Author Archives: Kate

I feel like the summer is getting late, but I don’t know where the season went. I’m counting down the last few weekends of August and realizing that we won’t be climbing Long’s this year either. I don’t think we’re going to climb in Black Canyon either, which was my goal for this year. Classes are going to be starting soon, and I haven’t bagged a single 14er! I haven’t been mountain biking once! It’s already too late to rent the duckies and float the Poudre as we had been hoping.

I guess this year the priorities just got shifted. I do feel that I’ve made some very important progress in my most recently chosen career. I’m much nearer to finishing my masters thanks to all of the hard work I put in this summer. And for fun stuff, well, my crack climbing is better now than it was last summer, that’s for sure. I’ve explored places in ‘Voo that I’ve been wanting to check out for years now. And of course, the traveling this year has been fantastic.

I may not have been able to check off all of my goals for this summer, but I do feel stronger, somehow. Both mentally and physically. I feel more confidant in my place in Colorado, and more sure of the things and people I love. I suppose all I could ask for is to learn and grow a bit each season, and I think I’m doing great there.

Here’s a shot from one of my dog walks this week. Looks like we’re getting closer to sunrise-shooting-season.

I do love my job. Sometimes it’s stressful. Sometimes I get tired and freak out. But last night, I got to leave the poster session just a little early to “Measure the diffusive and reflected longer wavelengths of radiation.” In other words, “to take pictures of the pretty sunset.” Scientifically, of course.

I’ve spent my week at a team meeting for my advisor’s largest research project. It’s been a great meeting. On Tuesday, I gave my first public science talk: to the whole conference! Close to 100 of the best, and most famous, climate and cloud modelers in the world sat there and watched me explain the MJO in the most interesting and least complicated way that I could. From what I hear, it was a resounding success. It’s sooo good for your ego to have so many people come up and tell you how much they enjoyed your talk. I feel really proud right now.

But also really tired. I’ve got a late night tonight and then a stressful day tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to this weekend right now!

In honor of the cloud modeling meeting, here’s a shot of the Colorado sky this afternoon.

I put the rest of the photos from the weekend up in the gallery!

Sunday morning dawned bright and clear. I had one of the best nights of sleep while backpacking that night. I think it supports my theory that I am not capable of sleeping at 11,000ft. Our camp was closer to 10,000ft this weekend, and I felt much better all night. I woke before Mark, grabbed my camera and dog, and hiked back up to the lakes for morning photography. I was not early enough to catch any alpin-glow, but the reflections on hang lake were incredible.

I wandered back to camp and got Mark up. We made breakfast (thank goodness for that mosquito netting again), and Mark had an adventure in backpacker’s biscuits and gravy. Liv ended up eating half a roll of self-rising biscuit dough that morning. We packed water and snacks into Mark’s bag and then hiked up to Blue Lake.

Sunday, the weather seemed much better. Mark and I were quickly able to hike to the top of the nearby pass. From there, we had to decide if we wanted to hike to Island and Timber Lakes on the far side of the pass, or hike up to the summit of Cameron Peak from there. I’m a sucker for peaks, and Mark calculated that the elevation loss/gain would be about 2,000ft less if we just went up, so we headed into the trees.

The trail we found wound up around the lower slopes of the peak to a wide grassy saddle on the north side of Cameron Peak. From there, it was straight up over the hill, over the first false summit, and then on to the true one at 12,194ft. The views were awesome.

Another great thing about this little peak, we were the only ones there. We hung out on the summit, which we had all to ourselves, for about half an hour, and then took off down the hill. We decided to descend the south side, on a more direct route to the pass. This worked great until we got a little lost in the trees, and I did end up leading us into a bit of a swamp towards the end, but we popped out into the grass again quickly without much bushwacking.

From there, we hiked back to camp, packed up, and headed back to the car. It took us about 3.5 hours to hike down from the pass to the car that afternoon. It felt grueling, and I found myself horribly sunburnt by the end of the day. As of writing, my nose and back are kind of peeling. But it was a really fun weekend!

Well, last night we had somewhere between 2 and 5 inches of rain in about 2 hours, and Fort Collins saw another series of flash floods. The last time this happend several people died, and the town had to rebuild the drainage system to better handle these large amounts of rain.

• As far as I’ve read this morning, nobody got hurt or killed last night. Some houses were damaged and traffic was definitely snarled. There’s a nice story in the Coloradoan.
• Here’s a link to the storm reports for the area.
• And here’s a link to a precipitation map of the state. You might have to choose the date “8/3/07” to see the heavy rain event. It’s really interesting how localized our precipitation is out here. It was like one storm that just sat and dumped on our town
• Mark and I weathered the storm just fine. Our house stayed dry, but the grassy drainage in front of our building was filled to the brim last night. There’s a photo below! For comparison, here’s a shot of what our house normally looks like. With the water up to the bottom of the bridge, we estimate that the pool was almost 6ft deep in some places!

So we’ve heard so many great tales of friends hiking and backpacking in the mountains lately, that Mark and I decided it was time to get our sorry butts out to the wilderness last weekend.

I’ve put the first batch of photos up in the gallery.

We left Ft Collins a little late on Friday evening, and it rained for most of the two hour drive up the Poudre Canyon. Everything was so wet by the time we reached the Blue Lake Trailhead, that we decided to just find a free place to park and sleep in the car. We drove across the street to Long Draw Road, and quickly stumbled upon a very nice, quiet, free site. Hmm, have to remember that these are here for the next time we’re camping in the area.

