So far this spring, weather windows on weekends have been difficult to come by. El Nino has been and continues to be generous and we definitely need the moisture, but it’d be nice to have some sun once in awhile too. One such day where we did actually get some weekend sun, a few of us headed on up to Loveland Pass for what turned out to be a nice tour along the Continental Divide. Out across the long, undulating ridge we went to the summmit of Grizzly D, down the north face, up the east side of “Cupid”, and then down Dave’s Wave to the Arapaho Basin Ski Area. Keep reading…
As summer winds down, it gets increasingly more difficult to find the motivation to get out. It should be the opposite, as, strategically, one might think the best plan of attack would be to hit it hard in the Spring, take a break for the first few weeks of summer, when there isn’t enough snow to ski, but just enough to make it annoying to hike. Then as the monsoon winds down, you’d wind up your trips, but any mountain man knows all too well the undeniable call of the wild and one’s insatiable desire to head back in to the hills – time and time again. Keep reading…
The title of this TR is a tad misleading, as it assumes a level of despair and emptiness. Congestion in Colorado has been a brain damaging experience, but I’m not waiving the white flag just yet. On the contrary, I was able to seek solitude, in addition to finding a dispersed campsite….in the Front Range of all places – and it even had a sense of solitude. Truth of the matter is, I spend the greater part of my work week ranting and raving about stuff that doesn’t really even affect me that much – I just have that natural urge as a human to fill that empty void in my soul by bitching about things out of my control, and at the end of the day, it doesn’t really do anyone any good. Keep reading…
I used to hike Greyrock Mountain a lot back in the day when my cousin went to CSU. It’s a fantastic loop, arguably one of the finest in the Front Range foothills and what Morrison is to Denver, Bear is to Boulder – Greyrock is to Fort Collins. I hadn’t been up it since 2009 at the least and figured it was time for a reunion. My toenail fungus, which I had ignored basically since college, finally got the best of me lately. After 12 straight weeks of oral Lamisil, the fungus was finally subsiding, but the nail of my right toe had become so deformed that it started to grow in to my toe (ingrown). It eventually became infected and required a minor surgical procedure. I’m usually good with novacaine, but this go around was a little different, as 2 shots of the stuff didn’t do much. Afraid he’d inject too much, the doc apologized in advance, gave me something to bite down on and basically dug out and yanked my toenail off. I hope to never experience that ever again. Keep reading…
