Springtime in Park City

Photos taken June 1, .. in Park City, Utah

Arches Revisited

Ten days ago I left Hovenweep National Monument and continued north toward Moab. My intention was to stay a few days and spend some time at Arches National Park. I immensely enjoyed my visit there, about a year ago. However, after a stop at the visitor center, where I learned that most of the campgrounds in the area were already full and booked for the weekend, I resumed driving. There is a State Park at Green River about 45 minutes northwest of Moab and, as luck would have it, they still had quite a few campsites available. It was mid-afternoon when I checked in and before the sun set the campground was full.



The next morning (Friday the 13th), I decided to stay at Green River State Park for the weekend. It was a gorgeous day and after doing a few chores in the morning took a drive over to Arches National Park.





One of the numerous formations at Arches. It was late afternoon and nearby formations cast their shadows, slowly creeping ever closer to this formation.





Another formation silhouetted against the skyline.



The snow-capped La Sal mountains rise up in the distance and dominate the horizon



Balancing Rock. From this angle it really does looks like it is doing a balancing act.



But as you walk around it, the angle of view and perspective change; it is securely attached to the base rock. In time, the wind and rain will erode the base further and some day, in the distant future, the balancing rock will be no more.





And, of course, the setting sun marked the end of another beautiful day!

Aspens and Sea Smoke

This photo was taken on a VERY cold morning in February . I think it was almost 20 below zero the morning I made this image. There was a lot of steam or "sea smoke" as people like to call it, rising off the lake. More common in early winter, it was a treat to see the steam in late February. My friend Roger and I had spent sunrise right along the water's edge taking photos of the rising sun and the ice on Grand Portage Bay.
To give you an idea of just how cold it was, while we were walking through some deep snow drifts to get to the water's edge, I tripped and fell in the snow. My tripod went right down under the snow, and was only in the snow for a few seconds. The tripod had been warm from being inside the car, and as soon as I pulled it up out of the snow it had ice on it. The snow had melted briefly when making contact with the warm tripod and as soon as I lifted the tripod up into the cold air it the melted snow that was on it froze instantly. I had a difficult time the rest of the morning adjusting my tripod legs due to the ice that now covered it.
After about 20 minutes in our first location we headed up to an overlook which looks down onto Lake Superior and Wauswaugoning Bay. From this elevated vantage point it was magical watching the sea smoke as it rose off the lake and drifted out away from shore. Roger has a Vari-ND filter which lets you block several stops of light and I thought this would be a perfect place to use it so I borrowed it for several exposures. The stationary trees and the edge of the ice combined with the moving steam made for a very compelling photo. Exposure time on this shot was 15 seconds, aperture f16, ISO 50. It was taken with my Canon EF 100-400mm lens.

Pornography?

You know when you see it....











http://www.guardian.co.uk/world//may/30/everest-mountaineer-crowding-hobby-tragedy

Hammers for the Petzl Quark?

Having climbed on the Nomics for so long now, myfavorite ice tool from just a few years ago, theQuark has been ignored as of late.



In factthe last pair of QuarksI did climb on had been chopped up pretty dramatically to take advantage of the best of everything I thought Petzl offered at the time.



Details here from the Spring of :



http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/850659/How-to-trash-a-300-ice-tool



The end result? Awesome Alpine tool!

These two were eventuallypassedon via "Pay it Forward" along with thousands of dollarsin new and used gear that was donated on CCcom. Fun project that!



http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/923346/1





Same toolsspent the past season in Patagonia. By thelooks of it they were put to good use.



http://jensholsten.blogspot.com//01/jardines-japoneses-new-route-on-mermoz.html



http://colinhaley.blogspot.com//01/jardines-japoneses.html







So I guess it comes as no surprise that I really like the newest Quark based on the original Nomic's head. I was never a big fan of the head shape or hammer and adze combo on the old Quark. So I put my money where mymouth was and made both a lwt weight hammer and a light weight adze for a Nomic 2 years ago. (Justthe one adze, mine,sorry!)

Very cool that Petzl decided last winter that what I was doing,was what they also wanted to do. Great minds think alike and all ;-)

So now you can buy the production version of a designI thought was a great ice tool several years ago. Big improvement on the old Quark I think. But theone place I still think Petzl missed the boat on the new Quark is in the hammer and adze. So it is really fun that the hammer I designed for the Nomic fits the new Quark perfectly. The lwt weight Cold Thistle hammer makes a much better balanced and super sweet alpine ice tool.

This version of the Quark is one of my main alpine tools.Petzl deliversthe best production picks on the market. What is not to like on this tool? Nothing!

Production runs sell out quickly. If you are off to Alaska this spring. It is time to get your order in now.

