Mount Julian, Cracktop, Chief Cheley Peak, and Mount Ida

The standard route to Mount Julian involves hiking 6.7 miles from Milner Pass along the Continental Divide, climbing up and over Mount Ida, Chief Cheley Peak, Point 12,820, and Cracktop. This was my mission for Saturday, 21 August.

Since most of the hike was above treeline, I wanted to get an early start to minimize my potential exposure to afternoon thunderstorms. I woke up at 04:00, ate breakfast, and drove to my nearest National Park. Driving Trail Ridge Road in the pre-dawn gloom was singular; I could make out the barest outlines of the park's massive mountains and had to fill in the details of Ypsilon Mountain and Mount Julian from memory. I parked at Milner Pass around dawn and hit the trail at 06:30.

The designated trail climbed through the trees to treeline. A sign at the last junction warned about the dangers of navigating above treeline without a trail and without a map, where the slightest deviation from one's assigned bearing can send one down the wrong drainage. Above treeline, the trail was obvious for several miles as it followed the slope below the crest of the Continental Divide. I could see the Never Summer Mountains to the west, the Mummy Range to the north, the Gore Range to the south-west, and the Indian Peaks to the south.

Mount Ida Trail and Never Summer Mountains

The well-trod social trail gave out a mile from Mount Ida, leaving me to climb easy class 2 tundra with scattered rocks with only the slightest hint of a trail. I reached the summit (12,900 feet; ranked 715 in Colorado and 21 in Rocky Mountain National Park) easily and searched unsuccessfully for a summit register. I could finally see Mount Julian across the cirque, which seemed almost as remote as it did when viewed from Trail Ridge Road, and the summit afforded an interesting view of the Indian Peaks, presenting some interesting juxtapositions when viewed from this unfamiliar angle. (North Arapaho Peak appeared immediately above Fair Glacier, rather than several miles away. I'm used to seeing these mountains in a neat line when viewed from the flat lands of Boulder County, not from the north-west.)

I descended Mount Ida's steep south-east ridge and ascended Chief Cheley Peak's north-west ridge. I reached the summit easily and calibrated my GPS receiver's barometric altimeter for the summit's surveyed elevation of 12,804 feet. (Gerry Roach's list of the national park's summits listed the unnamed Point 12,820 as the ranked parent of both Chief Cheley Peak and Cracktop, and I was curious whether it was in fact higher, since both Chief Cheley Peak and Point 12,820 mustered only a single closed contour at 12,800 feet. All of this chatter about ranking and parents and topographic prominence may seem a bit technical but it gives me the opportunity to obsess over something while climbing.) I traversed the ridge to Point 12,820 and checked my GPS receiver's elevation reading and saw that it reported about 12,835 feet, suggesting it was, in fact, the legitimate parent of Chief Cheley Peak.

Mount Ida and Highest Lake

I continued to Cracktop, found only a few pieces of broken glass that I assumed must have been a summit register years ago, and contemplated Mount Julian, my final (and highest) destination for the ridge-hop. On the map it was a modest half-mile, but that half-mile involved descending 350 feet of class 3 terrain on the narrow ridge. It was here that my hike turned into a climb, and the best-guess schedule I had laid out for myself disappeared. I descended a bit too far to the south-east of the ridge and kept having to traverse vertical spines of rock before I decided I ought to climb back toward the crest of the ridge, which proved the best choice, as the scrambling soon eased. The half-mile ridge taxed my route-finding skills, which seemed to have a built-in disadvantage that I could only see the mountain immediately in front of me and had to guess whether the rock was passable without exceeding class 3. I did, at least, get a little better guessing whether a particular move on a particular rock would be class 3.

Gorge Lakes, Trail Ridge, and the Mummy Range

I reached the saddle between Cracktop and Mount Julian and began the final push to the summit. The ridge was blocky and scrambling up the car-sized boulders was much easier than the descent from Cracktop. I reached the summit of Mount Julian (12,928 feet; ranked 697 in Colorado and 19 in the national park) at 11:30.

I scanned the western sky for signs of storms and found nothing. I signed the official Colorado Mountain Club summit register, which had been placed in 2004 and averaged about a dozen signatures per year. The last signatures in ink were last year; I saw three scratched lines that looked like an attempt to leave a mark with a stylus when the pen was gone. I donated my pen to the summit register after signing.

Longs Peak above Hayden Gorge

I ate lunch and contemplated my return. Across the cirque I could see people standing on Mount Ida, and a few figures moving on Chief Cheley Peak and Point 12,820.

I began retracing my steps back to the trailhead by descending the blocky south ridge of Mount Julian, then began the scramble back to Cracktop. I had just enough of an idea where I was going to stay mostly on-route, but the scramble was still long and the route-finding tricky. (It was still easier than the final scramble up McHenrys Peak from Stone Man Pass.) On the summit of Cracktop I contemplated dropping into the upper reaches of the cirque, crossing the terminal moraine anchoring the tarn Highest Lake to the hillside, and scrambling up the opposite side of the cirque, bypassing Point 12,820 and Chief Cheley Peak and the elevation gain that would entail. I studied my map and surveyed the terrain carefully and decided I would give it a shot. Dropping into the cirque and crossing the moraine went well, but once I got below Chief Cheley Peak I could see that I had misread my map and the terrain and missed the snowfield separating me from the saddle between Chief Cheley Peak and Mount Ida. I did not bring the appropriate gear to cross the snowfield, so I scrambled down the side of the snowfield, crossed below it, and scrambled up the opposite side to the saddle. The difficulty never exceeded class 2, but the elevation I lost and had to regain was more than I would have had to climb had I stuck to the ridge. My shortcut was really nothing of the sort.

