Back to WA

Posted on by

2013-03-04 17.52.36The glamor of business travel, continued…

After spending five weeks out of six in Connecticut, last week I was back in Everett. I didn’t take either camera with me on any of the Connecticut trips; I didn’t have much of a chance to wander around looking for anything interesting. But for this trip, I figured it might be fun to get a little time lapse of the ferry coming and going from Mukilteo. Turns out to be not that interesting, but so it goes.

While letting the camera run, I met a group of folks from Ukraine – a man, his wife, and his parents. I tried my very rusty Russian on them and we chatted for a while. The parents didn’t speak any English and I’ve lost nearly all my Russian so it wasn’t much of a conversation. My Soviet army belt buckle got a reaction, though.

The GoPro didn’t do a very good job of capturing the light. It’s automatic shutter controls keep it from showing the fading light as the sun set.

2013-03-04 17.53.49Much to my surprise (not), it rained half the time I was there, clear for the first and last days. My flight left Seattle just before sunset. On the climb out, we had a nice view of Mt. Ranier, the last rays of the day’s sun bathing the snow capped summit in pink.

On the mundane side, I’ve managed to get a different kind of rental car on each trip – seven in a row now. This time was a Chevy Malibu. It’s the first rental I’ve had with automatic head lights. I discovered that the intermittent windshield wipers change speed – on one setting they were intermittent when driving slowly but went to constant when I got over about 40mph. The wonders of technology.

STOMP Fail

Posted on by

Every year about this time, the folks over at Rocky Mountain National Park Forums put together a little shindig they call “STOMP”. This is the ninth year. They hike up to Lake Haiyaha, build a couple of igloos and spend a couple of nights. Not everybody wants to sleep in an igloo, though, so there’s a bigger get together on the Saturday of the week allowing the day trippers to get involved with a hike to the igloos followed by a dinner that evening.

Those of us just doing the Saturday hike were to meet up at 8am at the Bear Lake parking lot. I didn’t really want to spend all day on this hike, particularly as it’s a fairly short one. And it would be fairly cold. And I wasn’t that interested in getting up early on a Saturday. I figured I’d be able to follow the tracks of those who did get there on time so wasn’t too concerned about not finding my way. I roughly knew the way. I’ve only ever taken the summer route, and I knew that wasn’t going to happen this time. How hard can it be to follow a path taken by 15 or 20 people just a few hours earlier?

Jerry went with me. I’m somewhat prepared for winter hiking, he’s a bit less. I have a pair of snow shoes, some micro spikes, ski pants and gaiters. I also just recenly bought a decent winter coat and a pair of gloves with fairly long gauntlets. Jerry has ski bibs, hat, gloves and boots and that’s about it. When we got to the parking lot, I gave him the snow shoes and I took the spikes. I figured if we stayed on the beaten path, the snow would be packed enough I wouldn’t need the floatation the snow shoes provide and if I did occasionaly posthole the gaiters would keep my feet dry. If I gave Jerry the spikes and I took the snow shoes, his feet would be wet pretty quickly.

The weather was about normal for the area – mostly cloudy along the divide, wind obviously blowing hard above treeline, and cold but not bitter. The weather wonks predicted snow in the area by noon or shortly thereafter. From the looks of things, it was snowing not far from where we were going.

We hit the trail a bit before 11am and found the rock marking Ed’s departure from the trail without problems. I’d been this way with Ed a couple of times before, but both when there wasn’t any snow. Every time I hike in the snow I’m taken by how different the terrain looks. In some places, there might be only a few inches of snow but a few feet away it may have drifted ten feet deep. Streams and large rocks that may be used as landmarks may be covered completely. Nonetheless, the trail was well trod and easy to follow; snow shoes not necessary.

The forest was quite pretty in its winter clothes, even with the weather closing in. The clouds were not far above us; it was snowing lightly and the gusty wind blew the snow along the ground when we weren’t in denser forest.

