Author Archives: Kate

As mentioned in a previous post, I won a cool watch as a semi-finalist in the Timex Return to the Outdoors contest. After getting many requests to see the aforementioned essay, I finally got a copy back from the people at the website. Here it is!

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“I’m STUCK!” I scream out to anybody who is listening. I can hear my friends laugh out loud and then begin yelling encouragement back to me. The situation does not seem as funny to me. I’m wedged in the teeth of a giant crack in a granite boulder that is, quite literally, older than dirt. My right hand is wedged deep in the darkness before me, and the crystals of the granite are slowly, excruciatingly, tearing the skin on the back of my hand. My left hand is braced against the edge of the rock in front of me, pressing my shoulder and back into the sharp crystalline rock on all sides. My feet kick helplessly as I try to find some way to move. Up or down, it doesn’t matter at this point, I just need to move. I wiggle my knee into the crack and flex my thigh, the muscles expand and bite into the rock on either side. Or maybe the rock is biting me. It gives me enough purchase to slowly ooze up another 6 inches, and reposition for the next move.

I am climbing a wide crack in Vedauwoo, Wyoming, and it is one of my favorite things to do! The rock is old, and it knows better than me. I am little, and the mountain is big. When I finally make it to the top of the crack, and then the top of the rock, I am exhausted in all ways. I sit on top of the rock, bleeding a little, feeling the wind on my face, and feeling utterly content. On all sides of me are huge rock formations. The wind is howling through the aspens below, making them glitter in the sun. I can see a hawk gliding overhead and a herd of antelope grazing on the plain to my south. The air smells like dust, rock, sagebrush and sweat. My friends are chattering a hundred feet below me. And I am truly happy. Vedauwoo is a wild and special place. It is secluded and exposed at the same time. The climbing is painful and exhilarating. The wind blows and I feel full of life. I will come back to this place again and again. I hope to return often for the rest of my life, bringing family, new friends, and eventually my own children and their children. My house may not be in that wild valley, but it is my home.

We’ve had two icky weekends in a row, and busy, busy weeks between them. Last weekend, D-Liz mentioned they were heading to the rock gym, and Mark and I considered climbing indoors for the first time in years. We ended up going along and getting a week of free membership at Miramont North to see if we could work indoor climbing into our schedules.

The gym is an interesting one, with a whole fitness center (ie cardio, weight-lifting, yoga classes, basketball courts, etc) and a giant, very nice rock wall on one side.

I think the week was successful. We didn’t horribly embarrass ourselves while climbing the overhanging jug-fests that cover the walls. Mark did fall off of a 5.7 towards the end of our second day, which was hilarious. Yesterday, I tried bouldering by myself in the afternoon, and I remembered the problems I have had with bouldering in the past.

I’ve always said I’m not good at bouldering, which is true. I’m not super strong, and that is immediately apparent when I boulder. Plus I’m afraid of falling, which isn’t the best when you don’t have a rope. Finally, though, I don’t know the “rules” for bouldering. There are certain conventions and etiquette that boulderers all seem to know, and I’m left feeling a little confused and out-of-sorts. For instance:

1. I understand that between problems you’re supposed to sit on the floor and stare intently at the wall. How long, exactly should you sit on the floor? How far away from your problem should you sit? I mean, should I camp out directly below it or can I sit back in the corner? Can I do something other than stare at the wall? Like read or do homework?

2. It seems to be ok to watch other boulderers when you’re in a group, but creepy if you’re the only one there. Why is that?

3. How do you keep iPod earbuds in your ears after jumping down from the top of the boulder?

4. How long should you keep trying a problem until you decide to give up and move on? I’m a big fan of the “Well, didn’t get it on my third try, let’s try something else…” school, but it seems like more serious boulderers will work much harder on finishing one specific sequence.

5. How long is a normal bouldering “session”? I was there for an hour yesterday and felt like I got a great workout. But there were people sitting around staring at the wall that were there when I got there and still there when I left. Maybe they’re meditating? Would I do better if I spent more time there? Am I getting any benefit from only an hour of bouldering or do I need to spend several hours in order to climb the awesome routes?

So, that’s my adventure for the week. I asked a girl at the gym some of these questions and she seemed upset at first that I had disrupted her staring at the wall (I guess that’s not polite) and then laughed at my suggestion that I could do homework between problems. Mark, also, has no clue about these things. I suppose I’ll just have to learn in time. Unless there are awesome boulderers out there who would like to let a n00b in on the secret?

I know Mark isn’t going to like this one as much, but I really enjoy staring into the forest on my computer monitor. As usual, I’ve saved the image as a few different sizes for the most common screen resolutions. Feel free to down load the one that works for you by clicking on the link to the correct size below the image! Enjoy!

1024 x 768, 1440 x 900, 1600 x 1200, 1680 x 1050, 2560 x 1600

So, just wanted to drop a quick note about life around here the last few days. The first exciting thing that’s happened for us is the arrival of our freezer beef! This fall, we went in with three other families and bought a whole cow from a local ranch. The cow was entirely grass fed and finished, and grew up within 100 miles of our house. The processor is even very local. Yesterday afternoon, Liz brought home #4977, and last night we thanked her for her sacrifice and divided the 300 pounds of beef among the families.

Liz has a lovely blessing and gratitude post up on her blog, along with a few pictures. She echo’s the feeling we all have about receiving the gift of food from this innocent animal. I wish I could be so eloquent.