Highest Lake

From the saddle, I had to climb another 400 vertical feet to the summit of Mount Ida before I could continue my descent to the trailhead. The wind picked up as I crested the saddle and kept blowing as I ascended. I was tired and hungry and tried to maintain my blood sugar as I climbed, wary of calorie crash five miles from the trailhead.

I reached Mount Ida for the second time and looked back on Mount Julian, towering above the lakes in the cirque, and knew I had accomplished something.

Mount Julian and Inkwell Lake

The rest of the slog back to the trailhead was long and uneventful. The mid-afternoon light was different than it had been in the morning; the eastern sides of the mountains began to fall into shadows as the western sides lit up. (In most of the Front Range, the eastern sides of the mountains were carved by glaciers while the western sides of the mountains are broad expanses of tundra, leaving the eastern sides more photogenic and clearly favoring the early-to-bed, early-to-rise photography crowd.)

I reached Milner Pass at 16:15, ten hours after setting out, having blown out my optimistic schedule. I still needed to check in with Kiesa to let her know I was off the mountain; I gave her an absolute deadline of 17:00, though I suggested I'd be done before then. (My earlier estimate was based on hiking the entire distance to Mount Julian, rather than the more realistic scrambling, which ate up far more time than I had budgeted. I keep wanting to put together a comprehensive schedule-estimation toolset, based on my actual hikes and taking into account terrain, distance, and elevation gained and lost, but I haven't yet taken the time to do so.) I headed east on Trail Ridge Road, spotted Mount Julian from the road, tried not to get too angry at the slow-moving tourist traffic on the two-lane road, and made it to the wi-fi connection at the Beaver Meadows Visitor's Center with mere minutes to spare before my deadline. I Twittered my presence and continued into Estes Park and home.

Longs Peak and Trail Ridge Road

I quickly verified that bind was still running on my server, and it was accessible from the outside world, but it took me a few minutes to figure out why I still couldn't resolve names the normal way. I replicated the results dig +trace gave me, step by step, and discovered that the top-level .org servers were giving the wrong IP addresses for my nameservers. I had set up ns1.festing.org to point to Honor, my virtual server, and ns2.festing.org to point to Ziyal, my home server, but had forgotten to update the IP address of Honor when I migrated virtual servers eighteen months ago. Since then, Ziyal had been inadvertently functioning as my primary DNS server, and when my home DSL went down, my servers were essentially cut off from the Internet, despite still being connected itself. I presumably never noticed this before because I was either at home when my DSL went down, or I had already requested a DNS result and cached it in my local nameservers, wherever I happened to be. (With Kiesa working from home most days, she can power-cycle the modem whenever necessary, but on Thursdays she tends to work from a nearby library.)

With Kiesa unavailable to power-cycle my DSL modem until early afternoon, I figured out how to update the IP addresses of my nameservers in my name registrar's records and waited for the results to propagate across the Internet. By the time Kiesa brought Ziyal back up on the Internet, both my primary and secondary nameservers were up and all was well.

First light on McHenrys Peak

The following weekend, I set my sights on McHenrys Peak, proudly visible across Glacier Gorge from Longs Peak. (I took the picture above from the Keyhole while climbing Longs Peak two years ago.) I got up early on Saturday morning, ate breakfast in the dark, and drove to Estes Park. On the way I encountered a moose buck sauntering across the highway in the pre-dawn gloom and managed to give it a sufficient berth as I passed. Cloudy skies kept me from seeing the sunrise as I drove through an abandoned Estes Park and entered the National Park. I got one of the last spots in the parking lot at the Glacier Gorge Trailhead and saw a group assembling ahead of me. They hit the trail before I did, and I passed them on the climber's shortcut trail cutting off Alberta Falls and learned that they were headed for Thatchtop, an appropriately-named mountain that looks like nothing so much as a thatched roof.

I paid too much attention to the map on my GPS receiver and not enough attention to the trail as I navigated the final five-way junction and thought I had taken the turn toward Loch Vale rather than Glacier Gorge. I hadn't, but I still backtracked to the junction to verify I was on the right track. As I hiked up Glacier Gorge, the clouds persisted but for scattered glimpses of Chiefs Head Peak, bathed in early-morning light, through the clouds and the trees. I reached Black Lake at the end of the maintained trail and broke through the clouds to see McHenrys Peak towering majestically above the lake.