I thought if we encountered anybody on this trail they’d be members of the STOMP party. After a few minutes we caught up to a group going our direction. I thought this was a good sign – somebody that might have been up and down this part of the trail. I asked where they were going, expecting to hear something about igloos, but they said they were looking for Bear Lake. I told them they were going in the wrong direction – Bear Lake is behind us. They thanked us and turned around.

We continued on our way. Before long, it became obvious to me that the trail we were following wouldn’t take us to Lake Haiyaha. We were a bit north of where we needed to go. I had come down from Haiyaha last spring on the steep slope directly in front of us and knew we were unlikely to make it up that way. We needed to go to our left and up a more moderate slope. I knew if we’d just reach the top of that ridge the lake would be an easy hike. The trail we were intending to follow must have gone left somewhere that we went straight. But I certainly didn’t see any tracks that way. Blowing snow clearly obscured the correct path.

So we took off cross-country. Jerry took the lead as he was wearing the snow shoes. At times, even he was sinking a foot into the snow. I was often postholing quite badly behind him. Where the slope got steeper he had trouble with traction. We crested a ridge only to reveal another ridge above it. We topped that one to find yet another. I was sometimes sinking hip deep in the snow, crawling to get out. On the plus side, I was warm and dry, all my winter gear doing the job. But I was getting pretty worn out.

It was now about 1pm. I didn’t think Jerry would keep buying that we just had to gain one more ridge and we’d be back on the trail. We chatted about it for a few minutes and decided to back track the way we came. On the way, we kept a lookout for a nice place to sit and eat our lunches. In places we were quite surprised how steeply we had climbed. Soon we found a nice downed tree, barkless and gray, not covered with snow. We ate quickly as we had to take our gloves off.

By the time we were done and on our way again, my fingers were so cold I couldn’t feel them. I wasn’t particularly concerned. I knew that once we were exerting ourselves again I’d warm right up. This was true, it was only five or ten minutes before my fingers were warm again. The snow had stopped falling and sun was sparkling on the snow.

We again ran into other hikers; two groups of four or five hikers each.

“Where are you coming from?” they asked.
“The middle of nowhere. We didn’t get where we were going.”
“Where’s that?”
“Lake Haiyaha. Where you headed?”
“We’re trying to find Bear Lake.”
“Well, you’re heading in the wrong direction.”

One group took off down the trail in front of Jerry and I, the other lagged behind. I’d been looking for signs of tracks I might have missed but didn’t see any. We did come to a fork in the trail, though. The group behind us said the other hikers had gone that way only to reach a dead end. I thought the proper way was to the left and went that way. The group in front of us had by now turned around saying this way was a dead end also. In fact, the trail went nicely up the hill to gain the proper trail from Bear to Nymph. We could even see hikers on that trail. I hollered at the other hikers to follow me and we all got where we were going.

As two of them passed me, one said to the other “I wasn’t worried.” Perhaps he should have been. Granted, Jerry and I never made it to Haiyaha, but we were never lost. I knew exactly where I was. I just missed the tracks to the lake. These folks evidently had no idea where they were and seemed unable to follow fairly obvious tracks. I wonder how long they’d have been wandering around there.

Jerry and I made it back to the car by 3pm. Which left us three hours before pizza. I suggested we grab a beer at the brew pub and off we went. After a couple beers and some appetizers we headed to the shindig. We were still quite early so we sat in the car chatting and watching the clouds creep in from the west. The clouds looked like a big down blanket, slowly slipping over the divide, smothering the Bear Lake area.

Cars started arriving, so we went inside. There was a good turn out, a couple dozen folks at least. All had made it to Haiyaha but us, but no matter. People introduced themselves with their real names and their handles on the forum. I was surprised to find out that folks came from quite a distance for this little shindig. One couple flew in from Brooklyn.

As we were leaving, Mike suggested that we could still make it to the igloos if we wanted. He expected at least one of them to stand for another few weeks. I’m not sure I’ll make the attempt. I know I don’t want to take the summer route and I clearly demonstrated I can’t follow Ed’s route.

