Ilanarama!

On Sunday, Britt and I climbed 12,504' Grayrock Peak:



Huh, I wonder why it's called that? :-) It's actually a semi-detached point at the southeast end of a long, flat lump of rock called Graysill Mountain, connected by a skinny ridge. (In this photo, I'm standing at the end of Graysill looking at the ridge and the Grayrock summit.) We had actually tried to climb it from the east last year; we'd gotten lost and ended up wandering around a cliffy steep face that was no fun at all before picking our way down again. This time we drove around to the southwest and hiked up an old, closed logging road that eventually petered out into a trail, which eventually disappeared entirely, but by that time we were above treeline and just aimed for the high point.

( More pictures )

The slopes of Graysill from where we parked around 10,200 to a bit above treeline were thick with mushrooms. This has been a banner year in Colorado for wild mushrooms. Last Sunday we went on a dayhike specifically to look for and collect them, and we came back with something more than 20 pounds of mostly Hawk's Wings and King Boletes (as well as a few random samples of other things to try or investigate); on our way down from the peak, we collected Saffron Milkcaps (Lactarius deliciosus) and King Boletes (Boletus edulis). Our dehydrator has been running nonstop, and we've been eating mushrooms with nearly every meal, yum!

( Mushroom pictures )

The weather was pretty marginal all day, but it didn't start actually raining until we got back to the vehicle. (And then it hailed!)

Thursday night was the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, so Britt and I had plans to drive out to Cedar Mesa in Utah, figuring it would be warm enough there to sleep out and look at the sky, as well as clear (rain was predicted for Durango) and dark (the nearest town being Mexican Hat, population 88). And it didn't really make sense to drive out around 3 hours just to spend one night and drive back in the morning, so at the last minute we decided to bring our gear and go backpacking on the Fish Creek/Owl Creek loop, a highly-rated hike that goes through scenic canyons with arches and ruins, with quite a bit of rock scrambling and route-finding required. Most people, of course, do this in the spring or fall, when it's not brain-scorchingly HOT. On the other hand, it had rained across the entire region the previous week, so the intermittent streams would be running and the pools would be full, and with predicted temperatures in the upper 80s to lower 90s it was still on the cool side. (For the desert. In August.) Best of all, we would have it to ourselves - because nobody else would be nuts enough to be there.

( Rambling report and a bunch of photos )

All 26 photos (these plus more) as a Flickr set

For whatistigerbalm, who wanted to know about bread pudding, and anyone else who is into the OM NOM NOM NOM.

Yesterday I made chai ice cream according to this recipe, which is basically this recipe from SimplyRecipes with less sugar (which seemed just right to me). I used a combination of Republic of Tea's Irish Breakfast and plain old Lipton's decaf for the tea. Pretty tasty, although the spices were too subtle for my taste. ( Next time I make it... )

I was going to just have the ice cream for dessert last night, but I was craving something more carbo-y, so I decided to make bread pudding, too, and have it a la mode. We have an awesome local artisan bakery and I buy their bread unsliced; whenever I get to the weird ends of the loaves I stick them in the freezer for bread pudding. Which I love. (In fact the only thing I didn't like about Connie Willis's Bellwether, which I recently read and loved immensely, was that the heroine didn't like bread pudding! Hmmpht.)

Bread pudding is like French toast (which I also love), only desserty instead of breakfasty. (Although, um, I had some leftover bread pudding for breakfast, with a dollop of yogurt and maple syrup, which considering that I go for the full-fat Greek honey yogurt, probably not all that different, nutritionally, from my dessert portion with ice cream.) The recipe I use is based on this bread pudding recipe from SimplyRecipes (which has a photo that makes me drool) which I modified to make 2 large servings (or if you're going to put ice cream on it, 3 small ones; or you can be a BIG PIG and eat it all yourself, not that I have done that...more than once or twice) ( as follows: )

I swear I don't just eat desserts. Today was a chilly, rainy morning, so I made kitchen-sink soup for lunch, this version consisting of onion, garlic, potatoes, lentils, the last of the scaly urchin mushrooms we collected on Saturday, and various spices: cumin, sage, thyme, and a whole lot of black pepper. I blenderized about a quarter of it and mixed it all up and had it for lunch along with a small glass of port, because there is something about lentil soup and port, and besides, I needed it for medicinal purposes (aka That Time of Month). Seriously awesome.