The Cold Thistle hammers can be purchased here:



http://coldthistletools.blogspot.com//08/ice-climbing-gear.html

Pictured are my personal set of new Quarks.

How We Ride

To the delight of some and eye-rolling of others, during the first year or two of this blog I referred to riding a bike recreationally as "sporty cycling." What a funny term. Why not just call it roadcycling? Well, because it's not! Roadcycling evokes associations that I felt were not appropriate to the kind of riding I did at the time - or in fact to the kind of riding most people who just want to ride a bike for exercise are drawn to. Roadcycling is its own world, with what I consider to be pretty rigid parameters. There are assumptions about equipment, positioning on the bike, speed, and even style, that are pretty much unspoken pre-requisites no matter how friendly and open the people are. Whether described as "social rides" or "training rides," it is still a fairly specific type of riding that assumes performance-optimised equipment, advanced handling skills, and the ability to maintain what most would consider a high minimum speed. And there is nothing wrong with any of this. Except that not everyone wants, or needs to ride like that. To ultimately be on a bike with dropbars, keeping up with the local roadies, need not be an end goal. Some might truly enjoy riding an upright bike at their own pace, without feeling the need to "advance to the next level." The very idea of advancing - of cycling in order to get faster, stronger - is part of the roadcycling discourse and& need not influence those outside of it.



In May , just a couple of months after I touched a bike for the first time in 13 years, I rode my first 50 miles. I was living in Vienna at the time and riding around on an upright hybrid rental, up and down a short stretch of the Danube bicycle path outside of town after work. Then one Saturday, I just kept going and before I knew it I did 85km - which I hadn't even realised until I looked at the map of the area I covered later; I just knew it felt like "a lot." How fast did I go? No idea. What was my nutritional plan? None. What did I wear? A cotton tunic, leggings and sneakers. Did I look like a complete dork, puffing away on my inefficient hybrid with suspension fork, saddle too low and handlebars too high, my loose sweat-stained top billowing in the wind? To a roadcyclist, maybe. But to a regular person? I just looked like a person doing a long bike ride.





I do not know why, over the years, I have grown attracted to roadcycling and do in fact now want to get faster, stronger, to "advance." I enjoy it and do not regret the transition. But at the same time, I maintain that it is absolutely not necessary to ride a bike in this manner. Last October I was back in Vienna and did a 100 mile ride along the same route I rode in . Again, on an upright bike in regular clothing, with no training in the weeks leading up to it and no nutritional plan. I thought that maybe that kind of ride would be boring for me at this stage, but it wasn't at all. It was just different. A different frame of mind, a different style of riding. I went slowly and didn't worry. It was not about performance or timing. I was just a person, going kind of far on a bike.



Now and again I get emails from readers who are genuinely upset because they can't seem to transition from an upright step-through or mixte to a roadbike with drop bars. The local cycling clubs only cater to the latter. Their spouse rides a roadbike. They feel left out. But the more I think about it, the more I realise it just doesn't make sense to give up the sort of bike you are perfectly happy with because of some misguided notion that you "should" be riding a roadbike if you're serious about cycling. I do wish there were more bicycle clubs that catered to casual cycling, where people on hybrids and upright 3-speeds and mixtes could feel at home and within their comfort zone. I also think there is a difference between casual cycling and casual cyclists. You can be a serious, committed cyclist and ride casually. This distinction is not often acknowledged.



Roadcycling is not the only valid form of recreational or sporty cycling. There are so many ways to ride a bike, and there is no right or wrong way as far as I am concerned. How we ride depends on us alone.

Nebraska Sunset - Heading Home

On our journey home we decided thatGrand Island, Nebraskawould make a nice stopover point. So, once again we found ourselves along the Platte River watching for Sandhill Cranes at sunset. There were still quite a few cranes in the area and we enjoyed watching them fly around the farm fieldsas the day drew to a close. For sunset we stopped by the viewing platform at the Alda bridge. I have had good luck at this spot in the past; it seems the cranes favor the section of river just downstream from the bridge. On this evening, however, it was not the best location as there were not very many cranes landing in the area. There werea fewcoming down to the river but they were too far away to see very well. Maybe this was due to the fact that we were at the tail end of the migration, or maybe for whatever reason they just didn't want to land here for tonight. As a result I do not have any nice crane images to share from this end of our trip, BUT we sure did have a beautiful sunset! One of the best of the trip, in fact. We greatly enjoyed watching the clouds change colors as the sun dropped below the horizon. The weather was also much nicer than it was when we passed through a couple of weeks ago. We'll take mid 60's temps over low 30's any day of the week in Nebraska :-) At any rate, it was a supremely beautiful evening and a great way to bookend our honeymoon trip!