Wilson Peak July 21, 2008

This morning Allison and I set out to climb a 14,000 foot peak. Wilson Peak is situated amidst a group of 3 14ers. We picked Wilson Peak because the weather didn’t look like it was going to cooperate, and it’s the one you can get up and down the quickest. We left the house before 6 am. On our trip towards the trailhead, we had no idea that not only would we not reach the summit, but we’d be taking a helicopter home…

Driving up to the trailhead, we passed some cattle. I like the haircut on this one.

A view of Wilson Peak from the approach. 14,000 something feet high!

We parked the car at the trailhead. Hiking with an MIT student can be frustrating. You’re not allowed to start walking until your watch can pick up enough satellites to track your elevation gain vs distance traveled….

It took a while, but soon we were underway. Nice Marmot.

Looking back down the valley we hiked up. Beautiful.

A disintegrating building.

Lots of slippery snow to cross.

Approaching the saddle 13,020 feet, just before the scramble to WIlson Peak.

This is a photo of Allison at the saddle. Up above, we could see two figures taking a rest at about 13,200 feet. We would get to know these folks very soon….

This is the last photo I took before the day took a turn for the worse. You can see Lizard Head in the far right of the photo. Our trail took a left turn at this point.

Allison stopped to eat a quick snack, and I ran up the trail to look for a route. I crested a small ridge and saw a heap of gear just below some steep rocks, right where they met the snow. I looked further down and saw two people, the same silhouettes we had seen above us just 15 minutes prior. Only now, they were about 100 feet below us. One of them was lying in the snow, the other standing over him. I yelled down, “Are you guys alright?” My question was answered with an abrupt, “NO!” Not an answer you are ever expecting to hear. It was followed by an assertive, “We need rescue. Broken Thigh!”

I walked down to them, and Allison stayed up high in the hopes of getting cell communication. Luckily we could separate while maintaining voice contact.

I think they were happy to see us. A guy who works in a hospital, on an ambulance, and on ski patrol. And a hot chick with a cell phone and a GPS watch.

Looking up, I could see that the fall had been considerable. 30 feet bouncing over steep jagged rock and a 100 foot slide down the snow, to where he came to rest.

This guy’s femur was obviously broken and his thigh was as big as watermelon, only harder. And it would only get worse over time.

I took vital signs, treated for shock, and improvised a long bone traction splint. The ingredients? Two trekking poles, a stuff sack, duct tape, and 3 mil rope. Take a look…

The patient and a long view of his new splint.

The muscles in the the thigh are really strong, and once the femur breaks, the muscles go into spasm. They will pull the sharp bone ends together, causing extreme pain, and life threatening bleeding. A closed femur fracture can cause enough blood loss to lead to death.

This splint, pulling ~15lbs of pressure down on the foot is actually pulling the bone ends apart…

Allison was hard at work up the ridge. She couldn’t get voice cell service, but could squeeze out some text messages. She texted a friend, who called the sheriff’s office. The sheriff’s deputy, in turn, texted Allison. At this point I had yelled up to Allison that we need a helicopter ASAP. She passed that along and that got the gears turning. Amazingly, the whole entire rescue was coordinated via text message. Not a single phone call was ever placed.

We had been on scene since 10 am, and the sheriff’s deputy promised a chopper by 1 pm.

I hiked 5 minutes down to a flat spot where I thought a chopper could land. It would take a brave pilot, but there was some flat snow just along side an old mining cabin. I made a big X in the snow that would be visible from above.

I grabbed an old board and stuck it upright in the snow. I tied my shirt to it to make a windsock. This is the last time I would ever see my shirt intact, but In marginal conditions, these pilots can use all the information they can get.

The chopper came in at about 130. We were glad to see it.

Awesome landing, right on top of my X!

Out of the helicopter came two people with lots of equipment. It then lifted off, to return when we had the patient ready to load.

We met up with Eric and Brian, members of the local search and rescue.

