Spring in Yellowstone

Posted: June 16, 2010
By: andylibrande
In: Camping, Location Categories, National Parks, Travel, Wyoming
0

Where: Yellowstone National Park

When: Friday May 28th – Monday May 31st, 2010; aka Memorial Day Weekend

Who: Caitlin, Andy, thousands of Buffalo, some elk, grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, moose, antelope, and the most dangerous animal of them all: tourists.

Have you every heard of this place called Yellowstone? Because I never have and rightfully so as there is not much to do there. We happened to stumble upon it when we decided that we should drive North through that mostly empty piece of land above Colorado that some historic maps have listed as “Wyoming”.

While driving through this land we eventually landed in this weird place called Yellowstone, which apparently is somewhat famous as it is designated as a National Park (what-ever that means). So we decided to hang-out for a few days (mainly because we were sick of driving through that barren land north of Colorado).

So there is not much to see there which should be expected as it is in the middle of nowhere. Not sure if anyone should ever go to this place…

Not really that many bison roaming all over the park, hanging out on the road or on the trails where you would least expect them.

Or are is there any other wildlife like the herds of elk or Pronghorn Antelope.

Or are there any Grizzly bears taking down elk calves in plain site and proceeding to eat them.

And there are most certainly no Wolves hunting elk herds for their newly born calves.

Lastly the landscape is extremely boring as things such as geysers, springs, bubbling mud-pits, sulphur pits, or stunning mountains and valleys exist anywhere in this park.

Anyways if you want to see some horrible photos of probably the most boring place on earth, please read-on and don’t come crying to me when you are bored to death as I warned you fairly.

The Trip: Yellowstone over Memorial Day Weekend:

Our first Wildlife encounter was on the first evening where we went on our first short hike in Yellowstone (2/3rds mile). We went out around a small geyser basin (Mud Volcano basin) through some insanely wet rain/slush:

Out on this short hike in the wet rain/slush we rounded a corner on the trail right before our eyes was the first (and certainly not last) buffalo; Caitlin exclaimed “Is that a real one!?!”…why yes I believe that is a real one:

One advantage of really wet/slushy rain of the first evening was that the pesky Tourist animal was no-where to be seen. The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone Lower Falls which we enjoyed in complete solidarity for at least 20 mins:

Caitlin demonstrating the proper way to deploy Bear Pepper Spray when a bear, bison, chipmunk, moose, bighorn sheep, or RV decide that they will charge you and attempt to maul/gore/eat/cuddle/love/stomp you:

Saturday morning looked pretty much the Beach Vacation we were expecting (2 inches of Fresh!) the next morning near the Hayden Valley:

Damn tourists can’t walk down the road right:

Porcelain Basin near Norris Junction was insanely awesome:

Some really colorful Extremophiles found in the Porcelain Basin:

The Northern Lamar Valley after a fast moving rain storm (which is about 1,500 ft lower than were we camped and was significantly warmer), also known as the Serengeti of Yellowstone:

Momma and Baby Black Bear were hanging out giving the crowds a show (Near Tower):

Sunday Morning we were treated to some excellent GORE!!! Yogi the Grizzly Bear had chased down an delicious Elk Calf for breakfast and I was jealous as I hadn’t yet had my morning baby animal breakfast. Anyways we finally got a decent photo once he got-up and re-hydrated (but people with high-powered scopes helped us see closeups of the grizzly enjoying the various parts of an elk calf):

Then out of no-where some Wolves attacked a small herd of elk on the same hillside!!! Unfortunately they were hidden by a small hill and they would only pop-out occasionally and were running so quick it that I could not get a photo that was worth anything at all 🙁

Once our killing appetite was taken care of we went and checked out some more Geyser basins near Old-Faithful (Old-faithful was probably the least exciting part of the trip):

The very large Grand Prismatic Geyser from a good vantage point (there is a boardwalk to this geyser but since it is so large and hot all you can see is steam):

So we randomly went to this one small side road and got out of the car to wander around. There was a small group near this one geyser and out of no-where the thing started to erupt and was really sweet to watch it shoot about 25 ft into the air. The White Dome Geyser:

Sunday evening the skies cleared and we were treated to some excellent visual pleasure over the Hayden valley and Pelican Creek (just before sunset the temperature peaked at a whopping 54 degrees):

Monday morning we packed-up and headed out. There was some excellent viewage at Yellowstone Lake (which like most things we saw in the park was still frozen):

Then back in the car again and across that vast land of Wyoming…

Yee Haw!