McHenrys Peak reflected in Black Lake

I followed an unmaintained trail up the gully to the east of the lake and broke out into a broad basin at the end of Glacier Gorge, surrounded by mountains: the broad, talus-covered west slope of Longs Peak stood to the east, crowned by Keyhole Ridge and The Trough; Keyboard of the Winds marked the ridge to Pagoda Mountain; Chiefs Head Peak stood mostly hidden behind the rounded granite obelisk The Spearhead; the Stone Man (looking very much like a man made out of stone) stood guarding Stone Man Pass; and McHenrys Peak, the lowest of the four surrounding summits, stood overlooked by most but me. I could see a few dozen technical climbers making their way up The Spearhead in various parties on various routes, but the rest of my route was deserted. To the north I saw clouds covering the lower expanse of Glacier Gorge up to the Mummy Range miles to the north.

I picked my way across the basin to the west, trying to find a reasonable route to Stone Man Pass. I ended up visiting tiny Frozen Lake, nestled below The Spearhead and looking quite liquid, and scrambling over the rocks on the west side of the lake to a massive expanse of gently-sloping granite. I followed the direct route to Stone Man Pass a bit too literally, and ended up with climb class four cliffs between me and the pass. I backtracked, found a better route to the gully leading north to the pass, and snow-climbed up a hundred vertical feet of soft summer snow to the pass itself.

On the crest of the pass I took a short break and surveyed my surroundings: the broken north face of Mount Alice was now exposed to the south, and I could see west down trailless valleys into untracked wilderness toward Grand Lake. I studied the route description in the pocket-sized Gerry Roach guidebook I brought with me and wondered exactly how many of Rocky Mountain National Park's mountains this library guidebook had ascended.

I began climbing north-east, along the class two talus that quickly gave way to class three scrambling. I had trouble route-finding up what I took to be the gully leading me to the tiny notch marking the crux of the route, finding cliffs larger than I was willing to climb this far from civilization. Much of the scrambling itself was fun, but the route-finding taxed my route-finding skills more than I expected.

At length, I crested the ridge, scrambled the last few feet to the summit, and found the large rock marking the summit. The summit push had worn me down, and the large cliff marking the east face, less than two meters from the summit rock, unnerved me. I found and signed the summit register and saw that the last person on the summit had ascended a week ago, and the log had less than ten entries this year. The log went back several years, at least to 2006. I might not be as high as Longs Peak but I was on far more rarefied ground.

I ate a large pre-lunch snack and began my descent. Picking my way down the class three summit ridge proved just as technically demanding as the ascent; having gravity on my side meant I needed to be even more cautious about where I stepped. Back at Stone Man Pass I donned crampons and deployed my ice axe for a careful descent of the snowfield that afforded the most obvious descent route. The top several inches of snow were soft in the summer heat, but the rest of the snow was hard-packed. Halfway down the first bit of snow I slipped and began sliding, feet-first, down the slope. I hadn't actually practiced self-arrest, but I knew what I was supposed to do: rotate into the snow and dig the pick of my ice axe into the snow, using the friction to stop my slide. I flipped halfway, unwilling to loose my view of where I was going, and came to a gentle rest on a rock at the base of the snow field.

I took a few minutes to regain composure and began picking my way down the wet scree separating two snow fields. I kept my crampons on because I knew I'd need them again, and dislodged a modest rockfall that tumbled down out of view, descending the gully in front of me. I didn't think anyone else was in the gully, or anywhere near Stone Man Pass, but I didn't want to be mistaken. Still unnerved from my slide, I shouted "Rock!" until the slide stopped, hoping to alert anyone who might be under my rock fall to watch their surroundings.

I continued down the gully and adopted a self-belay stance to down-climb the next snowfield, then picked my way to the talus on the opposite side. I shed my crampons, relieved to put the gully behind me and instead have a freeway of stable car-sized boulders to navigate. The only remaining navigational hazards were the creek draining Frozen Lake and an expanse of willows below The Spearhead, which were easily crossed once I found the path. I saw where the rough path crossing the lower portion of the basin met the well-traveled path I had followed on my way up, and joined the track to descend to Black Lake.

I stopped for lunch on a broad rock halfway down the final gully to Black Lake, once I was confident I was well-protected against any afternoon thunderstorms. The risk of rain proved hypothetical; the rest of the day remained clear and bright as I descended the long slog back to Glacier Gorge Trailhead and my car. Mine were some of the many tired feet returning to the trailhead, having successfully climbed my mountain.

Back at the trailhead, I noticed a dog locked in the car parked next to me, and brought it to the attention of the parking lot attendant who kept the shuttle busses running and generally gave directions. He said he'd keep an eye on the dog and bring it to the attention of the park rangers if conditions merited. The windows were cracked and the dog did have food and water, but it was a hot bright day and I still wasn't sure it was entirely appropriate.

Many of the guidebooks (and guidewebsites) I consulted suggested that McHenrys Peak might be harder than Longs Peak, and I'm inclined to agree. In terms of elevation and length, Longs Peak wins, but even the class-three pitches on Longs are well-marked and well-traveled. The class-three climbing on McHenrys was high and long and required extensive route-finding. Even the cross-country basin travel from one side of Glacier Gorge to the other needed more route-finding than I expected. McHenrys was a fantastic climb and a worthy way to spend my Saturday.

