Guest Post by Margaret

Greetings, dedicated blog readers. I’m Margaret, Joey’s other younger sister, here to tell you about our hike up Huron Peak, a fourteener (one of 54 mountains in CO above 14,000 ft) near Buena Vista. This was the first fourteener for Christine, Adrianne, and me, and Joey’s second.

Two Pitches and Buena Vista

We drove south into Boulder and up into Boulder Canyon looking to do our first Multi-Pitch climb of the trip, 'The Young and The Rackless'.  Usually when doing anything new climbing-wise, its wise to keep the climbing easy to minimise the time and risk in learning new things.  Unfortunately, the only multi pitch sport route in the area was a 5.9 that was originally rated a 10b since it was more difficult for shorter folks.

Beta Photo from Mountain Project.  The climb is on the Upper East Face. 

Welcome to Colorado!

Wyoming treated us well, even through the final BLM campsite where we stayed.  It was a beautiful park nestled in the cottonwood trees.  The nearby river was cool and we spent a good bit of time with our feet in the water trying to stay cool.

Our campsite in Wyoming.  It was the first camp we visited managed by the Bureau of Land Management and not the National Park service or Forest Service. 

That put us in a good position to drive into Colorado.  Driving through some rain showers, we made our way to the western side of Rocky Mountain National Park near Granby, CO.  We met an unusually friendly and well-dressed ranger, who approached us at a picnic area to ask if we had any questions, and invited the nearby kids to be junior rangers.  We thought it was a bit out of the ordinary, and the shock red mutton chops and NPS issue tie might have contributed a bit to the weirdness.

On the way up the road, we saw a bit of a moose hiding in the plants.  After our sighting in Canada, we were unimpressed with only partial moose sightings, so we moved on in a hurry.  The famous Trail Ridge Road wound up the mountain and landed us at the mountaintop visitor center.  We found a cool short walk nearby out to a "Mountain Index" which helped us to see prominent features by lining up our eyes with the compass marks.

Adrianne overlooking the Colorado river at RMN Park

 

Joey checking out the Mountain Index that pointed out all of the nearby mountain peaks. 

Hoback Shield

We were reluctant to leave the Grand Tetons, but recognized that we wouldn't be finding much in the way of sport climbing if we remained there.  

The next day we leaved the awesome majesty of the rugged mountain range and headed south to Jackson Hole.  We needed to stock up on a few supplies, so we stopped at the grocery store.  Before heading in Joey and I sat in the cabin of the van and made a list of the usual items we needed to continue our journey.  We needed some bagels, carrots, cheese, apples, and OUCH!

I arched my back in electric shock!  OUCH OUCH OUCH!  My back was in so much pain!  I started swatting my back and encountered this fellow.

While minding my own business in the van, a bee stung my back.  What business did the bee have in the van?  I showed no remorse at his demise.  

The Grand Tetons

Driving into the Grand Teton National Park the next day, we were greeted with haze.  

The mountains are obscured by smoke from fires in Idaho.

We stopped at the Lodge for some coffee and internet - we wanted to get some more information on some of the climbs in the area.  At the Grand Tetons, we also noticed there was a 'Climber's Ranch' operated by the American Alipine Club.  We decided to go check it out.  

The climber's ranch is a little haven tucked into the mountains for mountaineers and climbers.  It is a dorm style ranch that has a nice picnic area, showers, laundry, and small bouldering wall.  The ranch is open to the public, they often have families stay there, but the rates are discounted for AAC members.  Naturally, we decided to join the AAC! 

New AAC member!

Yellowstone

We entered Yellowstone from the northeast.  Before getting to any geologic features, a valley filled with buffalo greeted us.  Adrianne was excited to see buffalo for the first time.  

Even though we weren't in eastern New York, seeing buffalo reminded me of this unique grammatically correct sentence, Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.  

We toured the falls of the grand canyon of the Yellowstone, zooming down and up the trail.  Calling in a reservation for a campsite from the visitor center, we continued touring.   

We visited the Norris hot springs area, with all sorts of belching and churning steam holes and some small geysers.  Before heading to camp, we made a quick stop at the paint pots to see some bubbling muddy paste.  Geology is wild.

