Archive for 2006

I managed to take a lot of really great pictures last weekend. Well, I think they’re really great. You’re welcome to your opinion as well.

I had been seeing a lot of fantastic shots of the northern lights in the last couple of days due to a large solar flare that blew through the ionosphere last week. I was hoping to get some night shots in the northern mountains that might pick up a little magnetic activity, or even the tail end of the geminids. But it was cloudy and snowing, so I just played around with shots of the campfire instead.

The weather report for this weekend called for a decent amount of snow to blow through on Saturday night. Mark and I were feeling a little cooped up and inspired by winter camping exploits of our friends. We decided to dig out all of our winter gear, pack up the yellow truck, and head out to the mountains for a night of snowy camping.

I looked up the status of National Forest campgrounds in our area a few days before, and we saw that Dowdy Lake campground was open year round in Red Feather Lakes. This is a highly residential area in the mountains just south of Wyoming. This is an area that Mark and I have not spent much time in, because so much of the land is privately owned, it can be slightly worrisome to hike and camp around. But, the Dowdy Lake area is a national forest site, and trails lead from the lake to Mount Margaret, a small rocky peak that is a popular summer day hike for people in our area.

We got to the campground a little later in the afternoon than we originally planned, and we spent some time picking out the perfect campsite. This turned out to be time well spent, as the wind picked up over the lake at night, and our site back in the woods stayed still and calm.

Around 2pm, we hit the trail for Mount Margaret. Most of this trail is actually downhill, with only the final summit climb being somewhat vertical. We goofed around along the way, filming bits of “Mark vs Wild” and playing on a wide, solid ice sheet over a creek. By around 3:30pm, we hit an intersection with a sign telling us that the summit was still a mile away. With the sun rapidly setting and clouds blowing in, we decided to forgo the actual summit and head back to the campsite.

In the evening, Mark started a fire, and we had a tasty Chef Boyar-D dinner. As we were getting ready to head into the tent at night, I hiked over to the toilets, and met 3 guys with their 2 dogs that were stuck in the campground because their glow plugs weren’t warming up. They had been out ice fishing all day, and when I asked if they needed any food, water or blankets, I got two firm “No”s, and one “Well, maybe…” They ended up getting the truck started pretty soon after I arrived, and all we gave them was some water and a spoon for their cans of soup. I did find out, however, that in a day of ice fishing, these guys were able to pull 75 fish out of that frozen lake!! And 75 trout at that!! They offered us a couple of fish (as they had so many extras) but we declined as well. I decided that ice fishing just might be a hobby worth taking up in the future!

That evening we snuggled into the 4-season tent. We brought our -10F degree bags, our down sleeping mats, and about 10 extra blankets. It was about 25F degrees outside and the tent rapidly warmed up to over 40F as we moved around and settled in. After we actually cocooned up to sleep, the temperature dropped rapidly towards the external temp, but never got too horribly cold.

In the morning we woke to a quiet blanket of snow over the whole area, and the beautiful white views made the whole weekend worth it. It was a really fun trip, and we had a great time.

   
More photos from the trip are in the photo gallery.

It was surprisingly warm on the dog walk this morning. Around 40F, and the sunrise was incredible. I’m kind of glad it’s Friday, but I’ve got a big stack of work ahead of me. Hope you all have a fun weekend!

This is a picture I took about two weeks ago, during the really cold days after the snow storm. It’s my job to walk Liv in the mornings, almost always right after waking up. So, this shot was taken before 7am, during the coldest part of the morning. I had just walked Liv around the block, and I looked down and saw that frost had formed on the edges of her fluff and wiskers. I thought to myself “It must be really cold.” Got inside, checked the temperature, and sure enough, it was -21.6C (-7F) out there.

It’s been warmer since, thank goodness.

We had a great party on Saturday night! Maike brought over all of her stuff for the feuerzagenbowle (actually feuerzangenbowle). This is a pretty and tasty German tradition that we’ve been able to convince Maike to make for us every year. Usually we do it around Halloween, but this year we waited until close to Christmas which is more along the lines of how it is made in Germany.

We also had a lot of fun decorating inappropriate Christmas cookies, and stuffing our faces full of Ute’s incredibly good breads and Black Forest Cherry cake. We had a great crowd, and a really nice time. Thanks everybody!

I’ve started up a spot in the photo gallery for adding in pictures of Christmas decorations and festivities. Feel free to check it out: Christmas 2006 Gallery.

This is a shot I took in the middle of the snow storm that hit last week. It snowed for about 24 hours and when it was over, we had about 8 inches on the ground. It was a pretty snow, and a fun day to run around in it.

Yey! The new battery and charger arrived last night! I was finally able to free the hundred-or-so pictures that had been trapped on the camera. Thinking back on it now, I probably could have just found myself an SD card reader and pulled them off that way, but I didn’t think of that until it was too late.

So, this picture has a pretty fun story associated with it. Last week, on the day after the big snow, I took a late lunch break and drove up to Rotary Park near Horsetooth Reservoir to try to get some good pictures of the new snow. As I drove down the road over the dams, I could see this beautiful fog being blown around on top of the water, it was an incredible sight.

When I got up to Rotary, there was one other person there. Another guy, bundled up against the cold, with his tripod and very nice camera out, trying to take the same pictures I wanted! So, of course, I took a couple pictures of him taking pictures.

When I got close enough he stood up and smiled at me, and I said (rather lamely) “Um, hi. Do you Flickr?” What kind of question is that? It doesn’t even make sense. If he didn’t know what I was talking about, he would probably classify me as mentally challenged. But he just laughed and said “I was just about to ask you that!”

So, here I have met another Flickrite. His name is AJ, and I had actually commented on a couple of his photos just the day before. Now I’ve met another cool local photographer via the internet. He invited me to future Ft. Collins Flickr gatherings, and I think I’ll probably go.

This is the picture I took of AJ. It is a bit of an experiment, and I’m still kind of futzing with it. Constructive criticism is very welcome.