After spending an academic year in India, Willy returned to North America in June and settled into Walla Walla. He and my mother drove to my parents' timeshare at Powderhorn, on the north slope of the Grand Mesa in western Colorado. They picked up my father at the airport in Grand Junction, flying in from his summer job in Sacramento. Willy's car was packed with his stuff to move to graduate school, so he didn't have space to carry both parents to the front range for the weekend. I came to the rescue, driving to western Colorado on Thursday and taking Willy back with me on Friday, by way of Mount Elbert, the twenty-seventh highest mountain in North America, the fourteenth most-prominent mountain in the United States, and (more importantly) the highest mountain in Colorado. (Sometime during our expedition to Mount Adams on Cascade Volcano Day two years ago, Willy talked me into joining him to climb the eleven state highpoints of the contiguous western states, which seemed like a reasonable idea because the summit afforded us a singular view of two of the northwest's state highpoints.) This gave Bethany a good opportunity to actually see the entire family in one place, so she flew out from New York for the weekend.

Thursday

Kiesa and I went out for dinner at Leaf on our eighth wedding anniversary on Wednesday evening. My alarm woke me up at 07:00 on Thursday, giving me plenty of time to run five miles, eat breakfast, and stop for coffee on my way out of Longmont. I drove down I-25 to I-76 to I-70 for the long slog across Colorado, climbing to the Eisenhower Tunnel and again to Vail Pass, then passing all of the interesting parts of Colorado (at least, for those interested in mountains, which has been my emphasis of late) for the flatter and hotter western slope. Along the way I listened to the audiobook of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, which was a fascinating bit of magical realism and would have been totally inscrutable if I hadn't known as much as I learned in the past year about Indian history. (It occurs to me that more time has elapsed since my return from India -- five months -- than elapsed from my first getting the idea to visit to my actual trip -- four months -- and I'm still working through my backlog of reading material.)

This being the first time I had seen Willy since catching an auto rickshaw from the main street in Siliguri to the airport at Bagdogra, I finally got the opportunity to see the pictures he took while we were in Darjeeling, which gave a different perspective on the whole thing. (He also mentioned that he recalled our tea shopping on an entirely different evening, and I'm inclined to believe he's probably right, given that he wrote his account before I wrote my account. However, I assert that despite lacking literal truth, my account is still sufficiently figuratively truthful.)

I did not manage to get to bed very early, despite my declared intention to wake up at 04:00.

Friday

My alarm went off, entirely too early, at 04:00. I joined Willy for breakfast and we carried the rest of our stuff out to Yoda and departed at 04:45, still well before dawn. The sun rose about the time we stopped for gas in Glenwood Springs, affording a great early-morning view of Glenwood Canyon. We continued east and turned off I-70 at Minturn, heading up US 24 toward Tennessee Pass. I pointed out Eagle Park and the site of Camp Hale in the early morning light and pulled off to let Willy look at the interpretive signs. (Despite living in Colorado for thirteen years, he never made it to Camp Hale. I didn't make the visit myself until last year. The site of the Tenth Mountain Division's Second World War training camp is now mostly empty fields, with scattered foundations and ruins, and is steeped in more history than is readily apparent from a casual observation.) We stopped again at the monument at the top of Tennessee Pass, then continued south into the Arkansas River Valley, through Leadville, to the North Elbert Trailhead nestled between Mount Elbert and Colorado's second-highest peak (by normal Colorado prominence standards), Mount Massive. We had driven more than three hours to the trailhead, just as far as the drive from home, but I at least managed to pick up a climbing partner.

The trailhead was comfortably full at 08:45 as we hit the trail, a little later than I had hoped but not too far behind schedule. The trail climbed steadily through forested hillside and we used the altimeter on my GPS receiver to note when we climbed through Mount Hood's elevation. We crossed timberline and continued the long slog up the trail climbing steeply up the mountain's north-east ridge. We had a great view of Leadville to the north-east, and Mount Massive immediately to the north. Most groups had gotten an earlier start than we had, but we passed many of them on the mountain as we climbed.

Mount Elbert's north and east ridges

At 13,441 feet, I climbed past the elevation of Apache Peak, my prior highpoint so far this year. (We passed Willy's highpoint in the vicinity of the trailhead. I was a little worried how well he would do at elevation but managed to set a pace sufficiently ambitious to reach the summit in optimal time without going too fast.) Around 14,000 feet, the ridge grew more gentle to climb the last four hundred vertical feet, and I started calling off elevations of famous Fourteeners: Pikes Peak, Longs Peak, Mount Evans (Willy's prior highpoint, and Mount Harvard (my prior highpoint). Then, suddenly, we were on the summit: a broad rocky expanse with a modest crowd and an expansive view.

Willy and the crowd on the summit of Mount Elbert

Maintaining any sort of summit register on Colorado's highest summit was an exercise in futility; there were more people within two meters of me as I scribbled my name on a scrap of paper in the summit register than would visit McHenrys Peak (my last major summit) all year.

La Plata Peak from Mount Elbert

Mountains surrounded us in every direction: the Sawatch Range stretched north and south, with Mount Massive hulking to the north and LaPlata Peak visible to the south. I couldn't begin to identify all the mountains I saw, but I did take the opportunity to point out Mount Oklahoma, a centennial thirteener on the Continental divide.

