Death Hollow

Mike and I and two of Mike's friends, Lane and Dave, backpacked through the main section of Death Hollow near Escalante, Utah. We spent two nights in the canyon. The three main adventures of the weekend were 1) the thunderstorm that dumped on us for the first couple of hours of our hike, 2) avoiding the poison ivy, and 3) avoiding the unwanted swimming holes in the river. Other than that, it went as planned, the canyon was beautiful (poison ivy is very pretty and lush...), and Mike surprised me with an ultra-lightweight 2-person backpacking tent. Not for me to keep, but for he and I to enjoy together! I think he could see the writing on the wall that there is no way I am ever going to pack in my own tent when we could easily share the weight of one 2-person tent together. In order to mesh that with his desire to become an ultra-lightweight backpacker, he forked out the big bucks for this awesome tent..... and .... I didn't even have to carry any part of it. That's how much of a gentleman he is. :)

From here on out, I'll let the pics do the talking .... with maybe a few captions.

Hiking in the rain

One of the many extra waterfalls we saw due to the rain

With a view down into Death Hollow

Hiking down into Death Hollow - that's me on the right

One of the many "Ivy Islands" - yes that is all poison ivy

And me trying to wash the poison ivy off my face after I swear it made contact

The pool where we stopped for Lane and Dave to play in

The alcove under which we camped - the darker green is poison ivy 

12 Hours of Mesa Verde Race 2014

Well, I raced in the 12 Hours of Mesa Verde Race in Cortez, Colorado again. I did not take any pictures. Shame on me. I raced it with Patty, Jen H, and Jenn C. And guess what - I shaved 15 minutes off of my race time! That's the main reason for posting about this race with no pictures. I just had to document that for posterity sake. I think it must be due mostly to my ability to ride more technical stuff now. But who knows and who cares! I feel like I rocked it. 2 hours and 1 minute was my final race time for that 17 mile loop. Woot!

Early Out Bike Ride

Twice a year, campus shuts down for graduation and has all the employees leave so we can vacate the parking lots for the graduates and their families. One of those days was today. So to celebrate, Janie (who also works for BYU) and I went for a 35-mile road ride from my house out to Lincoln Beach. We rocked that ride: we average 16.3 miles per hour, which is pretty dang awesome for me. We weren't drafting off each other until the last 7 miles when we were both getting very low on energy. And since it was a beautiful day, we stopped to take a picture.

Fruita for Some Mountain Biking

Mike and I got some of our friends together and went to Fruita, Colorado for some mountain biking for Easter weekend. But.... Saturday morning it started raining in the wee hours of the night and didn't really stop until mid-afternoon. So, we dinked around camp and downtown Grand Junction for a while until it stopped raining. When it stopped raining, we played some lawn games that Mike brought at a park to see if the weather would hold and maybe give some trails a chance to dry out.

Thankfully the weather did hold so we went went to the Kokapelli trails and rode Horse Thief and Steve's loop late in the afternoon. Between those two rides, we got about 16 miles in, which is a good day!

The next day we drove out to ride the Tabegauche area where we found two bike brands (Yeti and Specialized) holding demo days.... to which I caved and tried a full-suspenson, 27.5-inch-tire-size Yeti for our ride that day. For free. We were out for just about 3 hours riding The Ribbon, Gunny's Loop, and some of the other trails within the Tabegauche trail system. I needed that much time to get used to the bike and then to kind of really like it. The full-suspension bike really does help a lot. I was much braver about doing rocky technical sections of the trail since I wasn't being bucked around nearly as much as I would have been on my bike (which is a hard-tail). When we got back to the bike people at the parking lot, I asked how much the bike was and they said $4,900. Ha! Yeah. Excellent. I think my bike is still good enough for me and I still have fun with it....unless I can find a used one for less money in a few years....

I was delinquent with my picture taking and only took one picture of Mike and I on The Ribbon overlooking a canyon:

Capitol Reef Weekend

I haven't been much of a fan of Capitol Reef National Park. I went there once a long time ago and just  did a cheesy little hike to an arch and saw that the only paved road cuts across a narrow section of this incredibly long park (I'm talking like 100 miles long). Otherwise it just has a bunch of 4WD/dirt roads that go to other areas of the park that I could never access because I didn't have a 4WD vehicle. Apparently, Mike and his friends make an annual trip of Capitol Reef and explore somewhere new every time. So my eyes were opened to the possibility of the park! They found a series of canyons called "The Wives" that we could canyoneer through, and they decided to have us try Wife 3 and The One That Got Away.

Wife 3 began with a bang! A 200-foot rappel with 150 of it being a free rappel (which means you're just hanging on the rope without being able to touch the canyon wall). It was quite the welcome-back-to-canyoneering rappel for me. The next rap was pretty intense too: I had to chimney across a crack (that had a deep drop) out to a rock stuck in the crack in order to get on the rope to rappel down the crack. After that, the raps weren't quite so intense.

