Assault on Santaquin Peak

Rosey and I tackled our second mountain peak this weekend: we hiked to the top of Santaquin Peak on Loafer Mountain. It was a 13 mile round trip hike with an elevation of 10, 648 ft at the peak. The peak was only about 3,000 ft higher than the trailhead but because the trail constantly gained and then lost elevation we did substantially more climbing than that figure would suggest.


The rest of the pictures are here.

This is the second of three goal hikes that I had planned for this summer:

• Timpanogos Peak [done]
  
• Santaquin Peak [done]
  
• Spanish Fork Peak

We will probably tackle Spanish Fork peak within the next couple of weekends.

This may be too much information (even for a blog) but this hike was achieved despite facing great adversity. On friday night (before the hike), we tried out Rosey's quesadilla maker. The quesadilla's were so good that I ate 3 of them. Mmmm. Turns out that it's not such a good idea to eat that much cheese before going on a 13 mile hike up a mountain :)

We were less than a mile into the hike before it felt like my ass was going to explode. It was very unpleasant. Fortunately Rosey thought to bring wet wipes and there were plenty of bushes for cover. Between the two of us, we had a total of 3 ass-splosions on that mountain. We're probably not going to be making quesadilla's before our next big hike :)

Switching gears...

One of the cool things about having the GPS is that it records the path that you take on a hike. When I got back home, I downloaded the GPS data off of the device and fed it into Google Earth to get a 3D satellite imagery representation of the hike that we went on. I have a screenshot posted below, but to get the full effect you really need to download Google Earth and then look at this file.


(N.B. - The mountain wasn't really covered in snow when we hiked it... the satellite imagery used by Google Earth is usually at least several months old or more. So this image was probably from this spring or maybe even sometime last year.)

My New Geek Toy

I've been lusting after a GPS for pretty much the better part of the last year. After hiking with a borrowed GPS in Glacier National Park last summer I was convinced that I needed to get one. And yet, I continually came up with reasons to delay they purchase. Well, a week and a half ago, I quit delaying and finally bought a new Garmin eTrex Vista CX. It's pretty sweet although I'm still figuring out exactly how to use it :) Rosey and I have used it on a couple of different hikes now (as well as for navigating our way to the Hard Rock Cafe in Salt Lake City) and it's awesome to know how far you've hiked, how much farther you have to go, how fast you are hiking and how much elevation you are gaining or losing. I've only had it for a little over a week and I already can't imagine how I ever hiked without one :)

Long (and Belated) Lake

I finally put up some pictures of a hike that Rosey and I did last weekend to Long Lake in the Uintas. It was a short and mostly flat 5 mile hike but the views were gorgeous. Besides after doing Timpanogos the previous weekend it felt good to go on a hike that was more recreational than athletic.



The rest of the pictures are here.

I'm Going to Munich!

When I got to go to Barcelona last year for Brainshare, I figured that it would just be a one time thing. My job does not usually entail a lot of traveling. However, I just got word from my director this afternoon that I was picked to be one of the engineers representing GroupWise at GWAVACon in Munich at the end of September! I'm so excited I can hardly contain myself :) This is going to be awesome!

Tackling Timp... Finally

I attempted the climb to the summit of Mount Timpanogos with my sister and brother-in-law back in 2000, but stopped about a half-mile shy of the peak; partly because we had run out of water and partly because the heights were kind of freaking me out. Over the past 5 years it has killed me to tell people that I have climbed Timp but have never made it to the top. Well, today Rosey and I remedied that problem and hiked all the way to the summit. It was long, it was grueling, in some places it was even a little treacherous, but it was worth it!


Our adventure began with my alarm clock going off at 4 in the morning. Temperatures have been reaching the 100's over the last couple of days and I wanted to get started on the trail as early as possible to minimize the amount of hiking that we needed to do in the sweltering mid-July heat. Unfortunately neither of us slept very well and we had to reluctantly peel ourselves out of bed when the alarm went off.


We began the hike in Aspen Grove at 5:50 in the morning and climbed what felt like hundreds of switchbacks up the mountain to Emerald Lake. We must have passed half-a-dozen waterfalls on the way up, crossed over several mountain streams and saw millions of wildflowers. It was gorgeous.


From Emerald Lake (which was really more of a pool), we could see our goal resting atop the sheer cliffs above us. It would have been a short hike (albeit strenous) if we were able to go straight there. But the trail had us hike a couple of miles out and then back up a ridge to reach the peak.