Beartooth Pass

After a weekend of fun in Oklahoma, full of fun times with friends and some cowboy hat sightings, we returned to Billings. 

We had to restock on our supplies and get the van ready to go for the next leg of our trip.  We were headed south, to Yellowstone, and on to Colorado. 

In Montana, even the food has awesome sports on it. 

We saw some other bread with rock climbers on it. :)

The campsite host we had met the previous week recommended a scenic route to Yellowstone through Beartooth pass.  We made our way in that direction, and camped in national forest land just south of Red Lodge, MT.   We were happy to be on the road again.  We busted out our bikes and rode around some of the trails by the camp, and hung around in the hammock. 

We camped down by the river, as usual. 

I love the hammock.

Great campsite at the bottom of the mountains, our bikes are off the top of the van resting after a ride.

Allenspur

Allenspur is an idyllic climbing location.  It is on BLM land only accessed by cutting through a farm pasture. The land is on some limestone cliffs on the edge of a river valley south of Livingston, MT.   The climbing area was bordered by a farmstead with classic red buildings with white trim. 

Photo of the valley from moutainproject.com

We were excited for a full day of climbing.  The rock at this location is limestone but it is extra exciting because of the pockets of dolomite crystals! 

Dolomite crystals mixed in with the limestone make for interesting climbing in Allenspur. 

Rattler's Gulch

On Monday, we headed out of Missoula.  Our goal was to spend the week climbing through Montana before catching a flight to Oklahoma on Thursday for our friend Rhiannon's wedding. 

We chose some climbing at a drive-up approach climbing area called Rattler's Gulch.  There were some cool blades of limestone sticking out of the ground, and we had the crag all to ourselves.  Adrianne was super tired and took a nap while I scouted out the climbs.  I was pretty excited after checking out the climbs, and couldn't wait to get started. 

 

The area was marked by limestone ribs sticking out of the mountainside. 

'Going to St. Louis' was a 5.9 route up the edge of one of the blades, so that's where we started.  It was pretty different than a lot of the climbing we had done, since it was essentially up the edge of a narrow spire - not on the face of a cliff. 

The Heap

On Sunday morning, we got up early and headed out of town to Lolo pass near the Idaho border.  The climbing guidebook suggested that there were a few good sport routes in this area, we were going for a place called the Heap. 

We drove through some scenic country - rolling hills forested with pine and most of the way the road was accompanied by a river.  As we got closer, we saw more and more granite outcroppings.  That is what we were looking for. 

We ended up at the turnout indicated by the guide book.  The road we needed was closed by the National Forest service, so we needed to park the van at the bottom of the hill.  It was scorching hot outside.  I downed a cold can of soda in seconds.  Since we weren't sure exactly where this wall was, or how far it was, we decided to get out the mountain bikes and scope out the area.  

It was pretty fun biking on the forest road, it was nice and shady.  We ditched the bikes a few times to hike up some promising looking trails.  Eventually, after meandering around the woods for a while, we spot a promising looking outcropping.  Joey sees a giant vulture perched on the top - so we decide to get a closer look.  We scramble uphill through some thick grass and slide around a bit in some loose sandy dirt and finally make it to the rock.  The glitter of steel on the rock rewards us - we had found the Heap! 

Downriver

The next morning in Missoula got off to a late start.  We were staying with some friends of Graham, one of our friends in LA who grew up in Montana.  Joey had wanted to go mountain biking with Noah, one of the guys we were staying with, but neither of them were really up to it in the morning. 

Instead we went to the local farmer's market in town.  I bought some cantelope - which were apparently pretty famous judging by the reaction we got when bringing them back to the house.  It was a pretty neat experience browsing a farmers market where everyone seemed to know each other.  Missoula is a pretty large town by Montana standards, but everyone still seems to know everyone else. 

We also saw some pretty rad street music at the farmer's market.  (sorry about the siren noise)

Kootenai Canyon

After camping nearby, we headed for a fun day of climbing at Kootenai Canyon.  We spent some time consulting the guidebook on some climbs in our grade, and had trouble finding too many sport routes in the canyon.  We found three sport routes that we could climb - two 5.9s and one 5.10a. 