We hiked them up to the patient. They had lots of medical stuff with them, which we desperately needed.

I used some of it to start and IV on the patient, and to give him some fluids and some morphine. He was happy to have some pain relief.

It took over an hour to get the patient stabilized, moved into a basket, and carried the 400 feet down the snow to the helicopter landing zone. It was starting to sprinkle and lightning was moving in. We were about to lose our window to use the helicopter. The alternative? Carry this guy down 3500 vertical feet.

Luckily the weather held off. This is a shot of Eric waving in the chopper. That fabric in his hand used to indicate wind speed and direction? A fragment of my shirt…

A great shot by Allison that really shows the clouds mounting in the background.

Here’s the chopper coming in. Brave pilot.

Brian covered the patient while I held onto my hat and the IV bag. By this time, the patient looked pale as a ghost, and really needed IV fluids to keep his pressure up.

We all helped load this poor guy.

The helicopter left to drop the patient off. Luckily, it came back to get us, and give us a ride back into town.

Amazing views out the windows.

Approaching the Telluride airport via helicopter.

Once we hit the ground, we met up with Eric again. He told us that when he was transferring the patient to Flight For Life, he curiously began complaining of back pain. Since we had done such a thorough evaluation of the patient over a period of 6 hours, Eric was stunned. Reaching down to feel the patients back, as any good medic would do, Eric pulled out these rocks which were firmly pinned up against his spine… Ouch!

And no adventure is complete without a few souvenirs…

You can read the news story about the rescue in the Telluride Daily Planet.

-A’s

Imogene Pass July 16, 2008

Today Allison and I took the jeep to Ouray, over Imogene Pass. It’s a rugged 18 mile trip over one of the highest passes in the country at over 13,000 feet. We took this “short cut” to find some hot springs to soak in. Ouray is full of them.

The trail was pretty rough from the start. Can you see it cutting a faint horizontal line through this picture?

The trail was steep and rocky. We climbed over 4,000 feet in just a few miles.

Mmmmm…….doughnuts.

With rock walls on one side and cliffs on the other, you must always keep you eyes on the road.

Along the way we passed countless abandoned structures, all of them related to mining in some way.

We reached the ghost town of Tomboy.

This is one of those desolate places that makes you wonder how people ended up there. Back in its day, around 100 years ago, it apparently had 1,000 residents, a school, a bowling alley, a YMCA. It is now just a pile of rubble, with only the skeletons of buildings remaining.

It’s also striking how much junk was left behind.

Moving higher, we passed this sign. This might the first time I’ve seen “short wheel base” recommended on a road sign. And based on the terrain we encountered, I’d say they’re using the term “recommended” pretty loosely.

The last switchback before the top.

At the top of the pass, we got out to take a look. It looked like a Jeep advertisement.

Some rednecks went postal on this mailbox. It must take the mailman forever to get up here.

Leaving the top, we turned left here. This sign is clearly brand new. No bullet holes.

That rock is huge!

And finally pulling into Ouray…

After lunch in Ouray, we headed to Orvis Hot Springs, in nearby Ridgway(no cameras allowed).

At the park in Ridgway, I had Allison strike a pose on a weird bear/owl chair thing.

Then I pushed her on the swings.

And she spun me on the spinny thing- until a gang of 8 years olds came and kicked me off….

-A’s

Sneffels Highline Trail July 13, 2008

Today Allison and I hiked the Sneffels Highline Trail, which is a dozen mile loop that starts from the town of Telluride. The haze I mentioned in the last post is still here, which somewhat hinders mountain photography.

Here’s Allison towards the beginning of the trail.

The trail climbed through the Aspens.

You can see the haze really well in this shot. Mount Wilson in the background.

Approaching treeline…

Allison cooling off.

If you like waterfalls, come to Telluride. I’ve lost count of how many we’ve been to. Notice the haze?

I like all the colors in this one…

The trail to the top. The bottom of the U-shaped rock formation in the center of the shot is the top of the pass. All downhill after that.