Mark said it was the worst night of sleep he’d had in a long time. I guess the car just isn’t long enough for him AND the dog. I did ok, and after making coffee and packing up, we hit the Blue Lake Trail at around 9am on Saturday morning.

We moved quickly over the flat-to-undulating first couple of miles, but started to slow down as the trail steepened. Around noon, we hit a serious rain shower, and we decided to pitch the tent in a nearby spot and wait out the rain there. We had about an hour to dry off and eat lunch before the sun came out. Looking at the wet rainfly and gear sitting in the sun, we figured it would be best to leave everything where it was and go look for a better site up near the lake. So we took some water and our raincoats and finished the last 20 minutes of hiking up to Blue Lake.

This large alpine lake sits right at tree line, nestled in a little valley between Clark Peak (12,951ft) and Cameron Peak (12,127ft). As the sun came out and everything dried off, we had a beautiful afternoon to walk around the lake and enjoy the area. The wildflowers were in full bloom, and columbine covered the banks of the lake.

Eventually, we scrambled up to Hang Lake, which sits about 500ft above Blue Lake at about 11,150ft. The view of distant Rocky Mountain National Park, Never Summer Mountains, and Mummy Range was incredible from there. And it looked like those mountains were seeing much worse weather than we were.

Eventually we had to head back to find a campsite. We saw some great sites down in the trees next to the lake, but there were signs everywhere saying that there was no camping allowed within 0.25 miles of Blue Lake. This didn’t seem to bother the 30 other people we saw camping down there, though. We found a nice site in the woods just off the trail just before the “No Camping Past This Point!” sign, moved all of our gear and tent stuff up the hill, and set up for the night.

Unlike our last trip two years ago, this time we brought a little wad of mosquito netting with us. I found this little mosquito tent at REI for $20 a few years ago. It’s only 3.5ft tall and maybe 6ft long by 4ft wide. It’s supposed to hang over your camp bed inside your canvas safari tent, I think. But we stuck it in one of Mark’s pack pockets for the hike up, and then hung it between a couple close together trees for a very short dining fly. Boy, was that nice. As the evening wore on, the whole south side of the netting was buzzing with those little buggers. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have to sit out in that swarm.

Mark was exhausted and fell asleep before it was even dark out. I read my little novel and eventually fell asleep myself.

So, here’s another post about activities we did a few weeks ago. I put photos from one day that weekend up in the gallery.

So, two weekends ago, July 21 & 22, we spent our first weekend back at climbing in Vedauwoo since we left for vacation. Saturday was hot, and we weren’t feeling strong, so we hiked out to Jurassic Park, an area we had never been to. It took us a little while to find the climbs we were looking for. Though, we did spend about an hour laying around in rock caves and in the sun enjoying the view.

Around lunchtime, Ann and Dylan found their way to our little crag. It was so nice to see Dylan hike up around the corner, glance up at the wall and exclaim “Oooo! Sport climbs!”

He started us out on an exciting lead of First Iteration (5.9+), a fun steep slab climb with a few bolts. Dylan got the redpoint (of course), but he had to do some wild, huge sidesteps back and forth across the face. I fell a few times but found my way up eventually, and it felt good to be back on the rock, and on my toes again.

Mark had a great lead of Recombination Mutation (5.7) after this. The climb goes through a squeeze opening to start out, and Mark had some trouble getting himself and his gear through. He actually spun a full 360-degrees before deciding how to proceed upwards. I had a ball on this climb, which finishes in a fu-u-un handcrack after the cool little chimney. My favorite two things about Ved in one climb, chimneys and handcracks!

Our last climb of the day was Sore-O-Pod (5.8). This was a long, grunting, grinding handcrack that we all climbed on TR from the First Iteration anchor. It was hard, especially after being off the rock for so long, but I had a great time on it.

Saturday night we camped out with Dylan and Ann, and enjoyed celebrating breaking in their new camper! It was an exciting evening, with fans grinding up metal, batteries going dead (and causing carbon monoxide alarms to beep), and giant moth attacks!!

Sunday morning, Mark and I hopped on Ted’s Trot (5.7). I’ve done this climb before but Mark was out of the country. This time, Mark got to try it. The pro wasn’t as good as I remembered it, and Mark did not enjoy the beginning chimney as much as I did. The crux was really interesting, though, and he figured it out and had a great time to finish. It was a great morning, and we had enough time to get everybody up and down before most of the rain hit.

Hello Vedauwoo, we’re back!

So, despite what it must look like, Mark and I are still leaving the house occasionally this summer. I know it seems like I’ve just been sitting around writing about Italy, but, in fact, we’ve been out climbing! I know, it’s amazing!

Yesterday I stuck shots from bouldering at Rotary Park up in the gallery. I know, I know, these shots are two weeks old! But I like them, and I thought they deserved some attention.

This was the Sunday the day after I got home from Italy. Ann and Dylan had a little picnic with the group up at Rotary Park to celebrate various family members visiting, their purchase of an awesome new camper, and (ahem) my safe return from overseas. After a tasty dinner of perfectly grilled chicken and really good quinoa salad, the boys retired to the boulders, and I dug out my flash.