In the parking lot, after making some sandwiches, we noticed the trees flurrying.  Let me explain, there where white dots floating around all of the pine trees in the parking lot.  I had a hard time taking a photo of the phenomena.  Then I noticed white "flurry" by the van.  I wasn't sure if it was a moth or a butterfly, and spent a good while chasing a few of them to find out.

Whitefish and Kalispell

Adrianne:

The next day, I still wanted to take it easy on my ankle so we decided to try and find some more no-ankle activities like canoeing. After some internet searching, we found some cheaper boat rentals than were offered in the national park at Whitefish lake a few miles south. The boat rental place was at a swanky resort – so we dressed up in our finest boating gear (ha!) and headed down to the dock.

They did have canoes and kayaks for rent at reasonable prices, but we also noticed they rented stand-up paddleboards. I thought it was unlikely that Joey would want to try one since he always gives SUPers a hard time – SUPers and surfers are constantly at odds with each other. I cajoled him anyways – and the guys working the boat house also said the SUPs were 'totally' cooler than kayaks. The SUPs were twice as expensive as the canoes – but since it was a new experience we were game to spend the extra cash.

Glacier NP

We crossed into the US without issue. No serious searching or otherwise odd procedures. Rolling in a fairly conspicuous vehicle, I was a little concerned we might get some special treatment. Canada was great, but crossing back into the US gave us that “back home” feeling that's hard to get in other countries.

Belly River

After a short backtrack to score some more showers at the Nordic Center, we headed south through Alberta toward Waterton National Park.  It was beautiful country: the mountains turned into foothills and rolling plains.  

Cougar Canyon

After biking at the Nordic Center, we wanted to explore one of the roads pointed out to us by the climbers we had met at Grassi Lakes.  He suggested we'd be able to camp along the road, as we were used to dispersed camping style. 

We headed up the road, but mile after mile were tightly controlled provincial park areas.  We saw one campground near a lake, but it was full.  We were examining our maps and the GPS to try and find a place that we could camp.  After driving for about 2 hours, we decided to take the next highway back towards Canmore.  

It was getting towards evening, and the sky was turning pink and yellow.  As we pulled onto the small highway back towards Canmore we ran into a herd of Rocky Mountain sheep!  It was a herd of females, and a bunch of babies - they were hilarious to watch jump over the guardrails. 

Canmore

When we climbed at Lake Louise some other climbers mentioned some good climbing areas in Canmore, about 15 minutes outside of Banff. After camping in Banff for the evening, we headed to Canmore the next day to find some more great climbing. We stopped at a climbing store and picked up a guidebook and went to a biking store to pick up an extra tube, and absorbing some great info at both places.

We selected Grassi Lakes for our climbing destination for the afternoon. As we pulled into the parking lot, a group of bighorn sheep greeted us (in Canada they call them Rocky Mountain Sheep).

Lake Louise Take Two

As my family headed back to Colorado, Adrianne and I decided to stay in the Banff area a few more days. We returned to Lake Louise after hearing that there was a great selection of sport climbing right off of the lake.

Getting to Lake Louise, we encountered some chipper Canadian park rangers. Their accents were especially thick and hilarious.

The approach was a an easy jaunt around the picturesque lake, and some of the climbing was belayable from the main flat trail. Without a guidebook for the area, we walked around and checked out a few of the bolted lines from the ground. A doable-looking climb on some slabby rock stood out as our first target. Gung-ho, I started up the route, only to be slow past some sections that weren't as easy as they looked from the ground. Adrianne struggled a bit but made it up the route as well. Climbers on routes to either side of us kept us company at this popular climbing spot. During small talk with one of our climbing neighbors, they pointed out a few nearby routes, including a nice two-pitch 10c. I responded: “Thanks, but that's a little out of our grade”. The climbers gave me a confused look in return, but didn't think anything of it at the time.

 The first climb of the day named The Incredible Talking Woman

 Adrianne resting at the crux

Guest Post

Hi Readers! This is Christine, Joey’s favorite and coolest sister guest writing for a post! This is my first blog experience so hang in there.  

The morning dawned cloudy, drizzly and chilly and all 7 of us piled into the trusty Suburban to head up the Ice Roads Parkway. The drive up was mostly uneventful; Joey, Adrianne, Elizabeth, and Margaret all fell asleep while I took in the beautiful mountain landscape whipping past the windows. 