About 3/4 of a mile between Emerald Lake and the Saddle (where you get onto the ridge for the first time) was covered in snow. It made for an extremely slow crossing. It would have been challenging even if the snow was on level ground, but the fact that you were walking sideways across a snow covered slope made it even more difficult. With every step you faced the possibility of losing your footing and sliding down the mountain to the rocks below. Our only solace was knowing that even if we fell, we probably wouldn't have died... probably :) We may have just been maimed really bad.


Fortunately, the snow subsided once we got up to the saddle. The 3/4 of a mile or so to the peak was steep but not too bad otherwise. We took our time and made it to the top shortly after 11 AM. The summit was 11,750 ft above sea level and about 5100 ft above where we had started. That's nearly a mile of elevation gain! It was also nearly as high as we were in Rocky Mountain National Park when we hiked to Chasm Lake.


It amused both Rosey and I that the most common activity on the top of this beautiful mountain was for people to get on their cell phones, call all of their friends and family and ask the question, "Guess where I am". We had a short lunch just above the saddle before beginning our trek back down the mountain.

Neither of us were looking forward to crossing the snow field again. In particular, I was freaking out about a particular section of trail just below the saddle. There was about a 20 foot section of trail that was steep and covered in snow. For those 20 feet the trail was only about 6 inches wide; just enough to step foot over foot. As if that wasn't bad enough the use of the trail all day had turned the snow to ice. Coming up that section of trail was bad, but at least we were ascending. Going back down I was concerned that gravity was going to work against me and send me flying off of the mountain.

I was sure that certain death awaited me if I were to attempt that section of the trail on the way down. So, I opted instead to climb up and over the snow patch that was covering the trail. That was a good idea until I got to the other side and realized that I still had to come down. I slid about 20 ft. down a 60 degree incline on my ass. The slope consisted of a bunch of loose rock and I nearly started a small rock slide. Meanwhile, Rosey decided to cross the trail on the snow. It was a good thing that I was too busy creating a rock slide to watch Rosey traverse the snow otherwise I probably would have had a panic attack just watching her. Thankfully, we both made across OK.


Later in the day, when we got back down to our car we discovered that someone had been injured on the mountain and that they were sending in LifeFlight to retrieve them. I wondered whether or not that someone had fallen off of that ice-covered section of the trail. It really was dangerous.

The highlight of the day came shortly after our near-death snow traversal. There was a second snow patch covering the trail down from the saddle. The second snow patch was much less treacherous and had the added advantage that instead of having rocks beneath it, the snow extended all the down to the snow field below. This meant that we could shave about a third of a mile off our hike by sliding down the side of the trail instead of hiking down it. So, we hopped over the edge dug our heels into the snow and slid down a 45 degree incline to the snow field below. It was awesome!


By the time that we got back to Emerald Lake we were both dragging ass. We were tired and sore but we still had two and a half hours of hiking ahead of us to get back down. Still we were grateful to be leaving the unsteady footing of the snowfield behind us. We made pretty good time down the mountain, stopping only once at Couch Rock to rest our legs for a few minutes, drink some water and eat some snacks. We made it back to the car at 4:10 PM, 10 hours and 20 minutes later than we had started that morning. I'm not certain exactly how long the hike was, but I have heard it estimated between 16 and 19 miles. That's a lot of hiking.

The rest of our pictures are here.

Five Years With Novell

Yesterday marked my 5 year anniversary at Novell. I got an email with a PDF certificate of recognition for my years of service. Yep, I started here on July 9th, 2001. It's hard to believe that I've been here that long. It seems like yesterday that I sat down in my own office for the very first time excited and terrified to be starting my career as a software engineer with Novell.

I feel pretty lucky to have this job... sometimes even a little spoiled. I am reasonably compensated, get to work on interesting projects with interesting and intelligent people, feel like my contributions to the company are appreciated and best of all, I get to show up to work most days wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I shudder to think about having to wear a tie to work. I'm not sure that I could do it.

So, I guess that the moral of the story is that I think that I'll stick around here for a while. For another 5 years? I don't know. But I'm not in any rush to leave as long as the work continues to be interesting.

Zion By Harley

I took a road trip down to Zion National Park this weekend with Rosey, Dad, Andria, Marci and Malina. It was the first semi-long trip that Rosey had taken on the Harley and she did awesome. She struggled a little bit to get comfortable in the back seat of the bike but we managed. We may make a few modifications to the bike to increase her comfort before we take our next trip. We probably covered 500 miles over two days. Seriously, that's awesome that she not only survived that but was enthusiastic about it!



On Saturday we rode down Hwy 89 and came into Zion through the East entrance of the park. Riding through the east side of the park is like driving on another planet. The checkered and swirling red-rock formations are other-worldly.