Maybe next year I’ll be willing to meet the Saturday group at the appointed time.

Another Post About Cars

Posted on by

I went to Connecticut on business the last three weeks. The first week I rented a Dodge Avenger. This was not the first time I’ve driven one – on both my trips last year to Everett I drove an orange one. I found it amusing that on those two trips I ended up renting the same car. What are the chances? The most interesting thing about the Avenger is the name. In every other respect it is nondescript. I think I can say there was absolutely nothing interesting about the car.

My second car in CT was a Ford Focus. Not a bad little car. It can’t really be compared to the Avenger – anybody thinking about buying one won’t really be considering the other. I’ll compare them anyway. I found the Focus better looking and more comfortable. It seems car designers have fun moving the controls for lights and wipers from place to place in different cars. I found them quicker in the Focus than in the Avenger. Although I found the Focus more stylish, I never confused any other car for the Avenger. Somebody parked their Mazda 3 a couple spots away from the Focus and I nearly got them confused.

On my third trip I got to drive a Fiat 500. I don’t think I’d ever be interested in owning any of these cars, but I was curious to drive the Fiat. A few things jumped right out at me when I got behind the wheel.

First, the instrument cluster is a circle about six inches in diameter. The speedometer goes to 140mph, although the car probably doesn’t do much more than half that. With the seat adjusted for my comfort, I could see only the bottom part of the speedo. On the left side, I could see 0-20 and on the right 120-140. That meant that while driving, I could almost never see how fast I was going without ducking my head down or peering over the top of the wheel. If I drove with one hand on the wheel, in the 12 o’clock position, the entire thing was obscured by my hand – all I could see was the faint orange glow.

Second, I found it odd how high you sit in the thing considering how tiny it is. It felt almost like driving a truck. With the seat adjusted so my legs were comfortable on the pedals and my arms comfortable on the wheel, I was quite upright. Driving next to much larger cars I found myself looking down on the other drivers.

2013-02-06 08.13.43Finally, or perhaps it was really first, is how big and heavy the keys are. This is probably exacerbated by the fact the rental company felt it necessary to give me two keys on a key ring that doesn’t allow them to be separated. Even if I’d had somebody else on the rental contract as a driver, there would have been no way to share the keys. Where one was going, the other couldn’t be more than a few inches away. And these things are big.

None of these three cars had handling worth mentioning. Anybody buying any of them probably isn’t the least bit interested in how they perform. As to fuel economy, the Fiat got the best and the Avenger got the worst, which is pretty much what you’d expect based on their relative sizes.

On a completely different note, I went to Ferrari of Denver today to pick up the Lotus. While I was working in CT, it was in the shop for a minor repair and a manufacturer recall. I paid the bill and they called for somebody to bring the car around. He said it probably hadn’t been washed and asked if I’d wait 10 minutes for him to do that. While I waited, I checked out what was on the showroom floor and took a peek into the shop.

2013-02-09 11.57.41It must have been Testarossa week. In addition to the two in the photo, there was another one on the other side of the aisle. These two both had their engines out. I couldn’t help but notice the engine for the yellow one is on a yellow cart. Do you suppose the engine for the red one is on a red cart? Looks expensive in any case.

I dropped the car off on a Saturday and didn’t get a chance to walk the showroom floor. But I did peek in the window. A pretty silver Exige caught my eye. They move the cars around quite a bit so today I had to search for it. Turns out it’s an Exige-S and is one of fifteen in the USA. Looks like it’s a track toy – full cage, no passenger seat, no headlights. I doubt there are too many folks able to put $109k into a car they can’t drive on the street.

Eiskhana

Posted on by

Georgetown was founded in 1859, during the silver boom. At one time, the population was near 10,000 and there was a local movement to relocate the state capital here from Denver but the bust soon followed. It is now not much more than a small tourist town, where skiers stop on their way home. Interstate 70 runs along the slope on the west side of the deep valley on the eastern approach to the Eisenhower tunnel and the old Loveland pass. Drivers there overlook the town and the reservoir just north of it. Today, many of them stopped to watch people drive their cars through a course laid out with traffic cones on the ice.