If you are following from some sort of feed all of my posts can be found here: http://andylibrande.com/news/

Moab Late Fall

Posted: November 23, 2009
By: andylibrande
In: Camping, Mountain Biking, Rock, Utah
0

Where: Moab, Utah

When: November 6th-8th

Who: Caitlin, Andrew Giamberardino, Whitney Hoover, Ben Strauss, Scott Miller, Paige Powers and Myself

Weather: Low 70’s during the day with a steady light breeze and mid 40’s overnight; in other words, Perfect

On extreme short-notice a group gathered to go down to Moab to do a little camping, biking, and climbing. We all left Denver around 7:00pm on the Friday night and ended-up hitting the campground just after midnight. Luckily we found a couple of sites just down from the Big Bend campground and set-up for the night.

We woke up early the next morning, made a quick breakfast and after getting a few rental bikes headed to the infamous Slickrock trail. On a side-note I have been to Moab on at least 6 trips but I have never gone mountain biking, so I was really stoked to finally get out and do something really cool.

Pulling into the Slickrock parking lot I realized why coming to Moab in November was so utterly awesome; this massive parking lot is usually overflowing down the road and this time only about a quarter of all the spots were taken.

We spent the rest of the day out on the Slick-rock trail enjoying the slight breeze and moderate weather; the views were also amazing with a light layer of snow on the La Sal mountains to the East and views of fall foliage all along the river-banks below us. The trail was more enjoyable and a lot more difficult then I anticipated and glad to finally tick it off of the list. Also the 7 person crew was a lot of fun and were able to enjoy large stretches of the trail just by ourselves.

Map of the Slick-rock Trail.

Biking Shots on the Slickrock trail:

Scott hitting up one of the wild switch-backs on the first part of the trail:

Andrew, Ben, and Whitney doing one of the really fun downhill sections with some of the better views of the trail:

Scott and Paige:

Caitlin and Me in front of the snow covered La Sal Mtns (almost done with the loop section):

The only small issue with Moab in November is that the sun is set by 5:30pm so it takes a few hours off of the day. Not too big of a deal as we ate some delicious Chili Whitney cooked up, sat around the fire, ate some s’mores and made fun of each other.

Here is a 12 minute exposure of the Milky Way from our campsite taken at 7:20pm. The stars were unbelievable and then sometime after midnight the moon rose with some really intense light.

The next morning some group shots at the camp-site:

And one of Caitlin:

Then myself, Paige and Caitlin walked over to the Big Bend boulders and had a fun day. Caitlin sending a nice tall problem:

Working on another right next to the road. This one had really cool crimpy pockets and an awesome finishing lip:

Awesome random weekend. It will be hard to ever go to Moab any other time of the year.

Zuma in the Summer?

Posted: October 24, 2009
By: andylibrande
In: Camping, Colorado, Snow, Summit County/I-70 Area
0

Where: Montezuma, Colorado

When: 8/29/09-8/30/09

Who: Trent, Tweak, Scott, Duncan, Evan, Caitlin (as the sole female), Ellie the dog, and myself.

An overnight car-camping trip in the Deer Creek Valley was an opportunity to see the valley when it is not covered in snow. Overall a really crazy thing to see how different it looks in the Summer and the Winter. Some of the amazing things I thought was how much snow fills into the valley (7-10 ft), how much water is in the valley (huge beaver dams), how lush the slopes that we ski are, and how much I don’t like Scott Miller (I kid…).

Another major goal was to work on our base-camp area since it has fallen into disrepair this past winter. We built a great firepit that should be way better then the weak set-up we had last year and then helped reinforce a major wind-block as to better protect one part of the base-camp area.

Besides that we caused a lot of havoc:

Fireworks over Zuma:

The Beaver Dams:

The hardest part about crossing the Beaver Dams is making sure you don’t spill your beer. Trent was successful at that but still managed to get wet:

Evan attempting to look cool:

Zuma in the Morning (Left to Right: Steeps, Washout, Cone 1, Cone2, Cone 3):

Baby Chute and Big Chute w/o Snow (mtn goats were wandering around the top earlier):

Ellie the Water Dog:

Click on the Snow Category to the right to see other adventures at Zuma.

Bouldering in Camp Dick

Posted: October 03, 2009
By: andylibrande
In: Camping, Colorado, Front Range, Rock
1

Who: RAMBO, Brea, Caitlin, myself, and Andrew (who is one of Brea/Rambo’s friends that is brand-new to climbing but straight-up crushed it).