Willy on top of Mount Elbert

We arrived at the summit at 11:45, after three hours of climbing 4500 vertical feet in 4.5 miles, and spent about half an hour on the summit. I kept a weather eye on the western horizon: the forecast called for a good chance of rain, and I expected the scattered clouds to turn to rain at some point during the afternoon I didn't expect them to start dumping immediately. I was less worried about getting stuck in the rain above timberline on Mount Elbert than on many other mountains I've climbed recently, but I still didn't expect it to be entirely pleasant. We started our descent and I found the descent to be only modestly easier than the ascent; I still had to step carefully, and I had left my trekking poles in the trunk.

As we descended the last five hundred vertical feet to timberline, I kept glancing back over my shoulder at the horizon expecting rain to start at any moment. I knew there were many people behind us on the mountain, and I couldn't help but wonder how many of them knew what they were getting themselves into. Did I have any responsibility to suggest that lingering above timberline after noon on a cloudy day was courting disaster? Most of the people I saw were adults, theoretically capable of making their own decisions -- until we spotted a family of four, with a preschooler and a toddler, on the trail just below timberline minutes before it started to rain. Willy and I stopped to pull on our rain gear, and though we kept up a brisk pace all the way down the trail, the mother kept up with us -- with her toddler son on her back, without a backpack -- for the next two miles back to the trailhead. I was impressed, and couldn't help but think of a mother bear protecting her cubs.

We reached the trailhead, after a long slog downhill in various stages of rain, by mid-afternoon, still roughly on schedule. We drove back toward Leadville and stopped to photograph the mountain we had just climbed -- Colorado's highest summit, and the second-highest mountain in the lower forty-eight.

Mount Elbert

We'd successfully summited one of the eleven contiguous western state highpoints, leaving another ten to go.

(There's a rumor that my talk was videoed, and could be available someday, but I know I have two years of BLUG tapes sitting in my basement, uncaptured and unnoticed, so I'm not going to blame the current videographer for falling behind. Though I might try asking to borrow the tapes myself, since I do know what to do with them.)

Navajo Peak, Apache Peak, and Shoshoni Peak visible from Longmont

Queens Way was already on my checklist for the early-summer snow-climbing season. I set out early Saturday morning, 10 July, for Brainard Lake Recreation Area, stopping for coffee along the way. The Long Lake Trailhead was already full at 07:30, so I parked at the lake and walked the extra half-mile to the trailhead. I saw a handful of people on the trail in the early-morning light. I pressed past Lake Isabelle (one of my family's favorite afternoon-hikes growing up in Boulder) into the upper valley toward Isabelle Glacier. When I reached the tiny basin where the trail headed off to the right to climb steeply to the glacier itself, I crossed the tarn and followed the tracks up the snow slope on the far end of the valley.

Tarn above Lake Isabelle

I spotted a trio of skiers ahead of me as I crossed the tarn, and when I stopped to grab my ice ax they took a direct approach up the end of the valley, skirting to the left of the big snowfield, to another tiny basin below Navajo Peak. I got a hundred meters up the snow slope before it got steep enough that I stopped to don my crampons. I climbed the slope and contemplated my ascent route. I could follow the snow up to the right to the mid-point of Isabelle Glacier and follow Queens Way up there, as had been my plan, or I could swing to the left, into the basin below Navajo Peak, and climb the Apache Couloir. Though not part of my original plan, the couloir seemed to be in excellent condition and felt like a better training climb for future steep snow routes I might be tempted to climb. I scrambled over rock for a few hundred meters to the base of the couloir, surveyed the route ahead of me, and began climbing.

Looking up Apache Couloir

By the middle of July, the snow in the couloir had consolidated into a firm cement, and previous tracks from backcountry skiers had plowed off the soft upper layer on meters of snow at a time, leaving an uneven ascent surface. I quickly switched from my ice ax in cane position to stake position as the slope grew steeper, and followed the main branch of the couloir as it wound its way up the side of the mountain. Kicking steps into the solid snow was difficult; I was glad to have the front points of my crampons for purchase, even as I strained my calves trying to remain upright on the slope.

Navajo Peak and "Dickers Peck"

I watched the conical summit block of Navajo Peak, and the odd little pinnacle of rock known informally as "Dickers Peck", rise to my left as I climbed, only to be quickly eclipsed by the rock walls of my couloir. I continued climbing and kept wondering how long I would see ski tracks. Just as I was beginning to worry that I would never reach the summit, the couloir abruptly ended and I found myself on a broad snow slope reaching gently for the ridge leading to Apache Peak. I climbed the remaining several hundred vertical feet to the ridge, then shed my crampons for another few hundred vertical feet to the summit. (The ski tracks started at the ridge and went all the way down the couloir.) It was 11:00, and the last thousand vertical feet took nearly an hour and a half.

I found two unremarkable piles of rock that could be the summit and found the summit register under the pile to the north-west. Two climbers who had ascended Queens Way arrived as I was scanning the two-year-old register for names I recognized. (I failed.) I surveyed my surroundings, trying to recognize mountains. The nearest higher point was North Arapaho Peak, just to the south.

