Lows and Highs to Whitney

After Humphery's Peak in Arizona we would have been remiss if we had not stopped by the Grand Canyon. So away we went. Tiffanee was ecstatic to stop and get some salad. We planned to hike to the bottom of the canyon then back. When we got there numerous signs pointed out that such a decision would be the death of us. So of course we stuck with our decision and hiked down and up.

The hike wasn't bad at all (but I think they like switchbacks). The variety of rock was nice as you descended into the earth.

On the way back to the rim the sky began to darken.

It began raining when we reached Indian Gardens. As we continued upward the rain came harder and faster and soon hail was pelting us as well combined with lightning strikes. Water flowed down the trail at mid calf level in a cataract. I stopped to wait and Tiffanee apparently did not hear me for she bolted up the trail. I quickly caught her and we put put on our warm clothes. When the precipitation stopped I got the camera back out. Waterfalls cascaded off the canyon walls even as the rain stopped. We were soaked completely, but the hike up was nice and cool.

From there we headed to Las Vegas were we slept. Then we drove to Mt. Whitney by way of Death Valley.

We had planned to climb the mountaineers route up Whitney (since the easy route is crowded and needs a permit), but Tiffanee was nervous about it. It turned out there was a lot of snow still though and there was only one other person at the base. When we set up our tent the guy next door came and chatted with us. Apparently he hiked up every year, but his friends had all canceled due to more snow cover than was normal. He was nervous because he had not used an ice axe or crampons before. He had extra space in his permit (because everyone else bailed do to the snow) so we joined him in hiking up the regular route.

We started up and I found my recently charged batteries in my camera were dead. Apparently the batch had an internal short, but at the time I did not know. It severely limited the number of pictures we managed to take. I attempted to use the batteries from the GPS, but the camera took 4 so it was not very useful to put 2 charged batteries in with 2 dead batteries. The camp was at around 12,000 feet. All through the night the wind hammered at our tent and kept Tiffanee awake. We were the only people there though. We woke up in the morning and headed up the mountain. The trail was covered in snow so a more direct approach was useful. We put our crampons on and headed up the snow field. Tiffanee's crampon came off the boot for the second time that trip, so we cranked it down even tighter. It feel off on relatively flat ground so wasn't a big deal, but cranking it down led to blisters worse than normal, and normal for Tiffanee is terrible. Later out found that the toe bail was on upside down for some unknown reason...

I wanted a picture, but given the battery situation I left the LCD off hoping I could sneak out a few photos. I took a lovely picture off Tiffanee, but did not notice I was blocking the lens since I had the LCD off. It was the last picture I was able to take. It is pretty amazing I managed to block it not with the usual thumb or finger alone, but involved the strap as well.

Tiffanee gamely trudged up after me and eventually we reached the ridge (near 1000 feet higher than we started) and the trail. We took our crampons off and pressed ahead toward the summit. The trail was mostly clear on the west side of the ridge, but the summit hut was still full of snow.

We got to the summit and the guy we met had a throw-away camera and took photos of us which he promised to send. We turned around and headed down, packed up camp and headed down again. We glissaded down the snow field. It was much easier and faster, but made Tiff a bit nervous.

Finally we got to the car, drove to Lone Pine and ate a dinner which the guy we met paid for. He then hopped on his motorcycle and drove away headed toward the vicinity of LA. We headed north, but were completely exhausted. We stopped at a hotel finally giving up and without getting anywhere significant. We hoped the guy we met was safe in his travels. The next morning we headed toward Yosemite only to find the pass closed from snow. Later when we got home the next fall a packet of photos came in the mail. Sure enough he arrived safe and was nice enough to mail the photos to us. So we are lucky enough to have a summit photo on top of the highest of the lower 48 despite our own failure at the 6 Ps.

Humphreys Peak AZ

In what was later to become a cherished tradition we broke the tent trying to set it up at the Chaco Canyon campground. While pushing the pole through the tent sleeve the metal joint caught the sleeve and ripped it from the tent. While this allowed our tent to emulate a wind sock, it did not provide suitable shelter. After the tent raising folly we ate dinner and went to a park astronomy program and looked at Venus and the moon in the mini observatory.






The next morning we checked out the ruins and petroglyphs. They had little brochures along the way that told the history of the site and a very informative visitors center. Did you know the people there kept semi-domesticated turkeys by breaking one of their legs?

