Posts from the ‘mountains’ Category
Asheville
Last weekend Kristen, Samuel and I piled into the car, slipped onto I-40 and headed west. Our friends Sam and Heather had moved to Asheville a few months earlier, and we were long overdue for a visit. We arrived Saturday afternoon and proceeded to the Pisgah National Forest for a late picnic lunch. Once our burgers were gone, we let Sam and Samuel splash around in the stream a bit before we moved a little further into the forest. When we got to Looking Glass Falls, a few rays from the late afternoon sun managed to pierce the summer foliage, casting a brilliant rainbow that seemed to dance in and out of the mist on the water’s surface. A fairly large crowd had gathered to take in the sight, and several people decided to wade out into the pool at the base of the waterfall. Not bad for Samuel’s first mountain-top experience.
Wintergreen Resort
Back in March I had a chance to catch up with my good friend Sam. He had recently returned to North Carolina after finishing his graduate program at the University of Colorado. With the blessings of our wives, Sam and I headed to Virginia for a couple days of snowboarding in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Sam and I met during our first semester at Appalachian State and ended up rooming together for the next three years, until Kristen finally agreed to marry me and I moved off campus. At ASU — due to location, wonderful student discounts and a general lack of pressing (financial) obligations — the three of us had an opportunity to go snowboarding practically as often as we were up to it; usually three or four times each week. This was the first year I have been able to make it back to the slopes since we left Blowing Rock in 2008. Sam and I spent two days at Wintergreen Resort, near Charlottesville. The weather was perfect, the slopes were fairly well covered and the crowd was relatively sparse.
Knowing how much patience and planning it would take to get any decent snowboarding shots that weren’t cliche, and, more importantly, knowing that I only had two days to enjoy the mountains, I decided to try something different with the camera. As we moved around the mountain, we just pointed the lens in a general downhill direction and held the shutter, blasting off nearly 2,000 still frames of random snowboarding action. I dropped the pictures into iMovie, added a soundtrack and created my first stop-motion video. It’s pretty rough, but you have to start somewhere, right?
Here are a few still shots I pulled out of the reel, in case you missed them.
The Summit
This morning we finished the hike we started three days ago. Kristen, Heather, Roxie and I reached the summit of the First Flatiron overlooking Boulder. To get an idea of the path we took, look a few posts down at “First Taste of Colorado.” It took us about an hour and a half to reach the end of the 1.2 mile trail, which put us 1,500 feet above the city we started in. We climbed a little beyond the trail’s end, but cresting the final 40′ of the mountain requires a rope and climbing shoes.
Still, the view of Boulder, the surrounding plains and the mountains in the distance was incredible.
Rocky Mountain High
We found the Rockies today. Heather was nice enough to lend her VolksWagon to me and Kristen for the day, so we took a road trip.
We drove north of Boulder, through the village of Estes Park and into the Rocky Mountain National Park. We spent four hours driving 29 miles along Trail Ridge Road – the main scenic highway through the park. We came out of the park alongside Grand Lake – a centuries old mining town and resort area, grabbed lunch at Maverick’s Grill and then hooked up with I-70 to head back to Boulder.
The mountains in the Front Range near Boulder are unlike any I’ve seen before, with their red-brown faces and prarie grass hills, but while we were in Colorado Kristen and I really wanted to get a glimpse of the craggy snow-capped peaks that our nation’s western states are famous for. The Rocky Mountain National Park didn’t dissappoint.
What has really stood out to me about the Rockies is the diversity of the terrain. In one drive we saw stony flat mesas; pale red cliffs of dried lava; 8,000-foot peaks covered in spruce and fir trees standing alongside barren, 13,000-foot mountains still cloaked in a remnant of the ice and snow that fell months earlier, all separated by endless plains of prarie grass and piles of clay boulders that loomed over our lime-green Beetle.
Seeing the Rockies for the first time, I instinctively want to compare them to the mountain ranges I’ve already experienced. At first glance, I want to say they are more impressive than the Appalachians and not quite as breathtaking as the Alps. Neither of those statements are really true. The more I travel and experience places, the more I realize just how unique every spot on Earth really is.
