My good wife gave us a theme for St. Patrick's Day: We Are Lucky.She gave us all paper cut-out clovers to write things we're thankful for. She wasn't thrilled with one of Kade's entries:
for being able to make farting noises and farting
Tuesday Alex and I headed south to hike Bluejohn Canyon. We arrived after dark, setup camp off the road a little ways and got to sleep around 11pm.
In the morning we loaded our packs and headed for the west fork (see the map).
(The above map is from Slot Canyons of the American Southwest.)
The west fork had one downclimb and some interesting rock and semi-narrows.
At the junction we continued down to the short slot section before the big drop into Horseshoe Canyon. (This is where Aron Ralston had to cut off his arm that was pinned by a boulder, the inspiration for the film 127 Hours.)
The slot dropped quickly and featured sculpted walls and one section that was quite dark.
At the drop off we turned around and went back up the slot. It was a little more work and had one climb out the top.
We hiked back up Bluejohn and up the east fork. It was quite a while until it narrowed. We walked up the slot about a quarter mile then came to water and turned around. We also explored a ways up a side slot.
Finally we went up the main fork. It has some nice narrows.
The final obstacle is a 90 foot climb. It was more work and more difficult than I remembered, but we made it up OK.
After completing the climb we walked a little farther up the drainage then headed overland back to the car (thank you GPS).
It was overcast and warm so the weather worked out. Grayish clouds went by, but they didn't hold significant rain. On the way home we had some slow driving in a full-on blizzard going over Soldier Summit and down Spanish Fork Canyon.
In early 2000 I was big into canyoneering. It felt good to be back in a canyon again. My thanks to Alex for driving and putting up with my inaccurate recollection about the upclimb.
Cycling gear tip:
To keep arm and leg warmers together, tie them in a knot.
The knot also makes them easier to find when groping around in my bag of cycling clothes.
To put one arm warmer inside the other when taking them off, hold the first one you take off in the other hand and pull the second arm warmer off and over it.
Yeah, simple little tips, but might be useful to someone.
Driving around Saturday I listened to an episode of To The Best Of Our Knowledge about our illogical, emotional and often conflicting relationship with animals.
During the interview with psychologist Hal Herzog, author of "Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat...", he notes that in a fairly large study over 60% of those who identified themselves as vegetarians had eaten meat in the last 24 hours. Huh? I guess that makes me a vegetarian. I wonder what Scott thinks about this. (Go to 6:20 in the program.)
As part of the program they talked about one of the first commercially cloned dogs. It was interesting, then I perked up when I heard them talk about how a woman who had her dog cloned had tracked down and seduced an LDS missionary she was infatuated with when she was younger - didn't see that coming (At 20:20).
The program was interesting and I think I'll add it to my podcast list.
Oops, I've had the draft of this post since mid-February. Better late than never, I guess.
Back on February 9th I took my oldest daughter (19), Jamie, skiing for her first time.
We went to Alta because they have free 2-3 bunny slopes. It worked very well for teaching skiing. Thanks, Alta.
She didn't have any trouble standing and scooting around in skis so we went right to the towrope to try her first slope. She did fine on the towrope, which can be tricky for beginners.
I had talked her through the principles of snowplowing and she went down the slope very well. Then I added turning, and she picked that up quickly too. Pretty soon she was going pretty fast down the slope.
So we went to the next bunny slope that was a little longer. She did good there too. I was impressed how fast she picked it up. So I told her about parallel skiing. She had some trouble here and kept losing her balance, but I'm sure it would just take some time for her to get the feel of it.
At 3pm we joined the line for the Sunnyside lift for free skiing. (Alta opens this lift for free skiing everyday at 3pm.) She did fine getting on and off the chairlift.
She got going a bit too fast on some of the steeper slopes (that's why I gave her my helmet to wear) but overall she did fine.
She's so busy with school and work that it was fun to do this with her. I'm sure if she went one or two more times she'd have the basics of parallel skiing down and able to ski on her own.
