Bison Peak

I was just looking back through some old images and realized that this weekend it will have been a year since I hiked up Bison Peak (in the Lost Creek Wilderness).  Man, that time has flown!  And a year ago, I said I'd get a post up "shortly" about it, but never did…  Oops! :)  Anyway, I'm not going to do a full write-up of the hike now, but thought I'd at least share a few pics and strongly recommend the hike.

The view in the picture above was taken on Bison Peak, looking out toward Wilkerson Pass.  We were just below timberline at this point, and the clouds out to the south and west were providing that nice hazy, layered effect for us to feast our eyes upon.  It was really beautiful.

These next two pictures, above and below, were taken up on the broad summit area of Bison Peak.  This mountain seriously has the broadest summit of any mountain I've ever been on, and it is LOADED with all these cool rock formations.  One could seriously spend a whole day just exploring this summit, and I have to say, it is the coolest summit I've ever been on .  14ers are nice an all, but if you really want to see some cool shit, step down to a 12er and go check out Bison Peak.  You won't regret it.

The Lost Creek Wilderness, including Bison Peak, is not too far of a drive from either Colorado Springs or Denver.  If you're looking for a really fun, beautiful day hike, I can't recommend this one enough.  I know I'll definitely be going back sometime.

I've uploaded the top two pics in this post to my photography, so they can be purchased as prints.  If you're interested, visit my landscapes gallery at http://www.ryanfonkertphotography.com/landscapes.

Amazon: “Your blog is dead.”

South Park & The Sawatch RangeThat was basically what Amazon just told me in a recent email.  I had completely forgotten that I had Kindle-ized this blog a while back, making it available on Amazon for anyone who wanted to load it on their e-readers.  Well, Amazon just sent me an email letting me know that they’re about to cancel my blog on Kindle, as it hadn’t been updated in over 30 days.  Oops…  I doubt anyone in the Amazon/Kindle world will notice, as I don’t know if anyone ever even subscribed to it there, but it did hit me that I hadn’t posted anything here in quite sometime.  In fact, it’s been over two months, and it had been over a month between that post and the prior one!  Part of that has just not been sitting down to write anything, but a lot of that has just not been much outdoor adventuring, so not much to write about.

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve gotten out skiing once.  My hikes have primarily been short, local ones, so not really much new to write about.  However, I have had some fun hikes and such with my kids, and I don’t know why I didn’t post about those, as they were fun and I did walk away with some fun pics.  I gotta remind myself to get more diligent about that…

The picture at the top of this post is one I took from Wilkerson Pass back in mid-January, looking out toward the Sawatch Range.  Not a bad view, eh?  I’ll be posting a couple more pics from that day soon.

By the way, if you enjoyed the pics from my last post, I’ve posted the better ones to my online photo gallery of landscapes (showing in the slideshow above), and I currently have a sale going on, allowing you to buy any landscape print at 50% off until the end of the month.  Details and coupon code for that sale can be found here.

Mount Harvard & Horn Fork Basin

I never got around to writing about it, but last June a friend and I took a backpacking trip up into Horn Fork Basin, inside the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness, west of Buena Vista.  Our intent was to tackle both Mt. Harvard (just off center in above pic) and Mt. Columbia, though we would end up only summiting Harvard.  Nevertheless, we had a great time exploring the basin, and this was probably my favorite backpacking trip since camping in Weminuche Wilderness Area back in 2003.  It's so beautiful up there.  Anyway, I was going back and processing a few pics from that trip last night, so thought I'd go ahead and share some of those with you.

Bear Lake

The Mighty Wall (as I liked to call it)

Looking South to Mt. Yale (not a great pic, but gives you an idea of the view looking down through the basin)

The Path (a cairn marking the path to the summit of Mt. Harvard – an AWESOME hike)

Ridgeline

Looking West/Northwest from Mt. Harvard

Scale

Exploring the Ridgelines

Horn Fork Sunset

As you can see, the views up there are phenomenal!  As I said previously, this goes down as one of my favorite backpacking trips, and I can't wait to go back.  For one, I'd like to go back and knock off Columbia, but more importantly, I'd just like to camp and hike around Horn Fork Basin again.  Even if you don't give a rat's patootey about bagging summits, you should go just to hang around and explore the basin.  It's crazy beautiful up there.