North Arapaho Peak from Apache Peak

I looked north, down onto Lone Eagle Peak from above, where the giant imposing pinnacle looked like a minor arête, barely distinguishable from the surrounding rock. Longs Peak and Mount Meeker were socked in with a late-morning rainstorm, but the rest of the peaks along the way were bathed in light.

Looking north towards Longs Peak from Apache Peak

I descended a few meters to the east and found a good place to eat lunch. I used my GPS receiver to guide me to the top of Queens Way and caught an impressive view of Shoshoni Peak and heard the siren call of the couloirs on its west face before dropping into the snow.

Shoshoni Peak from Queens Way

I don't yet feel comfortable glissading down snow, especially when I'm uncertain about the runout, so I descended at a modest pace, keeping my ice ax ready for balance and self-arrest. The snow was firm and rutted but I kept my balance. I veered off Isabelle Glacier onto the unbroken snow slope that took me all the way down to the unnamed tarn and the end of the snow. I removed and stowed my crampons and ice ax and surveyed the mountain I had climbed.

Navajo Peak and Apache Peak

As I watched, and worked on a post-lunch snack, a trio of skiers descended, one at a time, the snowfield I had just descended.

Skier descends snowfield below Apache Peak

I made my way back to the trailhead and returned to civilization, happy to have successfully made a classic tour of Apache Peak. I checked the second-highest summit in Indian Peaks Wilderness off my list and started looking for my next climb.

My mission for Saturday morning, 26 July was to snow-climb Andrews Glacier, then walk along the divide to the nearby peaks. It turned out there was a partial lunar eclipse, partially visible at moonset, that morning, but when I looked out the window upon waking up I saw only clouds where I hoped to see an eclipsed setting moon. I drove through Estes Park to Rocky Mountain National Park and watched the SUV in front of me take the last space in the parking lot at the Glacier Gorge Trailhead at 06:45. I continued on to Bear Lake and found plenty of space there, despite adding half a mile to my hike in each direction.

I set out at 07:00 and hiked most of the way back to the Glacier Gorge Trailhead, then passed the early-morning tourists at Alberta Falls and continued west. I passed Loch Vale and turned off the main trail to climb to Andrews Tarn. As I climbed the narrow canyon, my new GPS receiver started drifting; it showed me on the opposite side of the canyon and eventually asserted my position was several hundred meters north-west, overlooking Andrews Tarn, rather than approaching the side canyon known as "The Gash". I turned off WAAS and power-cycled my receiver and, once it regained its position, seemed to have a much more reasonable idea about where I was. This was my first major expedition with my new Garmin eTrex Vista HCx, and I was a little worried about the receiver when it misreported my position, but it didn't give me any more trouble. I took the experience as a reminder to not put too much trust in my fallible technology.

I lost the trail in a patch of snow at the bottom of the canyon and ended up approaching the snow-covered headwall below Andrews Tarn head-on. I deployed my ice ax but was still a little worried by the steep rocky slope below the snow.

I reached Andrews Tarn, perched above the valley between the remains of the glacier that carved the canyon and its last terminal moraine. From the right angle, it looked like the rocky strip keeping the tarn on the mountainside was paper-thin and ethereal, more magical than physical.

Andrews Tarn and Andrews Glacier

I walked around the south side of the tarn to the glacier, where I donned my crampons and hefted my ice ax and headed up the moderate snow slope. At the end of June, packed snow dominated. I didn't really need my crampons but I liked the extra purchase they afforded on the slope. After climbing Juliet, Andrews Glacier was tame by comparison, but it at least provided a pleasant moderate climb.

I crested the divide, stowed my crampons, and headed south along the ridge to Taylor Peak, another thousand vertical feet along gentle class two talus and tundra. I could see the Never Summer Mountains and more mountains covered with melting snow than I could identify. I reached the summit of Taylor Peak (13,153 feet above sea level, my highest point so far this summer) and immediately saw an impressive view of Longs Peak from the west, with snow filling the trough most of the way to Black Lake.

Longs Peak with Taylor Peak's summit cairn

I saw mountains everywhere I looked, some of which I've climbed, some of which I want to climb, and some of which I couldn't even identify by name.

Looking north from Taylor Peak

I signed the summit register, descended to Andrews Glacier, and thought about caching my pack to climb Otis Peak but decided against letting the overly-friendly local marmot rummage around my pack and left two bottles of water instead. I ascended the ridge to Otis Peak (12,486 feet), signed the register, and descended as ominous clouds rolled in from the west. I strapped on my crampons to descend Andrews Glacier, not feeling sufficiently confident in my snow-legs to attempt a glissade.

Looking down Andrews Glacier to Andrews Tarn

I felt a bit of rain as I descended the glacier, but it didn't start hailing in earnest until after I picked my way down the snow-covered headwall under the tarn (which turned out to be steeper than the glacier itself) and worked my way down the rough trail heading down the valley. I passed two outclassed hikers unprepared for the challenges presented by the snow just before the hail descended, gradually changing to rain. I kept my climbing helmet on and pulled my windbreaker's hood above the helmet to protect me from the storm.