I picked Jerry up a few minutes before 6 and we headed up I-70. We got there quite early; were the first to arrive at the designated meeting point, in fact. There was some miscommunication on the schedule. After visiting with some of the other participants, getting registered and signing the usual waivers, we headed off to the lake. It looked to be a fine day, cloudless and crisp. The valley there runs north-south with high mountains on each side, so the sun doesn’t hit the lake this time of year until 9:30 or so. It was quite chilly until then, but by noon was in the mid-40’s. We neglected to bring sun screen and even the brims of our hats didn’t help as the sun reflected off what snow was on the surface of the ice. We all stood on the western shore or the ice along it, so I managed to sunburn the right side of my face.

Thick ice

Thick ice

The email I received about the event said the ice was 12-15 inches thick. It is hard to tell standing on it, but I’d venture it was more like two feet where we were. The ice is criss-crossed with cracks, most of them quite small and not even going all the way from top to bottom. There are also lots of bubbles, often stacked up in columns. Some places the ice was quite smooth and the men, being boys at heart, often ran and slid to see who could slide the farthest. Here and there fishing holes had been drilled, but today all the fishermen were congregated at the southern end of the lake. (Movies and TV show these holes being big enough to drop a body through, but these were only about six inches across.) When we arrived a pickup truck towing a small trailer was navigating the course of traffic cones and many of us found that amusing.

I quickly found out that the battery for my camera was dead. When I checked it last night, it indicated a full charge but such is my luck lately with camera batteries. I took a few with the cell phone, but I find them unsatisfying. I did strike up a conversation with a guy who brought his 600mm lens and tripod. I hope to get copies of any shots he took during my runs. When I get them, I’ll share them in a subsequent post.

We were divided into four groups – two wheel drive Porsche, four wheel drive Porsche, 2wd other, and 4wd other. Did I mention this was a Porsche club event? The first group moved onto the ice and lined up for their runs. Cars were released a bit over a minute apart, depending on how fast the car ahead was going. The faster drivers were managing the course in a bit over two minutes. The slower ones took quite a bit longer, many spinning at the north east corner where the ice was particularly smooth and there was no snow.

I asked one of the event stewards how many cars had registered. He didn’t have the number and said he thought it was about 50, but I think it was more like 75. Chatting with other folks it seems most were, like me, doing this for the first time. Only a few people had studded snow tires. Some had snow or ice tires, most had all-season. I have “ultra high performance summer tires”, meaning I’d have very little traction. A few folks pointed at my tires and laughed. Good naturedly, of course.

So most of the day was spent standing around, waiting our turn. Prestige Imports brought a trailer with propane heaters so we could get warm. I took advantage early in the morning but it wasn’t necessary once the sun climbed over Saxon Mtn. Also in the trailer were free t-shirts, granola bars, and glove warmers.

Other 2WD staged up

Other 2WD staged up

At 11:30 the “other 2wd” group staged on the ice. This group was further split and we were in the second half, so more waiting around. The photo shows most of my group, including all three Lotuses. I didn’t know any of the Porsche folks but was acquainted with quite a few of my group, so while the first half was making their runs I was chatting with those in line and milling around with the rest of my group.The Porsche folks had made their runs in a fairly serious fashion, perhaps actually trying to get good times. Our group was a bit more free spirited. John managed to put his Miata though one gate sideways and the next gate backwards to hearty applause.

Finally, at 1:30, we got to make our first run. I was joking with Jerry, asking what he thought the chances were I’d be able to get through the course on the first run without spinning. He said “Zero!” I surprised everyone by putting together a perfect run, no spins, finishing in 2:30 according to Jerry’s stopwatch. Now, of course, I had to see how much time I could carve off that. I should be able to do better, now that I had some experience, right? On the second run I tried a hand-brake turn where we had all seen everybody have the most difficulty. I learned not to attempt hand-brake turns. I spun twice on that run and once on the third run.