The final bit of road leading to Chaco Canyon was quite rough. The kind of washboard that feels smoother as you go faster. Thus as we made our way to and from at a good clip while our suspension was put through it's paces. Upon reaching Mesa Verde we parked and I heard a sound, I turned around and worked my way toward the hissing. I squatted down and there I found the inner portion of the rear tire had peeled away. The tire was rapidly deflating, but as luck had it we were safely parked. We had a full size spare, full of air, that I put on then and there.



















After a tour or two we went to the campsite. As it turned out we got our campsite for free. It must have been destiny. So we camped, showered, and did laundry at long last. Then we traveled to Flagstaff on the spare tire as tire selection in Cortez was not even fair. A new set of four tires made the trip much more expensive. The alignment was also out so we camped at a horse camp after getting an appointment for repair the next day. We awoke early and twiddled our thumbs till the auto repair place opened, and unloaded the entire vehicle so the alignment would be correct when it wasn't stuffed to the gills. We took a picture to make repacking easier.












Then we drove up to the base of Humphrey's Peak as if going to the snowbowl. We met a deaf young man who was not only highpointing, but apparently had decided to run all the peaks as well. It was very pretty on the way up. As we neared the top and got out of the trees we turned up a ridge, the top is not shown in the picture, but farther along.



Gnats appeared and became thicker and thicker with each step toward the summit. The dry volcanic soil did not seem like it could support them, but they were so thick breathing seemed impossible without a protein infusion. Perhaps the steady stream of fools capering along the path nourished them. On top we paused long enough to take a quick picture before trying to escape.











We had a fun time running on the way down some of the way. Tiffanee took some lovely photos of irises and we made tracks for the Grand Canyon where the promise of a shower pulled us like a magnet.

PS. In other humorous news we are falling further behind in posting. Apparently it is far easier to hike up a mountain than to write about it.

Holes and Hills - Wheeler NM

(May 31, 2006) A hole in the ground, it goes down into the earth to 1950s rebirth. The cafeteria is strange and reminds one of movies and hiding from fallout. It was closed mostly, as when in use it heated the cavern too much. So now it is tacky "futuristic" decor with vending machine cuisine. (We did not take the picture of the cafeteria.) The natural formations were much more beautiful than the man-made ones.






From there we traveled to Rockhound state park and paid to dig in the dirt and smash our hands with hammers. The park is especially known for its thunder eggs, but we mostly found perlite and a giant sparkly purple rock that Tiffanee made me carry out. It was exactly the same as all the other sparkly purple rocks that littered the area, but Tiffanee liked "that one". (It is legal to remove rocks from this park, unlike most.) From there it was onto Truth or Consequences, NM (yes that name was surely ingenious). I told Tifffanee for every summit we would visit a hot spring. I am quite a ways behind on that still. (June1,2006)



We passed through Taos (where the traffic was amazingly slow) and the Taos Pueblo on the way to Wheeler Peak. The structures were nifty and very organic looking. (Which is not terribly surprising since they are made of mud and straw.) Tiffanee had fun telling me about the history of the Pueblo revolt. The church was interesting because of the mix of Catholicism and native beliefs. There are two main great houses and one supposedly is primitive and one is more modern. To be primitive apparently involves using propane tanks and Coleman stoves, lanterns, and gas lighting. Tiffanee was hungry, but when it came to deciding what to eat it became very complex, or at least it must have been for it defeated us and we drove away with no food added to our bellies. (June 2, 2006)




Instead a quick linner of canned chili was prepared before we started our hike to Williams lake where we camped for the night. It was a short hike, but despite our preparation Tiffanee looked tired. Finding the perfect spot for the tent was probably more exhausting than hiking though for her. Decisions really take it out of her.

Once again we awoke early, but not as early as on Guadalupe. We left camp sometime after 6am and were on the Summit by 9am. The trail went fairly directly from our tent up the gully you see in the picture. Our tent is the baby blue speck. From there it went onto scree and merged with a main trail on the ridge top that led to the summit. On the other side of the ridge there were some skittish goats.


It was a nice easy hike. We called Tiffanee's mom from the summit to let her know we were alive took our requisite picture and headed back down the way we came. On the way we were greeted by what Tiffanee termed "a bold marmot." I think most marmots are fairly bold especially when they smell gorp. (June 3, 2006) Next stop: Chaco Canyon.