I followed the trail back down the valley and started shedding layers as I descended, once the storm passed and left a bright summer afternoon. I found the climber's shortcut trail cutting around the Glacier Knobs, which I discovered was marked on the map on my GPS receiver. I trudged back to my car, happy to have accomplished my major objectives. I stopped for coffee in Estes Park to rejuvenate me for the drive home, and took advantage of the civilized wireless coverage to let the rest of the world know I was back.

The peaks' separation from civilization is what makes them so special. We have plenty of civilization. We need more peaks.

- Gerry Roach, Rocky Mountain National Park: Classic Hikes & Climbs

Our new babysitter's first day was two weeks ago. I got up with Calvin when he woke up a little after 07:00, and Kiesa got up in time for an experimental breakfast of experimental French toast. The babysitter arrived at 09:00, and after a quick briefing, Kiesa retreated to the basement to work and I worked first on the dishes and then on the lawn. The extra three hours in the morning didn't feel like much but made it easier to fit in everything I needed to do on the weekend. She gave Calvin plenty of attention, which he thought was wonderful. The experience worked out well for everyone.

I spoke for BLUG in April 2004 with the title "Video Editing on Linux: How I made a 45-minute science fiction film using (almost) entirely open source software". I spent most of the six months I could have spent preparing ignoring the talk entirely. I was interested in things like filesystems and Google Chrome OS, but I didn't really know enough to say anything intelligent. I could have researched extensively, and reported on my findings, but I didn't really have the time to devote to that. (One idea did come to mind: A round-table discussion of filesystems with various people who knew exciting things about exciting filesystems.) While trying to fall asleep the night before running the Bolder Boulder, inspiration struck: I know enough about GPS and wilderness navigation to speak at length about it.

I spent most of my free time during the first week of June cramming for the sci-fi book club, trying to finish River of Gods in time for Monday evening's meeting. I could have finished the book in time but for Motoko's battery dying as Kiesa was out shopping for groceries, requiring a late-afternoon trip to Boulder to our favorite mechanic. (To verify that Motoko wouldn't start, I parked her on top of a hill, then got to demo a hill start. I don't know how one would do that in an automatic. Our mechanic quickly diagnosed the problem Monday morning; I biked into work Monday morning and continued into Boulder that evening after work to pick up Motoko.) We ended up canceling the book club due to lack of attendance, and lack of anyone actually finishing the book.

Free of the book club book (which I eventually finished, later in the week) I worked out a quick outline for my talk, starting with the basics of GPS (mostly borrowed from Wikipedia) and coordinate systems, then moving onto how I use my GPS receivers to answer three questions: Where am I; where have I been; and where am I going? I put together a set of demos showing off gpsbabel, Google Maps, Google Earth, and various USGS websites. I barely finished in time for the meeting, and assembled my set of props in front of me, including both of the (functional) Garmin GPS receivers I possessed at that time (a well-worn eTrex Vista for hiking, and a year-old Forerunner 305 for running) and my USGS 7.5' quad of Mount Saint Helens.

I was ready when the meeting started promptly at 19:00, and launched into my talk after the introduction. I prefer to rely on my slides only to show, and to rely on my voice to tell, so my slides were picture-heavy and couldn't be easily interpreted in isolation. I have a tendency to speak quickly when I get nervous; I noticed I was racing through my background on the technology (glossing over the tasty math involved) and tried to pace myself. With another couple of hours to prepare, I could have fleshed out my introduction slides; at one point I forgot which slide I had next and started explaining why longitude and latitude were inappropriate for on-the-ground navigation before I showed the slide with our actual coordinates in longitude and latitude.

I subtitled my talk "How to get lost while still knowing where you are", which was a reference to the gap between having a number tying one's position to an arbitrary reference point on a mathematical model of the Earth's surface, and actually knowing where one was in relation to anything else. Having discussed the theory behind calculating one's position on the planet, the second part of my talk was devoted to demos attempting to make that abstract position meaningful.

I couldn't get a GPS signal inside to show the NMEA output via serial and the more intelligible output from gpsd (answering the "Where am I?" question), so I pressed on to show off my track from my climb of Mount Neva in Google Earth (answering the "Where have I been?" question). (While preparing for the talk, I noticed that gpsbabel had timing information for each point on my track, but it was writing kml for Google Earth with only the timestamp for the entire track. Google Earth can animate timestamped tracks, but gpsbabel wouldn't break up the track into sufficiently-small increments to make that animation useful.) I ran into trouble when I tried to answer the last question, "Where am I going?", using both National Geographic Topo! (running in a VM), gpsbabel, and Google Earth, to draw a line on the map in Topo! and display it in Google Earth. Despite having two gigabytes of core, my computer decided it was out of memory and would rather thrash than let me do what I wanted to do. My demo stalled for five or ten minutes while I waited for VMware to swap in and Google Earth to swap out, and once I was able to show off Topo! I couldn't swap back to Google Earth. I managed to hand-wave my way through the demo and declare something resembling victory, wrapping up my talk in almost exactly one hour.

My audience included some GPS experts; one guy worked on GPS systems for surveying in his day job. I think I managed to be generally enlightening for most of my audience, but I could tell I was bogging down when my computer kept thrashing, making it impossible to actually continue my demo. I intended to assemble static screenshots for my demos, so I could do something in lieu of actually pulling off the real demo.