It was a lot of fun, even though we were there something like seven hours and were only actually driving on the ice eight minutes. I’ll gladly try it again next year.

Video from Sunday

Posted on by

I just posted the video from Sunday’s track day. Rather than posting my fastest lap of the day, this time I made a montage of all the times I passed somebody or was passed. Well, almost every pass – I left out a couple of duplicates and one or two where you didn’t get much of a view of the other car. I’m guessing this is about two thirds of the cars that were there that day. I didn’t run in the fast group until the last session and a number of the faster cars left before then. And it’s a long track, so if somebody is running lap times comparable to mine, we may not encounter each other.

HPR Free Day

Posted on by

Happy New Year.

High Plains Raceway held their annual Customer Appreciation Day for 2012 yesterday. It was originally scheduled for last week, but was postponed due to the weather.

Scott and I met at the park and ride and drove out together. I think we first met at last year’s free day. The video I posted from that day has him waving me by at the end of the lap. He was quicker on the straights, but I had him in the turns. Since then he’s replaced worn brake parts and is now turning lap times a couple of seconds faster than me when I’m on my street tires.

Yesterday was a later start than usual – track opened at nine with a drivers meeting at 9:40 and hot track at ten. Two sessions were run each hour with the “slow” group for the first half hour and the “fast” group for the second half hour. I always run in the slow group on these open lapping days as there are quite a few race prepared cars. Yesterday I ran in four sessions, with the last session in the fast group. There were quite a few more cars in the slow group than the fast group, so I switched groups hoping to get a little more open space. I haven’t put a video together yet. Perhaps I’ll do a montage of all the times I got passed in that last session.

The weather was fairly nice for the first week of January. Sunny and in the low 40’s, but with a bit of a breeze that made things uncomfortable. Most folks were sitting in their cars to stay warm when they weren’t on the track. In the noon hour I took my picnic to the lunch area but retreated back to the car after a few bites of my sandwich. Too blustery for me.

There was quite a good turnout. I didn’t even try to count the cars. There might have been as many as 80. A fairly good variety with only a few familiar cars and faces. I was the only Elise but two Exiges showed up after a while so I wasn’t the only Lotus. There were several BMW’s, Porsches, and Corvettes. I don’t normally see any Honda S-2000’s but there were two yesterday – a black one with a giant wing on the back and one with a matte purple paint job and red wheels. A Ferrari showed up, but I don’t think he ever went on the track.

There was snow on the ground but the track was clear. There were quite a few places where the snow was right next to the track and occasionally somebody would cut a corner a bit and pull snow onto the racing surface. I had to modify my line all day through turn 1 as some snow kept melting on the inside of the turn. Hitting that little bit of water at speed in the turn was a real thrill; got a big wiggle there once, so I steered clear of it after that. Snow or water was in a few other places as well, so each time out started with a slow lap to make sure I knew where the danger spots were.

Everybody I talked to seemed to have a good time. But I guess that’s to be expected – every track rat will smile if you give him free lapping.

I hope to put a short video together in the next day or three and will post it here.

2012 Reading List

Posted on by

At the beginning of the year I set myself the goal of reading 36 books. Not much of a goal, really, as that’s the number of books I’ve read on average since I started keeping a list in 2008. So in effect my goal was to read an average number of books. I hit the goal back on the 21st. I started reading The Coldest Winter, not expecting to finish it until well into next month. But then Genae brought a brand new book home from the library for me, with a seven day limit on it, so I managed to sneak another one in to exceed the goal by one.

I’ve been thinking that my goal for 2013 should be 32 because I have several very long books coming to the top of the “to-read” list. The third Game of Thrones book weighs in at nearly a thousand pages, Massey’s Peter the Great is something like seven hundred, and Manchester’s MacArthur bio is on the order of eight. Each of those should count for two! But I’ll keep it at 36 and aim high.

Here’s the 2012 list.