High Country Beer Cooler

The above pic I include just to show you a proper high-country beer cooler. :)  We packed a few beers with us to unwind after the hard days of hiking, and were lucky to find this lone remaining snow bank just outside our campsite.  Divine providence! :)

Lastly, I'll leave you with this pic (below), which shows how much work it was to get up there.  The trail itself is a pretty basic walk up to the basin; some serious elevation gain, but never more than Class 1/2 hiking.  HOWEVER, in 2011 there were massive windstorms throughout the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness that resulted in hundreds of trees going down, including over many trails.  This was one of them.  Up until the wilderness area border, they had cleaned up most of the trail, cutting the trees away.  However, they can't use chainsaws within wilderness areas, per federal law, so once past that boundary, you're crossing/circumnavigating all those fallen trees yourself.  Many times when events like this happen, they'll simply re-route, as creating new trails is easier than trying to clean up all the deadfall.

That's my friend, Mark, navigating the mess.  On the way back out on our last day, I'd end up snagging my leg on one of the many fallen trees while trying to step over it, ripping it open something ugly.  I'm still carrying the scar from that one…

Time to Rebuild

Hey, All.  I know I've been pretty quiet, and fairly sporadic, on here this year.  Am I not doing anything?  Kinda, sorta...  I have gotten out on some cool outings into the mountains this year that I just never got around to writing about, but there have also been fewer of them this year.  Also, my day-to-day routine of cycling/running/hiking seriously took a nosedive this year.  Part of it was work and family commitments, part of was more time spent on my photography, including the new studio I've had open since the Spring, but truth be told, part of it has also just been laziness, too much time wasted online (Facebook, email, websites), etc.  I still got out for some big events like the Almanzo 100 and the Pikes Peak Ascent, but I also did poorly at them because my fitness was just never up to par this year.  I trained enough to get through these things, but not enough to excel at them.  Basically, I got lazy, and I lost the once very fit Ryan that used to be a mainstay.  And I've felt the results, too.  With too little time out on the trails, and too much time in front of the computer, I've had periods where my knees went to shit, my back has gone to shit, and various other signs of weakness.  I can always rectify it, though, whenever I do finally dedicate some time to working out.  So it's time to stick to that!  Time to put Humpty Dumpty back together...

I've started this past week+ by just getting back in the gym, putting in time on the elliptical, treadmill, etc.  Next is getting back outside for some nice, chilly runs, and eventually start working the bike back in, too.  I bought a 5-Pass for Copper Mountain, too, so I'll get in some skiing here and there, too (which is additional motivation for the running/cycling, as being fit makes skiing much more fun and much less painful).  I signed up for the local Winter Series races here in the Springs, which consists of 4 running races over the course of January and February; figured I'd be more motivated to train if I had some immediate goals.

Beyond that, I'm working on setting up some scheduled goals for next year, some of them organized events, some not.  I'm not going to fill up my weekends too much, or plan very many competitive events, as I've found that's how I easily burnout and walk away in the recent past, which is exactly what I want to avoid.  There are a few key things I'm looking at, though, that I'm very excited about.  I'll write more about that later, when I'm more certain of them, and have a realistic goal and schedule nailed down.

Gravel Grinding, German-Style

Stumbled upon this over at Almanzo.  Great event over in Germany.  I think I've found a new event for my bucket list!  And as you can see, gravel grinders aren't simply taking over the U.S., they're taking over the world! :)

CRITICAL FILM from e r t z u i ° film on Vimeo.

It's kinda long, at 26 minutes, but well worth watching.  I think it illustrates rather well why events like Almanzo, Dirty Kanza, etc. are so successful here, as it has the same kinda vibe.  Those of you who have participated in such an event know what I'm talking about.  Those of you haven't: go check one out!