cushman.net » Hiking

The Desert

mark — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:53:39 +0000

November was the perfect time to head down to the desert for a little bit of climbing. It was my first time to The Creek and I had a great time exploring the area with a few friends and getting a little schooled on crack climbing. I’m not new to crack climbing but these climbs were sustained. It was a blast and I can’t wait to head down again for some more sweet, sweet crack. Climbing, crack climbing.

Before I left I seemed to have misplaced my trusty old Canon SD400 point and shoot camera. I typically take this camera with me when I am climbing because it is compact and reliable. After searching around the house for a month I decided it was time to buy a new one. I ended up choosing a Samsung HZ15W for the nice lens (24mm wide with 10x zoom) and simple features including manual settings for shooting panoramas.

So far I’m happy with the camera, I think it takes good shots and I am especially happy with the wide-angle lens. When climbing I think the lens will let me capture much more of the climb than I was able to with the standard 28mm lens of my old point and shoot. The camera is a little bit bulkier but the only complaint I have so far is the noise when shooting video and using the zoom lens. The video quality is great (720p) but having the microphone mounted on the camera lets it pick up the lens noise.

I tested out the camera last weekend when my uncle Garth came to visit us in Colorado. He hadn’t been to the Moab area of Utah, so we took a quick weekend trip to camp and do a bit of hiking. We drove down through Castle Valley just outside of Moab and then camped at Beef Basin in Indian Creek. The next day we did a hike in Canyonlands National Park to the Druid Arch rock formation. Twelve miles later we were back at the car and in the morning headed back to Colorado. Uncle Garth liked it so much he drove back to Moab the next day to visit Arches National Park.

Hiking and Aid Climbing in January

mark — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 23:17:22 +0000

The past few weeks the weather has been very nice here in Colorado, everywhere else seems to be freezing but we’ve had temps in the 70s! You know what that means: winter hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park! I added a backrest made from a Ridgerest and some hardboard to a plastic sled, drilled some holes in the back and used some bungee cords to hold down our lunch. I stuffed Benjamin into a sleeping bag and we took off to Dream Lake. The sled worked really well most of the time, although the sled would sometimes track off the trail when traversing a slope. Nymph Lake was frozen and we had some fun sliding around on the ice, made our way to Dream Lake and ate lunch. Fun family outing!

Yesterday afternoon I finally reached a meager goal, aid climbing Country Club Crack at Castle Rock in Boulder Canyon. It goes free at 5.11c, but I wanted some aid practice and the 170ft route was a perfect site for testing out my aid system. It took me 2 hours for the lead, I really need to get faster at aid before heading onto something bigger. I felt better at the top and things were starting to click, so more practice and I should be good to go.

Flickr has the option to upload videos to the site, so I’ve uploaded a few videos that we took here at home and on our hike in RMNP to my Flickr page. The quality is much better than YouTube, and it will convert the videos directly from my camera just fine. Seems to be a great way to share videos with friends and family members, hope you like them!

Happy Halloween

mark — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 04:08:58 +0000

We’ve had a few visitors over the past month, my Uncle Garth came to visit from Illinois and spent his time in Colorado hiking and taking pictures. You can see the pictures he took from his visit on his photo page. Monika’s sister and her two youngest boys also came to visit for a bit, we drove them around to see the sights and hike in the Park. Tonight was Halloween and the boys had a good time extorting our neighbors for candy, I carved up some pumpkins that we grew in our backyard for decorations.

Fall is in the Air

mark — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:09:38 +0000

The past few weeks have significantly cooled off here in Colorado and more leaves have been changing color each day. My uncle came to visit and I had a good time showing him some of the local scenery and hikes in the area, especially Rocky Mountain National Park. One of the hikes we did took us up to Chasm Lake, one of the prettiest areas in the park. Just this past weekend, Monika and I drove to Aspen for a getaway and we were able to get some good pictures of the Maroon Bells with full fall colors.

Over the past month we’ve been able to get out with the kids and have a bit of fun. We’ve been hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park a few times, visiting Alberta Falls and Emerald Lake. On a hot day in August we took the boys to Lyons to tube the South St. Vrain river. Samuel and Benjamin both loved running the mild rapids in the whitewater park and floating down the river.

Samuel has started kindergarten and doing well, he’s active in his class and likes recess. Benjamin is growing every day and imitates everything his brother does. We took the kids to a local farm attraction in Longmont for the day that had a zip line. Samuel waited patiently in line for his turn, then jumped on and flew down the line. When Benjamin saw that his brother had a good time he wanted to do it, too.

RMNP in the Spring

mark — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 05:15:42 +0000

This past month we’ve been getting out in Rocky Mountain National Park to do some hiking, snowshoeing and camping. Monika and I went on a hike to Mills Lake a few weeks ago, last weekend I spent a night camping at Jewel Lake, and today I tried using touring skis with my mountaineering boots as an alternative to snowshoes for ice climbing approaches. The uphill part went just fine, but the downhill part was difficult due to the lack of support with my boots. It was a beautiful day, though, and I was able to get a few panoramic shots of the Glacier Gorge region of the park.

