A brief update on our cats

Henry.  July 2012.

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As they are wont to do, our kittens, Henry and Pysmon, now approaching 1-year-old, have grown, and though they now look like cats, they still act like kittens. They're a little lazier than they were, but they can knock over larger objects than they once could. 

I'm exposing myself to all sorts of criticism by blogging about our cats, I know. There's a lot of over sharing about cats on the web--from viral YouTube videos to endless slide shows with tacky transitions. But they're a pretty big part of my day--they wake me up in the morning and greet me when I come home from work.  

OK.  I'll stop.

August, 2012.

Psymon.  August 2012

October 2012

Henry (jumping).  November 2012

December 2012

With Brava and Smudge, December 2012.

February 2013

March 2013

May 2013

Canyoneering: Big Spring East and West Forks

Don Reyes advertises for Canyoneering USA, while threading the West Fork of Big Spring Canyon

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I just returned from the first of two canyoneering trips scheduled this season--this one to the High Roost of Utah.  We'll visit Zion for a week in June.  

Each canyoneering trip is different.  This one distinguished itself in two ways:  1) there were so many of us that we had to split into two groups after the first day, and 2) we rappelled from sand.  I'm not sure that twelve people is an ideal number for canyoneering, but it was a great group that grew from our small core  to friends and friends-of-friends.  More on that in another post, but it was great to meet some new people and to reunite with some old friends, even if we did have to split up to keep our descents manageable.  

The sand rappelling, surprisingly, is not as bad as it sounds, especially when it's an alternative to no anchor or to using a single small hook in a shallow hole in soft sandstone.  The ethic in many canyon descents is to pass with as little impact as possible ("ghosting"), so bolt anchors are rare.  The principle of a sandtrap is simple:  you pile a bunch of sand on a specially-constructed tarp that has webbing sewn into it for tying off rope.  The rappel rope is attached to the front of the tarp and a pull cord to the rear.  Everyone except the last person is backed up by a human clipped to the tarp while they rappel.  Then, after the last rappeller survives, a hearty pull on the rear rope dumps the sand off the tarp and retrieves it.  There's a photo below if you can't quite picture what I'm talking about.  We ended up using this technique several times on this trip and I'm convinced that I need to spend $100 to buy myself a sandtrap.    

The High Roost, if you haven't heard of it, is west of the Green River, about 60 miles of dirt road , some of it tediously rough,  from Utah Highway 24.  It occupies a large area east of Horseshoe Canyon, an isolated unit of Canyonlands National Park famous for big pictograph panels.  There are a handful of excellent canyons here that distinguish themselves by being especially beautiful and by requiring rappels from transitory anchors.  

Our first outing was through two forks of Big Spring Canyon--we descended the West Fork and ascended the East, the latter to avoid two trips up the ridge between the forks, which are typically both descended. Note to self:  ascending slot canyons is more strenuous than hiking ridges between them twice.  

These photos (many) are from our day in Big Spring... 

Steve Millard, studying the approach.

Dropping into the West Fork.

Collaborative human anchoring--a group effort.

Larry Scritchfield serving as a rappel anchor, and loving it.

A rare (single) bolt anchor.

Jim Akers on rappel from a single bolt anchor.  

Descending the West Fork.

Ken Sheldon in the West Fork.

Building a sand trap anchor.

The sandtrap.  

Into the darkness.

Descending.

West Fork sandstone.

Larry Scritchfield, Don Reyes, Bret Ruckman, Steve Millard:  West Fork.

Bret Ruckman.

Jim Olson (Jaime) at the "triple bridge" in West Big Spring.

Steve Millard, ejecting from the Triple Bridge.

The end of the descent of the West Fork.

Jim Olson, Jim Akers, and Bret Ruckman contemplating an obstacle during our ascent of the East Fork.

Bret, climbing through an arch in the East Fork.

A trapped bird (fledgling) in the East Fork.  We couldn't really help it escape, but hope that it did.  

Jim Akers, Steve Millard, and Bret Ruckman at the top of the East Fork, ready for chips, salsa, and margaritas.

Road Canyon on Cedar Mesa, Utah

Fallen Roof Ruin, Road Canyon, Cedar Mesa, Utah.  March 2013.

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Sometimes I miss the most obvious photo opportunities.  I didn't think to re-photograph Bei at the Fallen Roof Ruin in Road Canyon, a place we visited in 2007 when she was five-years-old and returned to this March during our spring break.  Somehow I also returned to Laramie without a single picture of our friend Dave Fay with his bourbon collection, which he spread lovingly across the picnic table in our campsite every evening.  