Date Title Author Pages Subject
01/09/12 The Assault on Reason Gore, Al 308 Politics
01/22/12 A Clash of Kings Martin, George R. R. 760 Fantasy
02/08/12 Millard Fillmore Rayback, Robert J. 470 Bio – Pres.
02/12/12 Red Orchestra Nelson, Anne 388 WW II
03/04/12 Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy Volkogonov, Dmitri 642 Biography
03/06/12 The Fear Index Harris, Robert 286 Fiction
03/18/12 War in the Sun Hodson, James 449 WW II
03/27/12 Hitler’s Peace Kerr, Philip 448 Fiction
04/21/12 Franklin Pierce Nichols, Roy Franklin 625 Bio – Pres.
04/25/12 Counterfeiter Nachtstern, Moritz 288 Holocaust
05/11/12 Europe and the French Imperium Bruun, Geoffrey 280 History
05/21/12 Fatal Crossroads Parker, Danny S. 390 WW II
05/23/12 The Sharp End Ellis, John 372 WW II
06/05/12 Catherine the Great Massie, Robert K. 625 Biography
06/20/12 1943: The Victory that Never Was Grigg, John 248 WW II
07/17/12 Caesar’s Women McCullough, Colleen 696 Fiction
07/22/12 American Miracle Sill, Van Rensselaer 301 WW II
08/14/12 President James Buchanan Klein, Philip Shriver 506 Bio – Pres.
09/01/12 Existence Brin, David 556 Sci Fi
09/10/12 Penalty Strike Pyl’Cyn, Alexander 204 WW II
09/16/12 The Great Gates Sprague, Marshall 468 History
09/20/12 Fate of Worlds Niven, Larry; Lerner, Edward M. 317 Sci Fi
09/27/12 From Nazi Sources Sternberg, Fritz 208 WW II
10/16/12 The Transparent Society Brin, David 384 Politics
10/18/12 Escape from the Deep Kershaw, Alex 270 WW II
11/02/12 With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln Oates, Stephen 492 Bio – Pres.
11/05/12 Lionel Asbo: State of England Amis, Martin 255 Fiction
11/08/12 The Flame Keepers Handy, Ned 325 WW II
11/10/12 Team Lotus: My View from the Pit Wall Warr, Peter 240 Motor Sports
11/16/12 A Dead Hand Theroux, Paul 279 Fiction
11/25/12 The American Axis Wallace, Max 465 History
12/06/12 Caesar McCullough, Colleen 664 Fiction
12/08/12 Rome Was My Beat Packard, Reynolds 338 Memoir
12/11/12 Stormtrooper on the Eastern Front Blosfelds, Mintauts 207 WW II
12/15/12 Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million Amis, Martin 320 History
12/21/12 The Battle of Midway Symonds, Craig L. 452 WW II
12/30/12 Hell in the Pacific McEnery, Jim 305 WW II

LoCo Christmas Party

Posted on by

Lotus Colorado held their 2012 Christmas party Saturday night at Club Auto. It was a pot luck, lots of good food, lots of good conversation, not much more to add about that.

Club Auto bills itself as the premier collector car storage and clubhouse facility in the Denver metro area. They have what I’d have to call a showroom area and a warehouse area. Also in the facility is a high-end car detailing business and perhaps an exotic car rental business.

The more notable cars are in the showroom area. On one end are the older cars – mid-20’s Buicks and Rolls Royces. At the other end are a few Indy cars. In between is a variety of cars – Lotuses, Porsches, a Lamborghini, and so on. The most notable here is a Porsche Spyder 550 I’m told has a serial number only one off from James Dean’s car. Moving from the showroom to the warehouse you find a couple Ferraris and some classic Fiats and Fords and a gull-wing Mercedes.

Guests to the party who chose to drive their Lotuses were invited to park in the warehouse. There were only two of us brave enough to do so. The weather forecast was for snow. None had fallen yet, and the weather guy I watched said none was likely to fall before the wee hours of the morning. He was wrong – I drove the Elise home in the snow. It wasn’t cold enough yet to stack up on the streets, though, so it wasn’t a problem.