(This is obvious stealing of one of Doug and Liz’s pictures, because I didn’t bring my camera last night)

Also, a few weeks ago, my short story was chosen as a semi-finalist in the Timex Return to the Outdoors contest. While I didn’t win an exciting vacation to anywhere, I did win a Timex Expedition watch, and it came in the mail yesterday. I think this is a darn cool award. The watch is huge, way too big for my little wrists, but I intend to wear it around happily on our next adventures. It has the usual date and time functions, with some obscenely huge number of lap splits and several congruent countdown timers. It also has a BAROMETER AND A THERMOMETER. Which is just freakin’ sweet.

So, this is an image of upper level stratus over the desert in Southern California from last November (2007). While the large scale flow could be approximated as two dimensional, the mountains and conflicting air masses in the region add in three dimensional turbulence. In class today, we had a lovely derivation of energy cascades in three-dimensional turbulent flows, and I was reminded of a poem we learned in my first year of grad school.

Big whirls have little whirls
that feed on their velocity,
and little whirls have lesser whirls,
and so on, to viscosity!

– L. F. Richardson (1922)

So my goal in the next week or so is to make a photo of three dimensional turbulence and energy cascades. It might take a while. The forecast is for generally laminar flow the next few days.

I know, I know. I’m a huge nerd.

The weather is changing. The nights are cooling off. The patterns are shifting. Our weekdays are sunny, warm and beautiful. Our weekends have been rainy and gross. So, Mark and I decided to take a short break from climbing and search out some of the best fall colors in Colorado. We ended up on the West White Pine Mountain trail, early on a Saturday morning.

There’s about a ba-jillion amazing photos from the day in the gallery!

I know, I know, Dylan’s awesome GeoMashups plugin will make the same cool google maps of my gps data as the one I just stuck in here. But I’ve been to lazy to upgrade, I’m sorry. It’s on the list for this upcoming rainy weekend, I promise!

So, for our hike, we headed about an hour west of town, up and down some winding remote canyons, and eventually found our way to this trailhead. We have hiked this trail (to the summit) before, and I knew the aspens would be fantastic. In fact, they were totally amazing.

It’s October in Colorado, and hunting season is in full swing. I knew this trail was remote and had easy access by 4wd vehicles, so we brought bright colored clothing for the whole family to make sure we were visible to any hunters in the area. Liv had to deal with wearing one of Mark’s red shirts for the day. It made her look completely goofy, and she got comments all day long. But she didn’t get shot at! On our way home, we stopped at Jax and bought her a hunter’s orange vest.

We hiked up to the pass, meandering through aspen groves, pine forests, and open prairies along the way. Our GPS track looks a bit like confused moose wandering up the side of the mountain. On this trip, we didn’t hike to the summit of either peak, though. The aspens were our goal, and they petered out just below the saddle.

When we got home, I had almost 400 shots of yellow aspens on my camera! So, it’s going to take a while for me to get all of my favorites up on the site. But, I think there’s enough here now to show it was a fantastic day, and a really amazingly beautiful hike.

Dance Edition!!

It probably isn’t a secrete to anybody that Mark and I have started taking, yes, this is true, Ballroom Dance Classes. We’ve had four classes so far, and have learned timeless steps like triple jive and “modern rock.” We’ve also learned some basics of the European style like quarter turns and pivot turns. Andre, our soviet-era Russian professional ballroom dance instructor, is very keen on making everything look good and flow, and we’ve been working hard to keep him happy. The most fun we’ve had, though, is with the Merengue. You should see us rock out to this one. We totally look like these people.

And, while we’re dancing ourselves silly, here’s a video my little brother made to blow off steam during finals last week. Yeah, he’s awesome. Here’s a link to the original groovy dancing girl if you’re curious.

So, I’m a bit behind in blogging this, but there are some nice photos from our second day in Colorado Springs up in the Gallery.

On Sunday morning, Mark and I woke up late, packed up, checked out, and hit the road. We were due to meet my bro Kev in Denver at around 2pm, so we didn’t really have time to climb. The hotel, and many billboards in the region, extolled the amazing, unforgettable, unimaginable, fantasmagoric beauty of the Seven Falls area. We thought that sounded like a fun way to spend a Sunday morning, so we headed up to check out the Falls after breakfast.

That’s not a picture of Seven Falls. Nor is it a photo of two of seven falls. No, when we got to the canyon where the waterfalls were, signs lined the road declaring that we were about to drive down the “Most beautiful mile of road IN THE WORLD!” This sounded pretty good.

We rounded the bend and the toll booth appeared in front of us. Ah. Such is the way of tourist traps in the mountains. They wanted us to pay $18 ($9 each) to drive down a mile of road and see the waterfalls. We didn’t think it was worth it.

It reminded me of the classic Grandfather Mountain U-Turn of 2003 (We wouldn’t pay $24 dollars to drive up the side of the mountain), or the legendary Royal Gorge reversal of 2005 (definitely never going to pay $40 to walk across a bridge).

So, following years of precedent and tradition, Mark swung the Prius around and we drove off in search of free waterfalls. We headed up the next canyon to the north, which was free and very beautiful. At the top, we checked out Helen Hunt Falls (very pretty, and a pioneer woman). There was a short trail, and we hiked up to Silver Cascade falls and enjoyed the view of the canyon and the long, lovely water fountain that slithers from the top of the rocks.

After the waterfalls, we headed down the Goldmine Road – a narrow two-way traffic dirt road that winds down the rim of the canyon and back to the Springs. It was a warm, sunny afternoon, and the trip home was too quick.