Nice views on the other side too…

A few hours down the trail and we were back in town!

-A’s

Lizard Head July 7, 2008

Allison and I are back in Telluride. She was in meetings all day, so I took a ride up to Lizard Head Pass. I packed a bag for a 7 mile hike, but due to weather, I never ventured far from the highway.

I did get a few nice photos though.

Here’s one of Lizard Head Peak. I’m not sure if I lack imagination, but I don’t see the lizard in this one. All i see is the world’s largest “We’re #1″ foam finger.

Lizard Head is over 13,000 feet high, and is one of Colorado’s most difficult high peaks to climb. It has near vertical faces made of rotten crumbly rock. Here’s an interesting account of climbing it written by a guy who did so only because his astrologer told him to.

Since the weather was getting so bad, I focused my attention to taking some pictures. I found some sheep to photograph. These two were nice and friendly.

These two hated me and my camera.

Here’s the wide view. There had to be thousands of them.

Speaking of sheep, here’s Sheep Mountain to the east.

This is looking down from Lizard Head Pass, towards the south. You can see the rain coming. Lightning was also getting very close as well. I took this photo right before I headed home.

Speaking of lightning, check out this story out about a whole family that got hit yesterday in Aspen. It happened near American Lake, which is right next to Electric Pass.

-A+A

Hope Lake June 29, 2008

Allison and I got a late start yesterday. We headed for Hope Lake in the late afternoon. We planned on finishing the 7 mile trip before dark. Hope Lake sits at about 12,000 feet, so we knew we could encounter some snow…

It’s about a 12 mile drive from Telluride. The last few miles are a jeep trail.

Once at the trailhead, Allison was sad to learn that she couldn’t take her dirtbike.

The trail was nice and flat at first, no snow to climb over just yet.

Here’s the first of many snow patches to negotiate. Allison looks terrified.

Don’t forget to stop and smell the flowers.

Climbing higher, the trail began to liquefy. The heaviest snow year in at least a decade has left plenty of volume remaining at higher elevations. The melting snow above us was making travel difficult.

There is a trail somewhere under this water.

We had so many stream crossings to contend with, that eventually you just needed to get your feet wet.

I almost made it across this one in one leap. But not quite…

Take a look at the nature.

Continuing on, we found more streams to cross. I like this shot because it looks like Allison is wearing a magical river-crossing stripper shoe on her left foot. Amazing!

Looking down the valley, post stream crossing.

The water raging downhill, perpendicular to this shot, is actually over the trail. We had to improvise and take routes around.

We worked our way around for a while, but it was getting late. Shortly after we took this photo, the trail turned to steep switchbacks covered in giant mounds of snow. Forward progress was painstakingly slow and difficult. We posed for one last photo.

Heading for home, we decided we would come back in a few weeks to finish the hike to the lake, complete with photos. To be continued….

-A’s

Bridal Veil Falls June 24, 2008

This morning I was planning on heading to Aspen. I have to work tomorrow at 930. Allison and I made a last minute decision to put off my departure until 5am tomorrow morning. There are just too many fun things to do here.

With our new time extension together, we hit the trail that heads east out of town up to Bridal Veil Falls.

For a mile or two, the trail follows the dead end road that leads out of town. The road dead ends because Telluride is situated in a box canyon; that is, a canyon with only one entrance, walled in on three sides.

Behind me is one of those walls. You can see the falls just above my head.

Here’s a far away shot through the 10X zoom. The falls are over 100 feet tall.

Once the trail ended, we walked along the road, which was now unpaved. The road is open to vehicles, but requires 4wd with high clearance. At the start of the dirt road, there were many old mining buildings. The land on both sides of the road is owned by the local mining company, Idarado. More on the Telluride mining history in a future post.

Some aspects of the mine appeared to be operable and workers were moving about. We came across this sign.