At the beginning of the day: Lane, Dave, Mike, and me

Me and Mike on the approach hike to Wife 3

Mike on the approach hike to Wife 3

Me on the approach to Wife 3 - quite the tight rope walk!

That's me! Beginning the 200-foot rappel

Me finishing the 200-foot rappel

Me hiking down from the 200-footer in the background

Me, Dave, and Lane in the canyon

Mike standing on the rock stuck in the crack with Dave in his spider hole where he helped me and Mike get on our ropes for the rappel

Mike starting another rappel in Wife 3

The One That Got Away (TOTGA) ..... well, it actually got away from us. It was supposed to be just a down-climbable canyon, meaning no ropes were necessary. We started it with a pretty crazy down-climb. But then we came up on a pretty deep and dark crack that we were supposed to chimney down - but it was deep! And the walls were all curvy and rough - not good for my limited experience of doing the chimney move. So we ended up hiking back out of it - and even getting up the down-climb we did was challenging.

Climbing back up the down climb in TOTGA

Dave and Lane exploring the bottom of TOTGA

Mike and I hanging out on the cliff-side while Dave and Lane explored the bottom of TOTGA

On Sunday, we ended up trying to hike up the west side of Burro Wash, but I think Lane (Mike's friend) said it ended up not being Burro Wash. Those guys .... they must have done so many trail hikes that they've become bored of them so their kind of hiking is off-trail, bouldering, and all that crazy stuff - so that is what we did for our "hike" on Sunday. But they were good to me, and I didn't complain. :)

And here I am bouldering and trying to keep up with the guys

This is where we stopped since I wasn't really inclined to climb that

Mike and I taking a little lunch nap

Quite a bit of this hike was on a 4WD road

I wished these "mattresses" were softer and more horizontal

Mike trying out the "mattresses"

Visiting Robyn & Doug, Traci & Greg in Portland

I finally made it out to Portland to visit Robyn and Doug and Traci and Greg! I flew in really late - at 11pm and Robyn picked me up and then terrible us - we stayed up until 12:30 talking. But I guess that's not news. :)

Friday, Robyn and I went to a little, very nice, shopping district in downtown Portland after which we had a walking tour of Portland scheduled. We had so much trouble finding parking for the shopping area, that when we realized the tour meeting point was only a mile and half away we decided to walk to it and not lose our parking spot only to fight to find another spot. After walking around the shopping area, then to our tour, then during our tour, and then back to our shopping area and car, we think we walked at least 5 miles that day. When we got home at 6:30 we were wiped out! Thankfully, Doug had picked up the famous gas station pizza for us for dinner.

Robyn and me inside one of the theaters on the tour

I loved these houses on the street that we parked in downtown Portland

Saturday, Traci and Jude joined Robyn and me for a walk through the botanical garden that is by Robyn's house. Then Traci and I picked up lunch and went back to her house to eat it since Jude had to lay down for a nap and I wanted to see Traci and Greg's cute little place! Traci also showed me her little wild land behind her house, for which I was not wearing the right kind of shoes! After that Doug, Robyn, and I went to the Portland Museum to see the Venice exhibit, and to dinner at a French bistro, and then we came back to their house to watch the movie, Catching Fire. Ha ha! Doug was so mad about the ending. Ha ha!

Sunday was packed just as much. I went to the dog park with Traci, Greg, Jude, and Henry, their dog. That's where I discovered the ingenious ball throwing tool that Traci uses to throw Henry's ball around - that way she doesn't have to touch the nasty ball after Henry has slobbered all over it! :) Then Robyn had a yummy brunch made for Doug, me and her. After which Robyn took me on a drive along the Columbia River Gorge Historic Highway. We scoped out most of the waterfalls along it and even the Vista Point. Then since we had a bit more time to kill before my flight, we stopped by some outlet shops - where both of us actually had some good luck at the Gap Outlet (I had pretty much given up hope on ever seeing anything good at the Gap!).

It was a lovely weekend! Despite me catching a cold the day before going. I hate that! That happened to me one time before I visited Joni and Adam one year. Equalizing your ears on a flight when you have cold is not fun, to put it lightly.

Sadly, I didn't take any pictures of Traci, Jude, or Greg! Ugh! So lame of me.

Saddle Sore in St. George

Mike and I took a very quick jaunt down to St. George for some mountain biking - our first for the season so we were extremely saddle sore! We left early Saturday morning, which is my best time of the day so I drove while Mike slept. Then we biked 20 miles around Bear Claw Poppy and the Green Valley Race Course and a little of Hurricane Rim. We were so tired we went back to our hotel at 8:15 and I fell asleep on my bed at 8:30 and slept soundly until 7:30 the next morning! We visited a little local ward for Sacrament Meeting and then we rode 13 miles on Gander out at Gooseberry Mesa. After that we headed home - I drove for a bit while Mike tried to sleep, but after that it was his best time of the day so he finished the drive home while I slept. It's kind of nice how that works out - to have a morning person and a night person in a relationship. :)