Great Western Roadtrip 2011

Driving for days on end is not our strong suit. The drive from Seattle to Colorado to LA to the John Muir Trail and back to Seattle was broken into small, manageable pieces by day bikes, quick rock climbs, short backpacking trips, visits with friends, brewery tours, and a few national park layovers. Some scattered images from our trip...


Berkeley Pit - read more here. A giant, toxic pool that threatens to poison the ground water around Butte, Montana.


I don't know about you, but I might have quietly taken this down on May 22nd.




Thermophile-crazed coloring around thermal pools in Yellowstone.


Taunted by bugs in the Winds of Wyoming.



Views from camp in the Wind River Range.

Wildflowers everywhere.



Cirque of the Towers, Wind River Range, Wyoming as seen from Jackass Pass.

The Jackass (pass) itself.

The Winds sure are pretty. Big sky moves in over the mountains as we drive the 100 miles of dirt road away from the trailhead.


One of many rainbows encountered on the trip. This time, it was a double complete rainbow (although hard to tell from the picture), at a rest stop where we had stopped to cook dinner.


Great mountain biking outside of Laramie in Curt Gowdy State Park.


Beautiful skies in Colorado after finishing our section of the Colorado Trail.



Black Canyon of the Gunnison: deep, dark, and tall. I guess a bit like most canyons, but still pretty impressive.




Culturefying ourselves at Mesa Verde.


Already in the high 90s at 8AM, Joshua Tree National Park.


Kickin' it in Pt Reyes National Seashore with Chris Andree.

Blame It On The Tetons

Job perks:
1.) new smells daily
2.) decreased worry about planning what to do with my weekday evenings
3.) old-fashioned dirty medical stories to tell at dinner parties
4.) CME money and time

I decided to take advantage of perk #4 and head to Wyoming for some medical education and hiking. Although I was super excited about learning about "Safeguarding Sphincters" (an actual lecture title...which I can post on later if there are interested parties), I was a bit more excited about hiking the Teton Crest Trail, mountain biking, and sleeping on the ground for a week.

The wildflowers were still blooming, the days were sunny, the hitch-hiking was easy, the crest trail was relatively unpopulated, and the company was great. I'm proud to say that I now officially have hiking-in-Chacos tan lines.

Queen Anne's Lace


View of the Teton range from Death Canyon Shelf.


Wildflowers blooming


Say Hello to my little friend


Views from Alaska Basin



From Hurricane pass


The reason I carried a large, heavy camera for the trip



The Grand, shrouded in clouds, on a day not for climbing. The week before we were there 16 climbers were rescued after being caught in a morning Thunderstorm


Attempt at self portrait


After finishing up the Crest Trail, Andrew and I left Jackson Hole to do some hiking in the Wind River Range. We stopped in Pinedale for coffee, pancakes as big (and delicious) as your right ass cheek, and a large earful of boomtown politics.

Seated near some local ranchers, now making their fortune off of natural gas, breakfast quickly became a quiet affair. We sat and listened to stories of apocalyptic planning, where not to go in California (south or west of Bakersfield), how to spend your fortune on mail order precious metals, what women are good for, and how Mexico is a bastion of free speech and individual freedom (and apparently where to move if Obama is elected for another term). Sometimes you just have to eavesdrop.

The Winds were beautiful, and had an untamed feeling that you don't get in the National Parks. I want to return with a fishing pole and a pack full of rice and butter for a few weeks of backcountry wandering and trout eating. I want to do this wandering when the mosquitoes have less of a voracious appetite...or maybe with a complete body suit of netting.

Green River Lakes


Crazy lichen


The canyon and another phallic object