I’m thankful Allison is not the kind of girl who sees a sign like this and says, “Why doesn’t it say women working! Those pigs! I’ll show them! I’m getting a job at the mine!”

We passed some nasty retaining ponds. Doesn’t exactly make you want to jump in for a swim.

Approaching the falls, we saw some skiers working hard for a few turns on a north-facing snow patch.

The road crossed an avalanche path which had clearly been active this winter. The debris had been cleared off of the road, but remained on both sides. Still pretty deep and littered with broken trees.

Here’s some destruction in the slide path.

We made it to the falls. There was an enormous cloud of mist, which made Allison chilly.

The mist creates a little microclimate all its own. It felt like the high mountain tropics.

On the descent, we had a nice view of Ingram Falls up above.

Here’s a view of town, looking west. Looks like rain…

Sure enough, it started sprinkling. I convinced Allison to stop for one more photo.

That is the last I saw of her. She took off down the trail, leaving me to pursue my passion: really bad nature photography.

I hung back to play around with my camera. The subject this time? Flowers!

Here’s a white one.

I took these two photos just before I got caught in a raging downpour. I got absolutely drenched. Allison, of course, made it home right before the rain…

-A’s

Telluride Bluegrass. The Last Day. June 22, 2008

This morning Allison and I went for a short walk up the hill to watch a Bluegrass festival tradition: staking claim to precious music viewing real estate. Festival seating is general admission, so if you want good seats, you have to be early. People camp out all night to get a good place in line. Walking through town this morning, the line snaked around the city streets and must have approached a mile in length.

This is not all you have to do to get good seats. Once the flood gates open at nine, you also must be fast. Even if you are number one in line, there is still a few hundred feet to cover before you reach the best seats. In these few hundred feet, you could be passed by many people, setting you a ways back from the stage and negating a hard nights work. Your claim is established simply with a tarp, which you must rig in advance to unroll in a seconds time.

So Allison and I woke up early. Not to get good seats, but just to watch the spectacle from above town. It was unreal. There is a five minute bagpipe ceremony before the gates are opened. Then some reveille is played. As the gates are opened, It looks more like people fleeing a tsunami wave then heading to see some bluegrass.

Allison snapped a time-lapse series of the venue filling up with tarps. It takes place over about one minute.

We actually went into the festival later for some music, but not till the afternoon. Around noon, a storm rolled in with intense thunder and lightning. Mushy hail stones the size of a gumball started to fall. I tried to make Allison pose outside for a picture.

The thick sheets of hail shortened visibility, almost like haze.

The storm soon passed, and we went into the show. We watched some music and got some snacks.

Unfortunately, we were just in time for the “kids parade.” Some kids walked around the venue and sang songs amidst some really scary festival monsters!

This one looked like a grumpy Flavor Flav. He also had the periodic table of elements stapled to his back.

I’m not quite sure what they were going for with this one. Maybe the guy from Predator?

The festival ends tonight. It’s been really fun, but we can’t wait for town to quiet down again.

-A+A

Telluride Bluegrass Festival June 21, 2008

Allison and I have waking up to music for the past few days. Just 1/4 mile from the venue for the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, our room has been flooded with some familiar voices. Soundchecks start at 8am or so, and just got us excited for the real thing.

We set out to buy some tickets yesterday. We were lucky enough to find one 4-day pass ahead of time, but we needed one more so we could go together. A sign was quickly constructed, and we took to the streets.

At first, we took notice that there were a dozen or so other folks who were looking for tickets. No one seemed to have any for sale. I walked up and down the main streets, some sympathetic folks gave condolences, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. I met up with Allison and we found a cozy bench by our second-favorite java joint, Cowboy Coffee, to relax and hold out our sign. Here, we received additional condolences, and the occasional onlooker who would read our sign aloud to us. “Need…..1……ticket……Oh sorry man.” This happened more than once.

Well, It took longer than expected, but we eventually found a nice guy who gave us a good price on a 4-day pass.