The warehouse was full of an odd assortment of vehicles. There was a nice early 70’s Lincoln Continental with a panorama roof, a couple of older Porsche 911’s, a Mazda RX-7 with very wide fenders and a huge wing on the back. There were also a surprisingly large number of trucks – Ford F-350’s and such. Not what I think of when I think “collector car storage”.

Sorry for the crappy photos, these were taken with the cell phone.

Ouzel Lake

Posted on by

Mike and I talked about hiking to Pipit Lake. It hadn’t really occurred to me to hike there in winter; I guess I’m still stuck in the “hiking is for summer” mindset. But after trading a few emails on Tuesday, we decided to go the next day. It would be the best weather for at least the next week.

I picked Mike up at the park and ride and we headed to the park. His bus was a few minutes late, and we were in the teeth of rush hour traffic into Boulder so we didn’t exactly get an early start. The Wild Basin entrance station is closed for winter – that is, there is no ranger there. That’s pretty much standard year around, if you arrive early enough. Up the road we go, only to find the gate closed before the road crosses the river. This was new to me. I really had no idea when that gate was ever closed. I thought perhaps it got closed when snow piled up on the road.

We geared up and started up the road. The thermometer read 44 degrees when we left the car at 9:00. On the drive up, the sky was mostly cloudy, with some rather ominous looking dark clouds to the west. At the trailhead, though, it was clear blue skies above us and to the west, with fairly strong winds. It took us twenty minutes to reach the trailhead; we figured we’d hiked a mile already.

We made good time on the first part of the trail to the campsite shortcut. We’d passed a few trees that had fallen across the trail, something I’d not seen here before. Approaching Calypso Cascades, there was a spot where water flows over the trail. There are several logs serving as steps; water had filled the spaces between the logs and frozen making terraces of ice – miniature skating rinks.

From Calypso Cascades to a bit past Ouzel Falls the trail is on a north facing slope and is now covered with ice or packed snow. There’s not much snow on the ground, just on the trail. I don’t know how this season compares to normal, I suspect it might be drier than usual, but it’s still early.

We took a short break at Ouzel Falls. A great mass of ice has built up at the base and it looks like the ice at the left side forms each night and melts during the day. A large chunk fell off while we were sitting there.

Continuing, we paused for a minute or two at the next trail junction, where the Thunder Lake trail goes right and Ouzel/Bluebird goes left. We would soon be atop the ridge which had burned back in 1978 and I anticipated it would be quite windy. Time to put on a hat to keep the ears warm. Gaining the top of the ridge, the wind was breathtaking at times. The occasional gust stopped me in my tracks. There is no shelter on this section of trail, which is not so good when it’s windy or in the summer sun. But it’s always good for the open views of the surrounding mountains.

At the lake I set up the GoPro for a time lapse. I didn’t bother with the SLR as there were very few clouds, just a few small ones above the nearby peaks that dissipated before they moved too far. Also, I found that the original battery for the SLR had died after taking only a handful of shots during the hike to the lake.

We looked for a place out of the wind to have our picnic lunches and ended up at the campsite. No view, but mostly out of the wind. After a short while, I went back to the shore of the lake and retrieved the camera. I had placed it on a rock only an inch or so above the ice. It was the best I could do, but not good enough. The wind had blown it over. I managed to salvage the footage. I didn’t do any fancy cropping to simulate pans or zooms; all the camera motion is caused by the wind. The first segment is at half normal speed (two seconds per minute) while the second segment is normal (one second per minute).

On the way out, we opted to continue a short way up the Thunder Lake trail to the upper junction of the campsite shortcut. It’s always nice to see a little different terrain. I think the shortcut saves six or seven tenths of a mile when hiking to Thunder Lake, but we had to go four tenths to get to it. So the hike out was a few tenths shorter than the hike in. We were also on the sunny side of the valley so we took another short break there.

