Author Archives: Kate

There’s a few nice shots from the day in the gallery.

After the snowy hike to Vedauwoo, it seemed the Wyoming trad climbing season is now officially over. But on Saturday, we had a nice sunny, warm day, so Mark and I decided to head up the Poudre canyon for some sport climbing. We haven’t climbed in this area in almost a year, but we were both excited about the lightweight packs (no rack) and the simplicity of a quick trip out to climb.

Our original goal for the day was the Crystal Wall, where we’ve never been before. Good directions from Doug helped us find the fixed rope for the walk up. But we were standing in the road, looking up at the shade-covered imposing face of the Crystal wall, or the sunny familiar climbs at the Palace and we decided to change plans for the day.

I’ve been working on my leading, so the first climb of the day was the easiest one we knew of at the Palace.

Escalera (5.8) – Unfortunately, my lead here did not go as well as planned. I got three bolts up and completely stuck. It was a different situation for me. Usually, I get into these spots and panic until Mark lets me lower, but this time I climbed up and down about 15 times and just couldn’t figure out how to get to that 4th bolt. Finally, I think Mark got frustrated enough to let me come down, and he finished the climb with plenty of nice comments about how that middle section was really tough. I climbed and cleaned it on toprope, and fell a few times. I guess the trick is to climb above that bolt to the left, and then hand traverse across a positive ledge with icky feet to the bolt, and then continue the traverse to the chimney on the right. I think I’d like to go back someday soon and pink point this one with an extended sling to protect this hard part.

After my two strong attempts at the 5.8, my fingers were sore and I was feeling like sport climbing was a different beast than we were used to. Mark agreed to lead up a climb I’ve been wanting to do since we first set foot in the Palace for our second route of the day.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel (5.10) – This climb was really fun. It was very well protected, and I think if we go back, I’d have a much better chance at leading this one all of the way through than Escalera. There were great big holds at the bottom, beautiful thin face climbing in the middle, and a tricky overhanging crack at the top. What more could you ask for? We both had a great time with this one.

By 2p, we were feeling pumped and ready to head home. Besides, Mark wanted to play tennis at 4p, so we needed to get packed up. Clouds were moving in rapidly, and what had been a blustery warm wind all morning was turning into a strong chilly breeze.

On the walk back across the river, Mark lost his balance and nearly did a full face-plant into the water. I made a similar mistep after giving up and wading. I tripped over an underwater rock and went full front body into the river. We both came out looking like we’d been swimming, but at least the water wasn’t too cold… yet.

This was actually shot a couple of weeks ago also, before the big fogs this week. Mornings like these are why I like to be the one who takes the dog out at dawn.

This is actually a shot from a couple of weeks ago. October 3rd, to be exact. There were some really nice wave clouds at sunset tonight also, but I’ve got a backlog that I want to put out on the web. There’s a few more of this sunset in the gallery. Enjoy!

Thought I would write just a little bit about the cool foggy mornings we’ve been having along the Northern Front range this week. Dylan has a particularly awesome picture of our morning pea soup up on Flickr right now.

I’ve actually heard a lot of theories to explain this lately, but I think what happened was a mixture of local and large-scale weather. Locally, we had a pretty intense rain event, that left the ground very wet (saturated, almost).

Evaporating moisture from the surface condenses in the cool dry air that moved in behind the frontal system that brought the rain. Makes sense. Check out the temperatures (red line) and dew points (blue line) the last couple of days:

On the large-scale though, the storm system has moved off to the east, and has been sending little bits of cloudiness our way. The satellite makes this fog look like part of the cloud system just getting trapped in our little bit of local valley.

When you sit at near 1,000ft above the storm to your east, it’s easy to get outflow from big storms at ground level. And pretty cool! I’ve enjoyed watching the fog flow in and lift out so much lately, that I made a little movie from the web cam that sits on top of my building. Enjoy!

Lots of great shots up in the gallery!

On their last day in town, Mark and I decided to take his parents up to Vedauwoo for an afternoon hike. Snow had fallen over the area the night before, and the Box Canyon trail wove up through the Turtle rocks covered in a light layer of wet, melting snow.

Vedauwoo is an amazing and mysterious place. Each season the light changes, the trees change, and it seems the rocks themselves change. Mark and I have spent so much time there this summer, that the Turtle Rock formation felt like a whole different place with snow on the ground and water running over the rocks.

We hiked to the top of the trail, and everybody thoroughly enjoyed the view. I scrambled over to a large flat area and Mark took a bunch of shots of me doing yoga. It didn’t take us long to get up there, and we made it back to the car right around two hours. I don’t know how long the hike is, but Mark’s parents felt it was not too steep and not too long, and perfectly fun. They both had so much fun, they hope to head back to Vedauwoo someday.

There’s some nice shots from the day in the gallery.

With Mark’s parents visiting for the weekend, we decided to show them some of the sites. The Poudre Canyon is a local spot of beauty, and the overcast skies provided a perfect opportunity for long exposure shots of the river. The fall colors were beautiful, the river was low, and the wind whistled through the dry leaves leaving the quiet ominous feeling of an incoming storm.

There’s blurry photos from the day in the gallery.

The story begins last April, when Mark and I paid $325 for a half vegetable share and a full fruit share of the Colorado State University Community Supported Agriculture (CSU CSA) program. This is a large organic vegetable garden that is part of the CSU horticulture research department. We paid for a share in the spring, and for the past 20 weeks we’ve gotten a huge pile of food to take home and eat every Thursday afternoon. The garden/farm has been a huge producer this year of everything from melons, to corn, to tomatoes, onions, peppers, broccoli, kale, chard, spinach, eggplant and various other herbs and veggies, too numerous to count.

At the beginning of October, we received the first of our killing frosts, and the growing season was officially over. On Harvest Day, we drove out to the farm for the first time (until now, we had been picking up previously harvested food on the college campus). We spent almost two hours ranging the fields, filling a huge bin with our own dug carrots, broccoli, spinach, leeks, kale, pumpkins, squash, peppers and even raspberries. It was so nice to have Mark’s Mom and Dad there with us, who have kept veggie gardens for years, and knew all kinds of useful tips about things as varied as “how to pull carrots out of the ground without leaving the bottom half in” and “how to recognize spinach when it just looks like a weed between rows.”

At the end of the day, we enjoyed fire-roasted chillies, stone soup, and carrying home the three biggest pumpkins in the whole patch.

Sunday night we spent making a huge batch of some of the freshest, best tasting vegetable soup you can find anywhere. And we, in fact, found it in the mud and dirt of our own home town. I think that’s about the coolest food you can make.

Malcolm Gladwell has been one of Mark and my heros ever since we listened to Blink while traveling around to climbing and mountain biking trails last summer. I remember driving Rachel home from Vedauwoo one day last year, playing his book. Mark and I were fascinated by the story of New Coke, and Rachel was sound asleep in the back seat. Oh well.

Here he is in a speech about revolutions in marketing from the food industry that have brought bountiful choice to American grocery stores. In the end, this actually leaves me wondering. I do love my coffee milky and weak, but was the explosion of choice good or bad? The Omnivore’s Dilemma might argue the opposite point, but its nice to see both sides of the tomato. As it were.