We were happy once inside the show. We watched Bruce Hornsby and Ricky Skaggs collaborate as the sun went down over the summer sky.

The scene just a short time later….

This morning we went on another hike overlooking the festival, which fits about 10,000 or so people. It was already jam-packed long before noon.

Now it’s off to the summer solstice show to catch Sam Bush…

-A+A

Ophir Pass June 20, 2008

Allison and I rested our legs today and let some fossil fuels do the work for us. We decided to head to Durango to meet up for lunch with Joe and Karen, Allison’s dad and step-mom. We picked a short-cut through the mountains, taking our one-way mileage from 120, down to 80 miles. We headed 12 miles south to the town of Ophir, where we picked up the road to Ophir pass.

The road is a jeep trail which connects Ophir with Silverton. Ophir is a tiny town, without much infrastructure. It is really beautiful, but littered with avalanche paths. More on that later. Here’s a photo I snapped of Ophir.

It’s hard to see, but it’s there, nestled in the valley.

The road is fairly rough, and requires 4WD. I drove…

Allison took the helm at the camera, which kept her mind off of the heights and drop-offs.

The road got very narrow toward the top.

Luckily no other cars came from the other direction through the narrow section. This could have required a lot of dangerous backing up, which adds to Allison’s anxiety!

Here the Jeep looks pretty dwarfed by the snow banks.

All the minerals up in the hills provide for the really rich colors you can see in the background.

Nearing the top, we passed a friendless soul looking for some snow to ski on.

Rule #1- Always ski with a partner.

This area is known for its avalanches. Look at this hill. It’s avalanche paths are spread out like fingers, leaving it with a striped appearance.

Across the valley, we spotted a bald patch of land littered with downed trees. Since all the trees above the patch were in tact, Allison surmised this was from a snow slide which had so much energy, it traveled a ways UP the opposite hill after it reached the valley floor. My contention? Obviously the work of Aliens. Click on it and see for yourself….

…Aliens!

The descent was a much easier drive.

We were soon on the highway and before long, in Durango. Lunch was fantastic. A gem of a Mexican restaurant hidden in an Albertson’s parking lot.

After, it was off to the local industrial park, where Allison knew of a local brewery. Much to our surprise, when we arrived we found a raging party, complete with cheap beer, free food, and a live band. These are all ingredients for a good time.

Any decent ski patroller can find some quality eats, free of charge. It’s in our blood.

Allison showed me how pound a microbrew. It’s a lot like pounding an MGD, but more expensive.

The party was complete with hippies and their leashless dogs. This is the drummer from the band. He alternated between beating his drum, and beating the dogs that were trying to eat his shift meal pizza. No joke.

This is the rest of the band. I never did catch their name, but they looked like they might have been called Southbound or something. Great Hank Williams covers….(senior, of course)

On the drive back I snapped one last photo of the road leaving Ophir.

You will recognize this road after you watch this short video on Ophir avalanches.

Try and disregard the Jihadist music, because this is the most incredible video on avalanches I’ve ever seen, and right in our own backyard!

-A’s

Up To Mountain Village June 18, 2008

This morning Allison and I went to Mountain Village. It’s a town perched above Telluride, accessible via the free gondola. We chose instead to walk(Allison’s idea) the 3 miles from town via the Boomerang Trail. We started on the river trail, which follows the San Miguel river. The river is swollen from snow-melt, and at times the path was a little flooded.

Further down the river there was so much water, we had to circumnavigate the path

I worked on my crappy urban nature photography.

Along the way we passed a hippie school. Looks like the hippie children made some birdhouses.

Telluride has some of the most interesting architecture that I’ve ever seen. A lot of ultra-modern looks mixed with classic mountain Victorian. Here’s a picture of an old mining cabin directly adjacent to a modern building intended to look like an old mining cabin. It’s an unusual concept, but I think it works really well.

Once we made it to Mountain Village, we took the gondola back into town. Time for a vegetabletarian lunch.

Here’s the happy cook…

-A^2