By now I was figuring we were the only visitors to Wild Basin. I was surprised when we encountered three groups of hikers heading toward Calypso Cascades (two couples and a solo hiker). In retrospect, we probably would have met somebody at Ouzel Falls. We were the first ones to the end of the road in the morning, but when we returned to the car there were about a dozen other cars there. Not alone in Wild Basin, but only meeting five other people on that lower section of main trail is about as much solitude as can be expected.

Timetable

Car 09:00 AM
Trailhead 09:20 AM
Campsite shortcut (bottom) 09:50 AM
Calypso Cascades 10:00 AM
Ouzel Falls 10:30 AM
Thunder/Ouzel jct 10:50 AM
Ouzel/Bluebird jct 11:35 AM
Arrive Ouzel Lake 11:50 AM
Depart Ouzel Lake 12:35 PM
Ouzel/Bluebird jct 12:50 PM
Thunder/Ouzel jct 01:25 PM
Campsite shortcut (top) 01:35 PM
Campsite shortcut (bottom) 02:10 PM
Trailhead 02:40 PM
Car 03:00 PM

Button Rock Mtn

Posted on by

Ed and I planned on hiking to one of the several glacial knobs in the vicinity of Mills Lake or The Loch. I was going to leave the house by 7:15 or so to meet him at his place. Unfortunately, the Fern Lake fire had been fanned during the night by winds gusting to 75 mph, causing the park to be closed. Highway 66 was closed and everybody west of Mary’s Lake road had been evacuated. The fire burned three miles to the east in a half hour during the early morning hours. The Fern Lake fire has now been burning nearly two months and has consumed over 3500 acres, including Moraine Park.

So Ed suggested a Plan B – we hike to the top of Button Rock Mountain. The trailhead is a short distance up the road to Big Elk Meadows, just past Pinewood Springs on US 36. The hike starts up a rough four-wheel-drive track before heading cross country on a trail Ed has been working on for a couple of decades.

In the lower elevations, forest service crews are clearing the dead trees. First they cut up the dead wood and stack it in cones, very similar to what the park service has done along the roads in RMNP. In the park they’ve been burning the cones when conditions are favorable. Here, though, they use a large chipper. We couldn’t see the chipper in action, as it was on the opposite slope of a ridge we hiked away from, but we heard it operating from the time we put boots on the trail until about lunch time. As we gained elevation we could see the extent of the area already cleared. This is a substantial amount of work.

I wonder how much of a difference it makes clearing the dead trees this way. The wood is still there, just in a different form – chips spread out over the forest floor instead of being in log form. Not as concentrated, closer to the ground, I guess it won’t burn as easily or as hotly.

I’d never have found Ed’s trail without his guidance. The lower part of his trail was covered by chips laid down in the last couple of weeks. Before long, we got to an indistinct trail. As we hiked, he pointed out rocks he’d moved, or trees he’d cut or rearranged. He doesn’t want the trail to be too obvious, but easy enough to follow once you’re on it. When we neared the summit, the trail again became to vague for me to follow without his help. Near the top was a picnic table made from dead trees – trunks sawn in half with a chainsaw.

The view from the top was quite nice – Longs Peak and Twin Sisters pretty much due west; the peaks of Wild Basin to their left, and the summits of the Mummy Range not totally obscured by intervening terrain. All the summits were snow capped and shrouded by clouds. Smoke from the Fern Lake fire was faint but visible, smearing the sky along the horizon.

The peaks to the west are too far away for any interesting time lapse footage from the GoPro. And I’m disappointed once again with battery performance from the SLR. I charged both batteries a couple of days ago. The Canon battery was pretty much dead from the start and the after market battery only lasted for 100 shots.

The hike was a nice change of pace, but all in all I prefer hiking in the park. As I said, we could hear the chipper running continuously for about three hours. Our hike was also punctuated by more or less constant gunfire. And along the four-wheel-drive road there was quite a bit of trash ranging from water bottles and broken plastic to spent shotgun shells and even discarded clothing.