Beautiful scene

by Genny

Of course it's beautiful! It's the view from the Dream Lake Overlook in Rocky Mountain National Park. What fascinated me is the lake you can see tucked in there. Is it Loch Vale, or something smaller, or something bigger? We flipped the map over about a hundred times trying to figure out which mountains we were looking at in order to figure out which lake it was. Our viewpoint was on one side of the map and the scenery options were all on the other side. Isn't that always the case- a map thats 32x22 inches and the 20 inches I need has to be split half on the front and half on the back.
This was our Saturday adventure. We decided to get a late start up Flattop Mountain. It was a lot of fun, but our high point was still 1,100 feet lower than the summit. Here's Ben deciding to turn around and head back down.

Visitors!

While we were in Joshua Tree, Matt's wife Cara, and her friend Clay came to visit us. It was sure nice for matt to get to see his wife at the half way point, and I wished Genny could have come visit as well. But she one of those things where you go to it, and they give you money for being there and doing things while you're there, so unfortunately, she couldn't. Among other things, we went for a few nice hikes. Here are some pics.









Matt looking at an old miner's camp, along the California Riding and Hiking Trail.





















Cara and Clay hiking along the same trail.





















Matt always has to climb on rocks.





















Clay reading a trail sign along the Barker Dam Trail.

I made it!

What's up, ya'll? I'm back from Joshua Tree as of 2 hours ago. I'm kinda loopy right now because we drove 22 hours straight to get home, and I took 14 of them. It was good times. J-tree was fabulous, what an amazing place. I'll be throwing up lots more pics in the coming few days, but I just wanted to get something up. I like this little picture I took of a thorny thing growing in no more than a handful of dirt in the shallow crack of a rock. I think that thing and I have a lot in common. It must be hard to grow in an environment like that, so naturally it's very tough and has developed a strong, thorny exterior. Although I guess I'm not really that tough, I tend to cry about things like only sleeping on one Thermarest because I left the other one on top of the truck and it blew away while driving. Also, I'm not very strong or thorny either. In fact, I mostly got torn up by gritty Josh cracks and donated blood frequently to a few offwidths. In fact, I may not have anything in common with this little guy, but I like the picture.

Meanwhile, back in Colorado...

by Genny
I've been learning to ski and learning to photograph. Maybe you thought I already knew how to do those things. Well yeah, I grew up skiing, but not like this. Cross country skiing to a yurt is way different than downhill at Mohawk. And you're right, I've been taking photos since I got that pink and purple camera for the trip to Germany in first grade. But now I'm learning to use my new Pentax, and that's a whole new thing!

Read all the details on Backpacker's Blog.

JTree Vol. 2

Back to the internet, and here we are with the next installment of pics from the beautiful Joshua Tree National Park. The first week was pretty rough. Between, bad weather, cold nights, being pretty homesick, and the usual harshness of adjusting to the joys of living out of a truck with two other guys, I wasn't having a good time at first. But now the weather has been great, nights are warmer, we're finding our climbing rhythm, and getting our send on.


The scenery here is amazing and so is the camping; that is, when we're actually camping in the Park, and not the Pit.
Since being here, I've run into three people I know; and it's not like I'm that cool and know tons of people. It's been really cool though. I ran into a friend Nate, who I met at the Solid Rock Climbers for Christ conference that I went to this past August in the RMNP. He's a really cool dude and climbs pretty hard, and so do his friends. Here's Nate's friend Todd getting the redpoint on Spider Line - 5.11c.















We've been trying to hit a lot of classics. Overhang Bypass (5.7) is definitely of of the best so far. I was hanging off a rope taking pictures, so I haven't climbed it, but I can tell. I can't wait to lead it myself. Here Matt runs it out, on easy ground, to the top of the first pitch.


























The sole benefit of all the crap weather we had at first was this really cool rainbow we saw. Other than that, it was rather miserable.


























All in all, it's been some pretty good times, with a lot more to come. Stay tuned, folks!

JTree Vol. 1

Hey you guys! I'm at Super 8 stealing their interweb. We're sitting in the truck watching SNL skits and Homestar Runner vids. I just thought I would upload a some pics from our first few nights. Here you see our beautiful first night of camping. It was 26 degrees, windy and moist. We were in 40 degree bags. Excellent. Below is the San Rafael Swell in Utah. Below that is a random boulder in Joshua Tree. Enjoy.

Warmer than last time...

by Ben







You know those nice warm January days? You know, like the 65 degree, sunny, windless days when you can wear a t-shirt and shorts, and you actually try and stay in the shade because the sun is too warm? No. I didn't know about those either, until this past Sunday. I got another chance to head out for some nice winter bouldering with my friend Aaron and some other folks he knew. It was absolutely gorgeous out, good sending weather. Good thing, because Aaron wanted to send Mongolian Cosmonaut, a V8 problem that he has been working on. Edit: Turns out this boulder problem is now consensus graded at V9, according to Mountain Project.






We bounced around for a little, getting warmed up and playing on some other stuff. Then we moved on to Mongolian Cosmonaut while Aaron was still fresh. The problems starts very steep and hanging from a pretty slopey hold. Then you fire the right hand up to a small pebble, bump it up to another slightly better pebble, bump up one more time before you can bring your left hand over to one of the pebbles and start moving up the boulder. It's very awkward and involves a lot of tough moves before you can get solid enough to start upwards. Aaron was having trouble getting his feet to stick under the boulder, while he lunged for the pebbles.



After some body position adjustments, he was sticking the next move and looking pretty good, but it's wasn't happening and there was one more problem to be dealt with. Diagnosis: His shirt was too heavy.


















With that solved, it was sending time.






























































Here are the rest of the photos.