We met up with Andrea, Marci and Malina mid-afternoon and then did a couple of hikes. Marci, Rosey and I hiked up to Hidden Canyon while Dad, Andrea and Malina lagged behind. Actually the three of them completed the most difficult part of the hike but then stopped because Andrea was uncomfortable hiking a section of the trail with some steep and scary drop-offs.



Later that night we did the Riverside walk and even hiked down the narrows for maybe a quarter of a mile. Unfortunately we brought the wrong shoes for walking in the river and Rosey twisted her ankle pretty good. We did get to a section of the narrows where the water was chest deep... well it was chest deep on me. Rosey missed the shallow section and ended up crossing through a section that was so deep that she had to swim :)



The rest of the family stayed the night at the Bumbleberry Inn but Rosey and I camped in the park at the Watchman campground. It ended up being a bad decision. Between the tiny tent that we brought along, a fierce, howling wind that blew all night long, and a late night conversation that lasted until the wee hours of the morning we hardly got any sleep at all. I may have gotten 3 hours of sleep but I think that Rosey got even less.

We woke up the next morning at 6 AM to meet the rest of the family for breakfast at Zion Lodge. I had been hoping to get some longer hikes in that morning but we were all feeling a little ragged and we had to get back to the hotel in time for Marci and Malina to get to church. So, we did a short hike up to the emerald pools and then headed home.



Rosey, Dad and I headed out on the bikes while Marci, Malina and Andrea went to church. We decided to take the scenic route home. We stopped through Kolob canyon to do a scenic ride and got some incredible pictures of the redrock cliffs up there. Further up I-15 we cut through Cedar City and went back up into the mountains to Cedar Breaks National Monument.



We were planning on taking Hwy 89 back home from Panguitch but once we got there the threat of thunderstorms and the desire to get home as quickly as possible sent us back out to I-15. About 30 miles south of Fillmore the lack of sleep hit Rosey and I. We were both having trouble staying awake on the bike. Yeah, that's not a good problem to have on a bike :) So, we stopped in Fillmore and loaded up on Caffeine and sugar. It felt disgusting to ingest that much junk food but it was a matter of survival at that point :)

The rest of the pictures from the trip are here.

Drinking Rotten Apples

I took a shot of raw apple cider vinegar this morning as an alleged remedy for the mucous build-up that resulted from my head cold over the weekend. Rosey swears by the stuff and has been using it for over a year as a home remedy for her asthma and various other ailments. I was a little skeptical about how drinking rotten apple juice could have any positive health benefits so I decided to do a little internet research this morning.

I found one set of websites that championed apple cider vinegar as a panacea and claimed that it could cure anything from arthritis to asthmas to high blood pressure to cancer. There were even claims that apple cider vinegar could assist in weight loss. I found just as many websites that claimed that the claims on the first set of websites were made by a bunch of quacks and that there were no scientific reasons to believe the claims. Although both sets of sites referred to medical studies that backed up their claims neither of them provided detailed information about the studies or references to look up the studies for yourself.

Here is what I am skeptical about... the proponents of apple cider vinegar claim that it's effects are the result of all of the nutrients that it contains. In particular they list potassium and calcium among a number of other minerals, trace elements, proteins, etc. The thing that doesn't make sense to me is the thought that apple cider vinegar could actually contain more nutrients than contained in the original apple that the vinegar was made from. Wouldn't it be better and much more palatable to just eat the apple? Maybe there is some truth behind the saying, "An apple a day...".

The other thing that I found curious was the claims that the potassium content of apple cider vinegar was responsible for many of benefits. Many of the sites that I visited went on to cite medical studies about the effects of potassium deficiency. It seems to be well established that potassium deficiency can cause a number of health problems. But a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar (the recommended dosage) only contains about 5 mg of potassium. A medium banana contains over 300 mg of potassium. Why not just eat a banana to get your potassium?

The one aspect of apple cider vinegar that does 'make sense' to me is it's acidity. I could be convinced that raising the pH of your digestive system could have some positive benefits and may help clean out your digestive tract. I have not seen enough evidence one way or the other though to establish that apple cider vinegar is the only or best way to do this. Would eating foods (fruits) with an elevated acidic content (citric acid) have a similar effect? I don't know.

And yet for all my skepticism, there are hundreds or thousands of testimonials from people who have taken apple cider vinegar and claimed that it worked for them. Could they all be wrong? I'm not sure, but I doubt it. I guess this will remain an unsolved mystery.

4th of July Hike

Here are some pictures of a 4th of July hike that the whole family did up Timpanogos. After lunch at the second waterfall, Rosey and I split off from the rest of the family and hiked another couple of miles up the mountain.