Maybe it's because of Dave's bourbon collection that I never photographed Dave with his bourbon collection.  

I did get a photo of Dave and Amy's daughter, Eliza, at Fallen Roof.  She's a year older than Bei was in 2007.  It  feels like a long time ago that Bei was that age and that it has passed in an instant. 

Road Canyon, like most on Cedar Mesa, is peppered with ruins, and Fallen Roof is a favorite.  Named for the thin layer of sandstone that exfoliated and dropped onto the floor of the alcove sheltering the dwellings, the site is decorated with the hand prints of someone who once lived there, before there was even such a thing as a "road," at least in southern Utah (there's still no road in this canyon, and I don't know why it's named after one). 

What must it have been like to raise your children in this beautiful place, waking each day to look out on the canyon before hiking up to the rim to tend the corn. People lived here perhaps a thousand years ago and then disappeared.  When you stand in these ruins and look at their hand prints, that can seem like an instant.    

Bei at the Fallen Roof Ruin, March 2007.

Eliza Fay at Fallen Roof, March 2013.

Petroglyphs on an enormous boulder facing up towards the sky, Road Canyon.

Dave, Eliza, Sam, Bei, Ellen, and Amy, descending into Road Canyon.

Bei at age 11, scrambling into the canyon.

The Fallen Roof Ruin.

Fallen Roof Ruin, with ancient hand prints.

Dave and Sam hiking out a side canyon off the main trail in Road Canyon. 

Spring break: Natural Bridges National Monument

Owachomo Bridge at sunrise, Natural Bridges National Monument, Utah.

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I have a love-hate relationship with National Monuments.  Maybe that’s too strong; it’s more love—feel-a-little-trapped.  I appreciate them and am grateful that they exist, buy my favorite places to camp and explore are at the ends of two-track roads or long walks, with no picnic tables, no scenic overlooks, no stinky outhouses, and no handrails protecting you from yourself.  But we promised Bei that this year we would have a more leisurely spring break, with no backpacks.  So we combined forces with our Laramie friends, Dave Fay and Amy Fluet, their kids Sam and Eliza, and Dave's Scotch collection that I augmented with a fancy bottle of Irish Whiskey. We found a nice site in the campground and set up a temporary village around the metal table (chained to the ground) and the double-walled steel fire pit (no wood gathering allowed). 

Natural Bridges National Monument, NBNM for short, occupies the northwest corner of Cedar Mesa, a misnomer because it’s covered in juniper.  But that’s splitting hairs.  If you haven’t been there, the mesa occupies a large chunk of Utah between Blanding and Hanksville, south of the Abajo Mountains and north of the San Juan River, which flows into Lake Powell from the east.  It's almost as high as Laramie, so nights in March are chilly, but the days warm nicely, and soon it will be too hot for humans.  

More important than the “cedars” are the canyons that cut through them and drain either directly into the San Juan or first into Grand Gulch or Comb Wash and then into the San Juan.  The canyons are beautiful and full of Anasazi ruins, pictographs, petroglyphs, and other archaeological debris, which pot robbers have meticulously scavenged.  They are deep, complicated, rugged, increasingly popular, and fun to explore. 

The Monument itself protects several spectacular sandstone bridges that span White Canyon and a tributary, Armstrong Canyon, both of which contain ruins and surprisingly nice hikes with surprisingly few people, at least in March.  It’s worth a stop despite all of the infrastructure.  We camped there all week, using the campground as a base for more remote adventures outside the Monument, where we collected firewood each night before returning to Site #4.   I’ll post images from some of those explorations when I get them organized. 

For now, here are a few pictures taken in NBNM during a hike through a short section of White Canyon and in our camp.

Bei and Eliza looking into White Canyon.

Sam Fay, descending a simulated Anasazi ladder on the way to Supapu Bridge.

Dave Fay at Sipapu Bridge. 

Ellen being protected from herself by a metal railing.

A Puebloan ruin in White Canyon.

Bei and Dave, White Canyon.

Ruin, White Canyon, NBNM.

Double walled fire pit, NBNM.  Scotch not shown.

Ellen and Bei, downclimbing from a ruin, White Canyon.

Handprints near Kachina Bridge.

Sunrise, Owachomo Bridge.