For a skier or rockclimber, the size of the Rockies will certainly add to their draw. For the casual observer, day hiker, photographer, vacationer or general mountain nut, I would have to say that the mountains of Colorado are no more or less attractive than their East Coast counterparts. They are just completely different, and definitely worth seeing for yourself.
First Taste of Colorado
Following an uneventful day of flying, Kristen and I arrived in Denver at 5:20 Monday afternoon. Sam and Heather were waiting for us at the gate. Sam is starting his last semester at the University of Colorado this month and we wanted to take the time to come visit before they move back to North Carolina.
Neither of us had been anywhere near the Rockies before and we were a little surprised that we didn’t see a single mountain on our way to Denver. We were even more surprised that we didn’t see any on our way from the airport to our hosts’ apartment in Westminster.
After living in the Appalachian Mountains for four years, I had imagined Colorado to be just like the mountainous areas of the East Coast, only more so – twice as windy, twice as cool, with scenery twice as dramatic. Not neccessarily so. For the few people out there who, like me one day ago, don’t already know, the eastern half of Colorado is as flat as Kansas and hotter than North Carolina. The high today in Boulder was almost ten degrees warmer than at our home in Benson. These surprises weren’t dissappointments though. It’s always exciting to experience a new place, and to gain so much new knowledge off the bat reminds me why I wanted to travel in the first place (besides catching up with great friends, which was the main point of this trip).
This morning we did get to see some mountains. The foothills of the Rockies are just visible from Sam’s and Heather’s balcony. Heather took Kristen and I to see the Flatirons on the outskirts of Boulder while Sam was at work.
We hiked around the base, but we got too late of a start and didn’t bring enough water to make it to the top. The mountains are not the image of snow-capped peaks and spruce trees that come to mind when thinking of the Rockies but they are just as dramatic. They are called the Flatirons because three of the large rock outcroppings look like the bottom sides of clothes irons.
After the hike we met up with Sam, lounged around at the pool, fried fish and played a friendly game of monopoly. I won.
Mischief Managed
Clouds Over Grandfather
We made it back from the camping trip with nothing put a set of sore legs, a half eaten box of oatmeal and some good memories. I don’t believe I’ve really spent a whole weekend vacation with my mother and brothers in the five years since I graduated from high school, and so it was good to have the whole family together in my old stomping ground in the western part of our state with nothing on the agenda at all.
After much coaxing, I was able to get the group to set off on a hike of the Boone Fork Trail — a five mile loop that should take two to three hours. During the first three hours we tried unsuccessfully to find a spur trail off of the loop that would lead us to a waterfall / rock formation we had only driven to before.
Zachary frolicking over the falls
Then Zachary, my 19-year-old brother, disappeared up the side of a mountain and into the woods. We didn’t think much of it for a while and continued on down the trail, but after 30 minutes or so when he didn’t show up, we began to get worried and set off looking for him.
By this time we had given up on finding our missing waterfalls and were just hoping to find Zach and get back to camp before nightfall. Jacob and I set off into the woods about 1/4 mile from the spot on the trail where we lost Zach, hoping we would head him off. He heard us calling for him and shouted back. He had no idea how he’d done it, but while trying to find the trail again, Zachary stumbled into the rock formation we’d spent all day looking for. The boys played around some and then we got back to camp just in time to get a fire and supper started before the sun set — six hours after we’d started our hike.
At The Village Cafe in Blowing Rock
Earlier in the day, Kristen and I set out on a hunt for breakfast. I decided not to tell Kristen what we were doing and just lead a walk from our campsite alongside the Blue Ridge Parkway and into Blowing Rock, where we had a formal brunch in the outdoor garden of The Village Cafe. Our smelly camp clothes stood out in sharp contrast to the waitstaff and tourists that sat around us, but after walking more than five miles to get to our table, we felt like we deserved a good breakfast just as much as the next guy.
As far as photographs went on this trip, I was pretty captivated with the cloudy skies over the mountains at every vista. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to shoot the mountains in sunny weather and generally tried to avoid taking the camera out in the rainy months. After the first night, we never had much rain on this trip but the scattered cloud cover hung over us the entire weekend, creating some neat sunburst scenes and really providing a powerful atmosphere that matched the prominence of the landscape.
 Reading by the lake |
 Jacob. Lost. |
 Dusk on the river |
 Camp stove |
 On the way to breakfast |
 Parenthood |