Sleeping through the scenery.

Banff and Family

Leaving Revelstoke, we had a bit of ground to cover to make it to Banff to meet up with my family.  We stopped in Glacier National Park (Canada) for a quick hike on the way, then drove through Yoho and Banff national parks to get to the city of Banff where my family was hanging out.  Along the Canada 1 through the parks, large fences keep wildlife away from the freeway.  Bridges with trees and grasses planted on top and tunnels allow wildlife to safely cross the traffic.

We rolled in after dinner to meet the my family.  My parents had some warm leftovers and mountains of cookies waiting for us.  My whole family had made it up to Canada for the first summer that we all vacationed together in quite a few years.  My sisters and parents had already had a couple days of adventures hiking around Moraine Lake and some waterfalls in the park.

My fam having fun at Moraine Lake.  

Revelstoke starts in reverse

"OMGBLAHPFFTTGAHWHAT!"

I wake with a start.  In my delirium, I imagine the van rolling off the cliff, bears ripping the van open, and other apocalyptic nightmares. 

"What is it!? Are there bears!?" I ask. 

"Shhhhhhhhh!" Joey leans over and puts his hand over my mouth. "Look at that" he whispers.  He points towards the windshield and a bull elk is staring straight at us in the van.  The elk is at eye level and not even a few feet away from the front of the van. 

I am frozen.  Eventually the elk turns his huge antlered head and looks towards the other side of the road.  Another bull Elk looks back at him.  The two bulls continue grazing on the side of the road/mountain.  The slowly ramble downhill. 

I collapse back onto the bed.  It is not even 6 in the morning.  

Joey is primed and ready for action. He jumps out of bed, and eats some breakfast (leftover stew from the night before... surprisingly delicious first thing in the  morning).  He gets dressed and is ready to go.   My head feels like it is stuffed with cotton.   I am cold, and not ready to move anywhere quickly.  

Joey runs around the van and moves the chocks out of the way of the tires, and starts inspecting the route recommended by the GPS.  Slowly I make my way to the front seat. 

"Look, we can just continue up this road for three miles and make it back to Highway 1."  Joey tries to convince me that getting an early start today is great idea.  Then we'd have plenty of time to visit Revelstoke and Glacier National Parks today before heading to Banff to meet up with his family. 

We fire up the van and continue uphill along the road. 

Check out the topo view of this map I made of our trip:  

Map of our off road journey up Mt. English

We are practically on top of Mt. English - we didn't know that at the time.  We could see the mountain top and it seemed pretty close - it was actually rather fantastic.  The clear morning air made everything seem a lot better. 

We rumble up the road, and criss-cross the utility lines again.  We stop to shower and feel refreshed.  Okay - awake and ready for action!

We rumble across a flat section of terrain, the brush begins to get thicker and thicker.  We were used to some dense vegetation crowding the road before - but this was like we were driving over a single-track bike path!

Eventually we clear the brush, and start going over some boulder-y terrain.  The rocks are a mix - between football size and smaller gravel.  We reach an uphill section and the wheels start spinning. 

No problem. 

Joey jumps out and locks up the front wheels and we kick the van into FOUR WHEEL DRIVE.  

Woo-hoo!  Things are looking good. 

Kamloops

Some days on the van trip we try to be pretty boring.  We headed out from our sweet campsite outside of Whistler and Banff national park. That day we needed to cover a lot of ground and to take care of a few chores. 

We rolled down from the Cascade mountains and into the dry plains of Canada along highway 1.  It was a high desert terrain and hot. A big change from the misty cool weather we'd had in the Olympic peninsula and Vancouver for the past week. 

Sam and Adam

In the morning we headed off to Canada. We passed some auto parts stores, and jumped at the chance to change our battery cables. The van was getting a little hard to start when hot, and then the cables were worn. One of the terminals had even started to melt from a bad contact, so we couldn't wait longer. All of the cables off was a little trickier than we thought (as usual when fixing the van), but eventually we were back on the road.

Melting battery connection and bad wire.

