.

A hike to South Crestone Lake

As we headed up the trail, the views only became better as we looked west over the San Luis Valley. South Crestone lake was about 3000 ft above the trailhead. Shivani & Joe, local friends, joined us.

There was one variation to the excitement of the scenery as we headed up. I heard a deep "muuf" in a steep and heavily wooded area. I heard it again and knew what it was - a bear. Then Shivani heard it. Mia had moved ahead, by herself, to find a bush. Then we heard a louder "MUUF" and a crashing in the bushes. Sort of like a short charge. I started yelling to see if Mia was ok. No answser .. as we stayed together and moved up the trail calling to Mia. Finally she called back, not having a clue what had happened. We were relieved to say the least.

The lake was worth the hike. Julia especially like the dipping as always.

Julia did great. Mia carried her only a 1/2 mile on the way up. On the way down, about 1-1/2 miles from the trailhead, she finally said - Papa, my legs hurt. It was time. She did SO good hiking. I'm glad Joe was there to help carrying too! I was pretty beat. Good day!

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!

Papas climbing with their kids

No breakfast in bed for Mia on Mother's Day. She was on a Girl's canyoneering trip scheduled long ago - before she realized it was Mother's Day weekend.

I met w/ David Kozak and his daugher, Sasha (6) at Shelf Road for a weekend climbing. David invited Mark Williamson and his boys, Dillon (7) and Cactus Jack (3). Jack was named Cactus Jack just the day before when Cholla Cactus gravitated to him 3 different times. Poor Jack!

The kids had a riot together while the papas had fun climbing. It's amazing watching the interaction of the kids. I had totally forgotten how much fun catching grasshoppers was. Dillon made sure all the kids knew how! :-)

Saturday evening, we saw a double rainbow. Julia took off, with the kids after her, to find the pot at the end of the rainbow. We watched until she was 1/4 mile away. The other kids were yelling - come back, Julia! No response as she slid under a barb wire fence and continued. What was she thinking? I fired up the truck for the chase - she was close to a road at this point .. if I drove fast. Luckily, the rainbow died out and she turned around.
David said - wait until she gets older ...

Is this the right canyon?

We had a writeup for the canyon, Good Day Jim, on Ticaboo Mesa. It was from a friend. There was a keeper pothole early on. We never saw it and we were well into the goods. We read the description again, after warming up after yet another swim. We decided the keeper must have been filled up w/ sand since our friends did it. Not too uncommon. We made the description fit our canyon - not that it had to, as long as we had long enough ropes.

The canyon stayed in our face. Lot's of water. Everyone was shivering at some point. Many narrow sections. At one point, it had to back off a few times to figure out where to put my chest. I finally ended up crawling on the ground. Chris went high and Bob came across at an an intermediate position. The girls asked: What is the problem, guys? I say: Get some chest! ;-)

It was one of the best canyons we've done on our family canyon trips. Some good laughs too, like when Bob spotted Chris down into a pool. As Chris got close to the water, Bob launched him into the deep section!

Garett, Emma & Julia had a great time too. Roselle took care of the kids. Roselle's daughter, little Sara had a great time too. Here's a pic of little Sara & Julia.

Back at camp, we consulted the Hard Day Harvey canyon description and map. It was pretty obvious, I'd switched the GPS waypoints of the two canyons.

If you're interested, here's the correct coords. Good Day Jim and Bad Day Harvey.

The view from camp was phenomenal. After a few hours solving the worlds problems, we hit the sack. We had another canyon tomorrow along with the drive home.

The main fork of Maidenwater canyon (topo, picture) was a good canyon, on Sunday, even if Hard Day Harvey was a tough act to follow. The rattle snake provided some good entertainment in Maidenwater.

The full set of pics for the Haaland/ Wood / Mestdagh 2007 spring family canyoneering trip are HERE !!

Cheesebox Canyon - BoyZrUs Canyoneering Trip

The West Fork of Cheesebox wasn't a gruntfest of slotness (Hmm, that doesn't sound so great. Oh well.) like some of our recent trips but it was a winner in variety and beauty. The water was cold though and we used many tricks to stay out of it. We still got wet. Real wet. Don't let the pics fool you you. Both Bob Wood & Charlie King wore wetsuits under their clothes and were happy about it. Luckily there was only one real swimming section. Of course, when Charlie or Bob went first, they'd say - Only chest deep, no problem. This translates to nose deep for me!

There's a lot to exploring to do around here. Without trying we bumped into an Anasazi ruin and Charlie found a nice arrowhead point.

After the canyon, we continued driving on Cheesebox Road. It became much rougher and turned into 4WD before we hit a decent dirt road. Another half hour of wondering where we were driving and we found a good camp. Here's a great view from close to camp. Wooden Shoe Canyon is in the distance. There's roads all over the place around here and they ALL go to cool places that need exploring. It's a definite problem! Since I strained my foot in one of the pools and Charlie hurt his knee, we decided to explore by vehicle. Gorgeous country ... Saw turkeys too.

Here's part of the route we took. Red is road. Blue is our canyoneering route. At our most northern point, the snow got too deep so we backtracked for 1/2 hour until we could travel East to Blanding (not marked).

All the trip pics are here!

A great ski weekend (part 2) and first bump runs

Mia's been working on tele'ing the bumps lately. I haven't. Not really anyway. Bumps are tough if you're a below knee amputee skiing with free heel gear. (Some would say telemark gear instead of free heel gear but telemark is a friggin' turn not a piece of equipment. Get with the program!) Anyway I've been trying to improve my skiing - bumps were just not on the agenda. I've been watching Mia close though ... and others in the bumps - just in case ...

Well at Mary Jane on Saturday, Mia did her first expert bump run. Yeah, conditions were soft but still ... I started following her on the easier bumps and listening to her advice. (She's been reading the Paul Parker book: Free Heel Skiing, when she sits on the can.) It was frustrating but I was starting to figure out the intermediate bumps. Sometimes it's just scary because I have this big ass board strapped to my wobbly prosthetic / leg connection and I'm going way too fast. I'm worried about blowing something out, like a tendon or knee. It was also just too cold and windy to take off my leg and reset everything in case of a torquey crash.

Back to the Wallace cabin for dinner and great company. Their place looks just like you think it should at a ski area. Lot's of snow encroaching on life. (Click on picture for full effect.) Mare & Tom totally spoiled us, especially with the hot tub. Julia had a great time.

Mare volunteered to sit Julia on Sunday. We know that kid sitting = spoiling Julia rotten but it's worth it so we ski together. (Thanks Mare!)

Sunday, I really worked it with Mia and Tom. Tom showed us many good runs we didn't know about. I tried for the balance of technique, speed and control that would allow me to ski bumps without crashing. It sounds like hocus pocus but it worked, especially when I pretended I had a submachine gun strapped over my shoulder and was sneaking up on the enemy. (yeah - no kidding). I don't know where I get this stuff ..

So I did my first expert bump run, then another. Yeah, conditions were soft but it's a good start. I'm pretty pysched!! What I'm really dreaming of now - is getting up high on the ski mountaineering tours. Tom wants to come too! Did I say I'm pysched?? Now I can put one of those "No Pain, No Jane" stickers on my truck. Hopefully Tom doesn't get into the backcountry thing too much. He'll have to trade in his Acura SUV for a truck or an old Landcruiser or Jeep. You can't be a serious backcountry skier with an nice SUV ;-)

... long before my accident I used to ski bumps. Not with style though. I was just stronger than Zeus back then and could muscle it through. Now I have to ski smart and use technique. We'll see where it leads.

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)