Hey, guess what? It's almost time for dinner!

We had so much fun on the San Juan trip from Montezuma Creek to Mexican Hat we did in June that we had to do it again. Britt got on the BLM's website to check cancellations, and found a date on which we could get a permit from Sand Island all the way to Clay Hills Crossing, another ~55 miles past Mexican Hat.



( Hot weather, low water, rapids, wildlife, flash floods, and (most importantly) photos. )

These are only a few (I know!) of the 55 photos I uploaded to my Flickr set for this trip.

I was going to write up all the stuff we did, but I don't really have the energy. Hiked in past gorgeous waterfalls to a pretty lake, set up camp, hiked to another pretty lake, hiked up a mountain to the 12,640 ft high summit where we were attacked by hordes of ladybugs, hiked over a stunning high pass to another pretty lake, hiked back to the trailhead. Woo.

Here are the equivalent of 16,000 words, on my Flickr page.

On Sunday, Britt and I drove about an hour north to a new-to-us trailhead in the mountains between Silverton and Telluride. It took a while to find the trail, off a jeep road that inexplicably made a loop above the highway (presumably it originally gave access to a mine); once we did, we climbed a bazillion switchbacks through a pretty pine forest carpeted with early wildflowers, until we broke out into a beautiful treeline basin. ( Pictures of mountains and wildlife and snow! )

The San Juan, in SE Utah, is the river I did my first river trip on, in 1990 when Britt and I had just started living together. It was also the last river trip that we did in 1998, just before selling our raft along with everything else we owned in order to buy a sailboat and goof off for a couple of years. The San Juan funnels all the water from SW Colorado and NW New Mexico through classic Utah sandstone canyons and into the Colorado River at Lake Powell, and was home to both pre-Puebloan native cultures and Mormon settlers. A few years ago, I bought a small paddle cataraft, but I only used it once since Britt didn't have a boat. But when Britt's niece's husband Dublin invited us to come with him and some friends on a San Juan trip, Britt immediately decided he'd better buy one as well.





( More about our boats. )

Dublin's friends had only time for a weekend trip, and so they had registered for a permit (the San Juan is lottery-controlled) for only the 28 miles from Sand Island to Mexican Hat. The next stretch of the river, to Clay Hills, goes through the fabled Goosenecks of the San Juan, where the river folds back on itself in big lazy loops, and we would have loved to do that too, but unfortunately there were no available permit slots. Instead we extended our trip by putting in a day and a half early at Montezuma Creek, 19 miles upstream from Sand Island. This rarely-floated stretch (we hadn't done it before) has no rapids and runs mostly through private land, but permits are free from the BLM and easily available.

( Montezuma Creek to Sand Island - cliffs and inscriptions )

( Sand Island to Mexican Hat - petroglyphs and rapids )

All 18 photos are here in a set on Flickr.

This morning I got up early and rode down to the Farmer's Market, and also watched the start of the citizen's ride of the Iron Horse. Then at midday, I did some riding of my own. Britt's still a little sick but wanted to get out, so we decided to do the Log Chutes trail (which I rode solo two weeks ago). This time, I brought a picnic lunch and a camera.



( A few more photos: )

Back in autumn of 2006, Britt and I ripped out the east side of our front yard (where the grass never grew too well, as there's a juniper tree and it's quite shaded) and put in a few plant terraces and a tiny patio. (A few photos of the process are on Flickr under my landscaping tag.) I have always wanted to put a little bistro table and chair set there, but the round tuit was elusive - plus, I never found exactly what I wanted...until now!