Wonderland

Leaving Vancouver, we headed north to Squamish along the Sea to Sky parkway. Unfortunately, low clouds and rain obstructed the views on this scenic route. In Squamish, we stopped at the nicest visitor center along the trip, complete with an espresso bar and free wifi. We had planned out a few climbs, but the rainy weather ruined our plans. Instead, we went for a soggy mountain bike ride.

Great climbing rained out.

Awesome visitor center.

Orcas and Eagles

There are very few things on our trip that we decided to do for sure from the outset.  One of them was to go see Orca whales in Washington.  My Aunt Kathy recommended an outfit that went out of the islands off of the coast of Washington where you could spot Orca whales.  I wanted to see them. 

In the evening after hiking the Deer Lake trail, we stopped at a sweet coffee shop in Port Angeles.  Our mission was to find a spot on one of the Orca whale tours for tomorrow.  After looking at various tour websites, Joey decides that the tour boats would be 'too lame' for him.  He starts looking at little inflatable zodiac tour boats.  I think those are insane. 

Eventually I come across an Orca kayaking tour.  This would be cool - even if we didn't see Orcas, we'd be kayaking in the ocean - and if we did see Orcas, it would be nuts because we'd be in kayaks. 

At this point it's about 9pm, and I'm not so sure if this place even had spots open for us to join their tour.  I call them up and the owner of the company answers the phone.  He was a super nice guy, we explain we'd like to join in on a tour for tomorrow, and he tells us that the group he has booked has 9 participants - if he took on two more he'd need another guide.  He tells us he'll call up another guide and see if they'd like the work and he'd call us back to let us know. 

Not even 15 minutes later, the guy calls us back and says another guide would be happy to work tomorrow - so we were free to join in on the tour.  We enthusiastically agree to join the tour.  Then I ask him if it is even resonable for us to get to the tour by 10:30 am the next morning.  The thing was, we were in Port Angeles, and the tour started from Friday Harbor.  

The geography off of the Olympic peninsula is something like this:  The peninsula is pretty large, and north of Seattle.  To get to Seattle you can drive around the edge of the peninsula - but you have to backtrack south a bit and you are in for a 3 hour ride.  North of the peninsula are a series of islands.  To reach them you need to take a ferry.  We were sort of in the middle of the peninsula, and needed to reach one of the northern-most islands. 

Clark, the tour owner was awesome.  He came up with a perfect itinerary for us to reach the tour in time.  We would need to take the 6:30am ferry from Port Townsend (about 2 hours from Port Angeles).  Then we'd need to drive the length of the Whidbey island (about an hour), to reach our next ferry by 9am.  That ferry we could just "walk-on" and ride for an hour to reach Port Friday. We'd likely arrive about 30 minutes before the tour and it allowed some time for the ferry to be late.  He even recommended a place to camp after the tour.

So that's what we did. 

Deer Lake

The Deer Lake trail speaks for itself.

Sol Duc Falls

Where is the trail?

Lots of uphill.

Deer Lake

Deer Lake

At an elevation marker.  Around 1650 feet of elevation gain on this trail.

Back at the falls on the way back down.

Foxgloves and Forks

Joey has been making a valiant effort to try and teach me some of the basics of photography. Some of the photos from this post are from us messing around with cameras.  We had plenty of opportunities to experiment, as Olympic National Park is quite photogenic. 

We took our time in the morning, playing around with depth of field. 

SPOT Tracker

My dad rides motorcycles. He likes going on cross country trips which require some extra planning. One of the tools he uses is a SPOT tracker. A GPS communication tool that will text or email your followers where you are.

Dad bought us one of these for our roadtrip.

The SPOT tracker has 4 functions. It will text the following messages:

1. Check in / Okay
2. Headed on an Adventure
3. We need (non-emergency) help
4. 911

The idea is that the first 2 messages will go to your family and friends to let them know you are okay. We have been taking advantage of this when we are in locations without cell reception.

The third message is to request help from AAA.  With the van as reliable as it is, we are sure it will be unlikely we'll need this one. heh.

The last message contacts local emergency services directly. They'll send in the local search and rescue... Safety Team!

The device will also track your progress if you are going on a neat trail you'd like to remember.

I thought I'd advertize this, since it has been a great investment. We haven't needed to use any of the 'help' functions - although we came close once...