This is a view from Mills Lake, with the ice climb All Mixed Up on the right Pagoda is visible at the end of the gorge, and Longs Peak is barely visible at the center of the picture. I was able to cross over the middle, but temperatures will soon begin to melt the lake and make things a bit messier. The freeze-thaw cycle that comes every spring will help some of the higher elevation ice climbs form up and stabilize the snowpack to allow for safer avalanche conditions.

Spearhead is the rock formation at the very left, McHenrys Peak is the mountain in the middle, and Arrowhead is the formation on the far right. The ice climb West Gully is formed up just below McHenrys in the picture. Directly behind where this photo was taken is the Trough and Longs Peak. Black Lake is about 4 miles from the trailhead in winter, in the summertime the standard trail adds another mile to the trip.

These are the Black Lake Slabs, a nice, long, easy ice climb that doesn’t see much traffic due to the long approach. At the moment, a lot of the ice is covered with snow since we’ve had some heavy snowfall in RMNP recently. When I camped at Jewel Lake last weekend, I had 16 inches fall on me overnight.

Winter

mark — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:43:34 +0000

Winter has finally arrived here in Colorado. There have been a few storms on the Front Range but the majority of the snow has been in the high peaks and the San Juan mountains. Samuel and I did get to go to Copper last Friday to ski, most of the snow was man-made but the conditions were decent enough. On Thanksgiving day we took the boys up to Chautauqua Park in Boulder to go hiking in the snow. Yesterday I went with a group up to Rocky Mountain National Park to go ice climbing, we hiked in to Loch Vale Gorge, climbed a few ice routes and attempted a mixed line that ended up being pretty hard (M7+). The freezing temperatures had us retreating to Ed’s Cantina in Estes Park fairly quickly, but it was great to get out and climb some early season ice!

Fall

mark — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:32:32 +0000

The leaves are turning, cooler temperatures are here and the days are getting shorter. It’s perfect weather for climbing and hiking, and we’ve been doing some of both in the past few weeks. I have been trying to push myself leading trad, and last week led my first 5.8+ route – Huston Crack. Boulder Canyon has many great granite cracks that I can’t wait to climb. Monika, the boys and I have also been hiking around the area and trying to see different areas of CO that we haven’t before. We always take our camera and seem to get some pretty good shots of the kids now and then.

Summer Update

mark — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 04:19:07 +0000

Monika, the kids and I decided to drive through South Dakota on our way back from our visit with family in Ohio. We drove for three days, visited Wall Drug, the Badlands, Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse memorial all in one day. The southwest corner of South Dakota seems to be the happening place in that state, the rest of the drive was highlighted by billboard ads for Wall Drug and the Mystery Spot.

Monika and I climbed Torreys Peak (14,267ft) today, it was her first fourteener and she did great. We went up Kelso Ridge, this was my second time up the route and today we had great weather for it. The crux of the climb was a bit more exposed because all the snow in Dead Dog Couloir had melted earlier this summer. Five hours up, two and a half down with a total ascent of 2946ft at an average of 14ft per minute. Thank you, Mr. Altimeter Watch.

Quandary Peak

mark — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 04:03:58 +0000

Just a quick post to show some pictures I took on Quandary Peak last month. I climbed Quandary with a visiting friend from Ohio, we did the West Ridge and on the way down saw a herd of mountain goats. They looked pretty ragged, shedding their wool for the summer. There were a few young goats (goatlings?) in the herd, but they weren’t shy at all. I’m sure if they felt threatened a good headbutting would have been dealt to the offender.

Fourteeners

mark — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 04:15:08 +0000

Over the past few weekends I’ve been able to hike a few 14ers here in Colorado. Last week I hiked Torreys and Greys via the Kelso Ridge route on Torreys. My brother-in-law Fred went with me, along with two of his friends that live in Ft. Collins. Kelso Ridge has some 3rd class scrambling and some great views, and I was able to take some decent pictures. This weekend I drove up to hike Bierstadt and Evans, linking the two together with the Sawtooth ridge route. Descending Evans down to Guanella pass was interesting because it was a bushwack, but I had the opportunity to take some pictures of the wildflowers and even saw some Rocky Mountain Columbine on the descent.

The Flying Dutchman

mark — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 22:49:43 +0000

Jason Deugan and I climbed a snow route on Longs Peak yesterday, it’s called The Flying Dutchman and it is a 1,600 foot couloir that begins at Chasm Lake and ends at the Loft, a football-field sized saddle between Longs and Mount Meeker. We started around 2am from the trailhead and hiked about 4 miles to Chasm Lake, in the Longs/Meeker cirque. We climbed the snow sections unroped, opting to rope up for the crux of the climb: a 40 foot section of ice. A short way after the ice crux we were able to remove our crampons and climb up to the Loft on loose rock. From the Loft we hiked around to the back side of Longs and took the Clark’s Arrow route up and around to the Homestretch on the Keyhole route. A short distance and we were on the summit of Longs. We met the three RMNP climbing rangers at the summit who had just climbed Kiener’s Route and then began our descent via the Keyhole. The Keyhole route descends 4,845 feet over a distance of about 8 miles, so we were pretty busted by the time we got back to the car at 7pm. This was my first fourteener and I was pumped to be able to do it via a technical route.

Update: Jason Deugan sent me a few pictures he took of our climb.