Lessons Learned: Them's the Breaks

So we were working on the house on July 2nd, and because we had rented a dumpter we were doing demolition. We were working on one of the bedrooms on the second floor known as the burlap room because previously the walls and ceiling were covered in burlap. Scott was knocking down plaster with a shingle remover and I was shoveling it into 5 gallon buckets. (Scott says I should mention that I suggested that we should stop for the evening because it was getting late but he said we should keep working because we only had the dumpster for a limited time. And he wasn't tired.) To make things easier we had lined buckets up along the wall where he was working to catch the falling plaster so we would not have to shovel so much. Scott started at the top of the wall, standing near the top of the ladder and worked his way down. About half way down the wall he ran into trouble and learned a few things:
"If you are planning to take plaster off lathe with a shingle remover be aware that the installers might have randomly decided to put a vertical piece of lathe on the side of a stud for no reason, and if they did your tool will likely catch on it. If you are standing on a ladder which is positioned on rubble when that happens the ladder will tend to slide in the opposite direction. If a brick hearth juts out of the floor and catches the leg of a sliding ladder, the ladder will tip over. If you fall off a ladder don’t land arm first, and if you insist on doing that (due to physics) don't stick your thumb in a 5-gal bucket when your hand goes outside of the bucket. It turns out that is bad for you. Quite educational really."

After he fell I asked if he was okay since I didn't see what had happened. Very calmly he immediatly said, "Emergency room." I ran downstairs as fast as I could without evening seeing the injury and grabbed my purse and tote, the cell phones, and Scott's wallet. By then he was walking out the front door and I saw his grotesque malformation. (See x-ray above.)

I drove to the only emergency room I know how to find here, with Scott giving helpful driving advice and colorful commentary along the way. When we got there the people looked at us somewhat askance since we were covered from head to toe in dust and soot. (Which is in the walls from Pittsburgh's industrial days and coal heating.) Luckily Scott's hands were clean because we had been wearing nitrile gloves. As we were being taken back Scott started to get dizzy and mentioned it to the nurse. She kindly informed him that he was hyperventilating. He said, "Oh, thank you" and stopped. Then she asked another nurse to get him some pain meds that the doctor ordered. Nurse 2 replied,"I'll get them in a minute. I'm busy." I was more than a bit upset by this point and countered in my best teacher voice, "Could you please hurry, ma'am. He is in a lot of pain." Scott very sweetly suggested I be calm and that she was probably doing her best. Eventually she saw his hand and was taken aback by the unnatural position of the thumb. After that she was much more helpful.

After a while x-rays were taken and the doctors came by. They put his thumb back in place and showed us one fracture on the x-rays. (A second worse fracture was not immediately evident.) They put on a splint and Scott was discharged and told to follow up with an orthopedic surgeon.

One week, two doctors visits, one MRI, two pins, and one surgery later he is once again writhing in pain. Some things never change, hopefully this is not one of them.

The Hightpointing Officially Begins

Scott wrote the last post so I guess its my turn now. For some reason Scott got the idea that we should do highpointing (I think he was just trying to make me exercise). So we (mainly Scott) planned this epic roadtrip of the western states that involved several highpoints, many state and national parks, and a family reunion. We even trained for it at the Rec Center at TAMU. (Picture Scott sweating gallons on one of those escalator-like stair climbers, while wearing massive hiking boots. Bang, bang, BANG!) We set off the Monday after school got out in May 2006 and did not get back to College Station until one day before teacher inservice started for me in August. We put over 10, 000 miles on the Subie in 3 and a half months.



Our first highpoint stop was at Guadalupe Mountains National Park in west Texas. When we got there we hiked up the Smith Spring trail. It was hot even in June, but the water from the cold spring felt very good.

(SP starts)
After convincing ourselves to leave the little oasis and brave the pummeling from the sun we were treated to some good views, deer and lizards. No pictures of the deer, but I think one can imagine them well enough.
(SP ends)


(The Horned Lizard aka Horny Toad, the state lizard of Texas)

Guadalupe Peak:
May 31 2006
We camped over night, then woke up super early the next day (4 am). The hike was actually really pretty because it started out in west Texas desert vegetation,


passed through a pine forest,

and the summit was windswept, misty, freezing cold, and covered in ladybugs.


We reached the summit at 8:20am and quickly huddled together for the summit picture. We were back to the car so early that we decided to drive off to Carlsbad Caverns.