If you'd like to follow our "real time" progress, you can follow our steps on our shared SPOT tracking webpage. There is a permanent link on the sidebar of the blog as well.

Driving in the Mist

July 15, 2012

Since we left Smith Rock a day early, we decided to take advantage of the extra day.  We wanted to try and catch our friends, Sam and Adam, in Vancouver.  Sam was heading down to Pasadena on July 20, so we wanted to catch her before she left. We hadn't been sure if we'd be able to catch her, so the thunderstorms we really a blessing in disguise.

We headed straight through Oregon.  We got to enjoy driving through Willamette national forest in the mist and the rain.  There had been several wildfires in the area, so the burned sections were a stark contrast to the rest of the forest.

Before we headed out on our trip, my dad was telling me about a book he had read 'Blue Highways' where a man drives across the country. One of the highlights the author recounts is dining experiences at hole-in-the-wall restaurants he finds along the way.  He ends up coming up with a rating system for the restaurants - how many calendars they have on the walls from traveling salesmen.  Apparently a few people in my family have read the book, so sometimes we comment that a restaurant is a '3 calendar spot' (good) or a no calendar spot (bad).

On that drive we found a place that must have been a 4 calendar spot (very good!). We were nearing the exit of the forest, and the road opened up on a little town.  Okay, so the town had no stoplight, and the gas station was closed down.  There were some old apartment buildings lining the roads and beat up trucks parked for sale.  It looked like a sad little place. The weather just made everything a bit drearier.

We drove by, and spotted a building with an overflowing parking lot with people parking on the side of the road.  We had to do a double take because all the other shops we had passed were abandoned or closed.  This place was overflowing.

Indian Drums

We originally agreed that we would not look for campsites in the dark.  Sometimes you can't do much about it, and this is what happens. 

For the most part, we've been camping at what are known as 'dispersed camp sites' in national forest land.  These are small camp sites that are usually 10 to 15 feet off of the road with a small fire ring and that is just about it.  It is free to camp in these spots and they are maintained by the national forest service. 

We arrived in the Willamette National forest around 9:30 after leaving Smith Rock. It was just getting dark and we started pulling off onto some of the smaller national forest roads.  In Oregon there are a lot of trees.  

The camp sites are usually off of much smaller national forest roads, and usually they are dirt roads.  The sites are not usually marked on a map, so usually you have to go driving around to find them. 

Usually our method is to look at the national forest on the GPS, and check out the roads there first.  We usually select, at random, a windy and small national forest road as our destination. We usually find something on the way to the way-point or we keep driving around nearby until we find a place. 

Fast forward to Willamette - we were driving on some of these small forest roads in the dark.  In this forest, we could see only two tire treads thinly illuminated by our headlights as we cut through thick underbrush.  Dense pine branches loomed over the van.  At some points we were screeching past thick bushes scraping the sides of the van. 

The view from the van while searching for sites at night.

We were not having too much luck locating any camp spots.  I was shining my head lamp out of the window avoiding branches as I was trying to see if there was a turn out on the road. 

We drove by a truck parked on the side of the road.  Whoa - first person we've seen dispersed camping.  

Eventually we get frustrated, and cannot find a spot.  We pull out into a turn off and turn off the van.  Instantly the van fills up with 10 billion tiny flies.   Joey and I sit in the front seats and use the various maps and pamphlets that are handy and swat flies karate kid style for about half an hour.  My best shot I got two flies at once.  It was pretty amusing. 

Finally we collapse into bed.  And we hear a thump.  I think it is coming from the van. Is something leaking? 

We look around, and wait. Another thump.  No, it must not be coming from the van.  What is it?  Joey thinks it is a drum.   Another boom.  We were spooked. 

Were the drum beats getting louder?  Was the guy at the other campground beating a drum?  It was kind of late... 

I remembered there was a resort nearby - maybe they were having a pow-wow?

The indian drums beat into the night.  Eventually the drums subsided and we went to sleep. 

The next evening, we found a campsite during the day.  We jump out of the van, and I start pulling out the cookware to make dinner. 

Thump.  

The noise is coming from the van water tank.  "Hey Joey, can you hear the Indian drums?"

We both laugh.