I think I did reasonably well at my talk. I learned that I need more time to prepare for something this size. (It's tricky to do much of value when I have maybe two free hours to rub together in the evening after work, and when I keep going to bed early to get up early and run. In May I flew to San Diego to give a two-hour presentation for another team at work, and I spent the better part of four working days preparing for it.) Overall, I enjoyed the experience, and I think I could be talked into doing it again.

I set out early Saturday morning, 5 June, to the Fourth of July trailhead beyond Nederland and Eldora, surrounded on three sides by wilderness. I was worried about my ability to navigate the road in Yoda if the road were snowy, and considered several fallback plans, but the road was clear and mostly dry all the way to the trailhead. I arrived around 07:00, and found several cars in the parking lot already. I set out on the trail, heading up to Arapaho Pass. I saw only one person on the trail, a solo guy with a light pack and an ice ax, heading down the trail shortly after I left the trailhead. Much of the snow had melted from the trail, leaving only short patches of snow below timberline, with the notable exception of one two-meter stretch of ice above a stream. Spring was in evidence everywhere, sending cascades of water down the streams and -- more often than not -- down the trail itself.

Unnamed false summits on Mount Jasper's broad east ridge dominated the view from the trailhead, and for the first mile up the trail, but as I reached timberline I could see Mount Jasper and Mount Neva, separated by the trailess alpine cirque I visited last September. There was a great deal of snow but plenty of rock as well. I pulled my fleece out of my pack to protect against the brisk wind blowing from the west, across Arapaho Pass, and put on gaiters to protect against the snow.

Mount Jasper and Mount Neva

The trail worked its way up to Arapaho Pass through snowfields and rock. I reached the pass and barely managed to stand up in the wind to look down into the lakes on the west side of the Continental Divide before continuing on to Lake Dorothy.

Lake Dorothy and Mount Neva's north ridge

I crossed the snow into the cirque below Mount Neva, donned my crampons, prepared my ice ax, and surveyed the route one last time. I set my sights on Juliet, a narrow line of unbroken snow flanked by rocks. I could see several sets of bootprints up the route, and saw where they veered to the left to bypass the overhanging cornice.

Juliet, on Mount Neva's north face

As I crossed the edge of the cirque, I saw the remnants of a modest avalanche down Desmonda, the next snow line to the right of Juliet. I made several special notes to myself to avoid getting caught in an avalanche. To the north of the cirque, on a low ridge separating the cirque from Lake Dorothy, I saw that the prevailing winds from the north had blown a giant cornice.

Aftermath of an avalanche on Desmonda

I made my way to the base of Juliet and began climbing. The snow was soft; late snows and warm temperatures kept the snow looser and softer than I expected. Soft snow seems better for traction -- I had no trouble kicking steps that held my entire foot, up to my ankle -- but the softer the snow the more likely it will slide. I continued upwards, as the snow grew gradually steeper. As I passed the narrowest point of the "hourglass-shaped" snowfield, the snow seemed to be a modest forty-five to fifty degrees; above the hourglass' neck, the snow grew steeper and seemed to pass sixty degrees as I climbed toward the headwall and veered left to avoid the cornice obscuring the direct exit. (I know I'm not supposed to be a good judge of slope while in the midst of a climb, so my estimates should be taken cautiously, but it did feel steep.) The headwall itself was a knee-high snow step; I took the step carefully and quickly realized what I would do with a second ice tool: I'd be able to keep three points in contact with the snow at all times, rather than two. The snow soaked through my thin fleece gloves as I made the final class-three move onto the flat expanse of snow on top of Juliet.

I cautiously walked to the edge of the snow, buffeted by the strongest winds I've felt, which threatened to knock me off my feet. I removed my crampons and scrambled the last hundred meters to the summit. The wind grew even stronger as I reached the summit; I dropped my pack and crawled onto the highest rock to avoid getting blown off the mountain. A casual survey for a summit register failed to locate anything, so I returned to my pack, ate a snack, surveyed my surroundings, and contemplated my descent plan.

Looking north from Mount Neva: Lake Dorothy, Longs Peak, Mount Meeker, Apache Peak, Navajo Peak

I descended via the soft snow on Mount Neva's north slope, trying to maintain a good line between the rocks littering the slope and the steeper, corniced slopes to the west (my left, as I descended). I couldn't see the slope below me, but I knew from looking up at the slope that there were some rocks but no overhanging hazards. As I descended, I could only see the rounded edge of the snow immediately ahead of me and the cirque floor, hundreds of vertical feet below; I couldn't see all of my descent route to properly identify the route to take. I descended cautiously, until at length I navigated the rocks and could see the straight descent route to the bottom of the cirque. The snow was still a robust slope, giving me the opportunity to plunge-step as I descended.

I ate lunch on a rock overlooking Lake Dorothy with a fantastic view of Mount Neva and I knew I had accomplished something. I saw only one person on my descent until I was a mile from the trailhead, when the trail filled with those on afternoon expeditions. Wearing gaiters and carrying unused snowshoes and a well-used ice ax, I felt modestly out of place, though I told myself they were the ones out of place and I was right where I wanted to be.