Isn't it pretty? And how I got it is yet another one of my small-town stories: I was walking to the natural foods coop (I call it a "grocery hike" - it's not quite a mile, and I figure I get some good exercise, especially on the way back with my backpack full of food) and passed by a consignment shop, Reruns. During the warm months they often have outdoor furniture displayed on their lawn, and there it was. I went inside, asked the woman at the register if I could write a check right now, and come pick it up the next day since I was just walking.

"Where do you live?"

"Up on 13th Street, by Mason Park."

"Oh, that's on my way home. If you help me load it up in my car, I'll drop it off when I close up tonight."

So we loaded it into her minivan, and then I went on my way to finish my grocery shopping, and that evening she came by and we set it up on my patio! And not only did she not charge me for delivery, she took off $10, for no apparent reason. (Other than to totally cement my conviction that this is a place I will shop in the future!)

I had my evening beer on it last night! Yay!

Britt and I had been planning on going backpacking in Utah this weekend, but early in the week he came down with a cold, and he was miserable enough by Thursday, our planned departure day, that it was clearly a no-go. So instead yesterday I did yard work, and today I went mountain biking.

I have been riding my mountain bike (not the one in the icon; I have a fancier newer one, that was part of the deal when we bought our Sportsmobile, as the seller owned a bike store and was more willing to throw in a couple of bikes than lower the price) a lot lately as I am taking a break from running to let my peroneal tendinitis heal. The tendinitis seems mostly unaffected by cycling, probably because my foot is locked into place by the clipless pedal (which, of course, my shoe clips into - weird terminology!) and my PT said any exercise is good as it increases the blood flow.

I started out a couple of weeks ago doing the shortest, easiest loop in the Horse Gulch system (where I used to trail run, and hopefully will again soon) and have been gradually extending my rides and increasing their difficulty. I've been trying to apply my lessons from last summer's MTB clinic, in particular trying to attack technical and/or steep sections rather than just assuming I can't ride them and bailing ahead of time. This has resulted in my riding over things that I never would have thought I could do - plus a few fall-down-go-booms and new bruises on my legs.

Today I wanted to do something a bit longer, so I rode up Junction Creek to the Log Chutes trail, about 5 miles of pavement and 2 miles of gravel/dirt road to get there, pretty much all uphill with a few quite steep spots. I'd never ridden this trail and knew only that there were a couple of "intermediate" loops, 4 and 7 miles. When I got there, I found no signage at all, and no people to ask, just two parked vehicles, so I took a guess and rode out the dirt road at the back of the parking lot, which had a barrier for vehicles but which bikes clearly had ridden around.

It turned out to be my favorite kind of mountain biking - a narrow, bumpy rock-and-dirt closed Forest Service road, a little uphill and then a little down. Using the best maze-solving philosophy I turned left at the first intersection, where it became narrower and more steeply uphill, and then left again when a singletrack trail (marked by tree blazes, and a post with a green circle for difficulty, but no map or name) veered off into the woods. (I was wearing my wrist GPS which I use for after-the-fact mapping and for mileage and speed tracking, and theoretically I think I could have used it to figure out how to get back to known territory, but I have never actually used the GPS functions so I'm not really sure how.) The trail was a little trickier but perfectly rideable, even for a wimp like me, although someone needs to go through with a pair of pruning shears and lop off the encroaching willows. I did have a few nervous moments on some of the rockier sections, and I walked across one boggy bit, and I fell at a creek crossing followed by a steep and loose uphill I couldn't quite negotiate. But otherwise, it was an awesome ride, and right at 4 miles I spotted the Junction Creek road ahead of me.

Total of 19 miles at a blazing 8mph average, although that hides the variance; on the paved part of the downhill I zoomed at 16-20mph, and my average over the actual Log Chutes trail was 5mph, or about trail running speed. I'm looking forward to riding it again (and trying the right fork, which I think leads to the longer loop; and bringing a camera, 'cause it's pretty!) with Britt once he gets over his ick.

Then I came home, took a shower, and went to the Taste of Durango street fair where I stuffed my face on tapas and mini-plates from our finest restaurants, washed down with a beer and a margarita. A perfect Sunday!