When: August 22nd-23rd, 2009

What: Camp Dick is an awesome alpine-type bouldering area with big blocks sitting all along a beautiful valley that backs up to the Indian Peaks Wilderness. Located about 30 minutes outside of Lyons and about 1.5 hrs from my house in Denver it is an awesome place to visit and has some great camping. A decent sized river runs through the middle of the whole canyon and a 4×4 road and a hiking trail lead-up are on either side of the river.

I had been here once before a couple years ago for a short overnight trip and was glad to finally get back (photos on that trip here).

All of the free camping is up the 4×4 road and therefore we had to park our cars and hike in with crashpads and all of our camping gear; luckily it is only about 1/2-3/4 mile hike before you get to the first boulders and all of the free camping. The camping is also really awesome as you can get right down next to the river with some great flat spots.

The Bouldering: After setting-up camp we hike all the way to the fartherest boulder some 2.5 miles on a very rough 4×4 road in the heat of the day. Once we found the Alpen-Glow boulder we spend around 2 hours trying to find the Jumbotron boulder which according to the guidebook would be just uphill. We had no luck in finding that rock and with the sun starting to get low in the sky headed back to the Alpen-Glow boulder for an suprisingly amazing session.

The Alpen-Glow boulder is a beautiful 15 ft boulder in the middle of a open field right next to the trail. It has a mixture of easier problems to some good moderates.

Andrew working on one of the arete problems:

Brea cruising up:

Brea enjoying the top-out:

Caitlin making short-work of the problem:

Then we switched gears and started working on a harder arete that Rambo and Andrew sent. Some funky but cool looking movements on the rock. After both had sent the sun began to really set and the colors just went off. Rambo was ready for the twilight send.

Just one of several great shots as Rambo sent the boulder at 7:45pm that evening:

Shortly after it was pitch-black and the walk back to camp was a little challenging without flashlights, however Rambo gave us a sneak-peek of his new climbing clothing line due out later this year:

The next day we broke-camp and went to the Fingerbanger boulder and the Pyramid boulder (the best part about Camp Dick is that most of the boulders and individual problems appeared to be named by a bunch of perverted 15 yr olds, which fit our groups personality/lack of maturity just fine).

The campsite as viewed from the river:

Brea working on a very tricky problem on the Pyramid Boulder:

Caitlin working on the Pyramid Boulder:

Rambo working on a beautiful problem called “Treetop Flyer” that starts low following the crack to a high crack that ends up being quite the high-ball:

The afternoon rainstorms eventually came in and we hiked out a little wet:

Another solid trip.

Crested Butte Hiking and Camping

Posted: September 18, 2009
By: andylibrande
In: Camping, Colorado, Southern Mountains, Travel
2

When: August 1st-2nd, 2009

Who: Andy and Caitlin (plus failed attempts to meet up with roommate Andrew + others)

Hit up the insanely beautiful town of Crested Butte for a little adventure with Caitlin at the beginning of August. We couldn’t ask for a better weekend of hiking and camping. We made it just an overnight trip due to us not being able to leave earlier on Friday, but it was well worth the drive.

The drive out took a little longer then normal due to a couple bike races going on, however the 4.5 hour drive to this place beats sitting in record-breaking summer traffic on I-70, when the highest 24 hr period of traffic ever was set on August 2nd with 50,918 vehicles!!! (link to article here). Luckily for us the rest of Colorado has not found out about the beauty that lies outside of summit and eagle counties. Needless to say on the way home I cruised in the Civic across some of my favorite areas to see from a car in Colorado.

Enough with the talky, talk. Time for some pictures.

Mt. Crested Butte as viewed from Gothic Peak area on the Copper Lake Trail (where is the snow?):

Some Amazing random peaks around here at the edge of the Maroon Bell Wilderness (along the Copper Lake Trail):

Weird fern plants we found while cruising off the trail in the middle of some marsh:

Finishing up our hike into the Maroon Bells Wilderness:

So that night we were suppose to met-up with Andrew and crew and camp at their campsite. It was getting late and we couldn’t get a hold of them so I took the civic up the road hoping to run into them or their campsite. We kept driving up this dirt road expecting to find them since there was only a select few campsites however we were not having any such luck.

Expecting to find them “just around the next bend” I made the Honda Civic get up some pretty gnarly rocks and around some pretty good wash-outs. Still no luck and the worse part was that we only passed a few campsites and they were all full. Finally after about 45 minutes of slowly driving and about 8 miles up the road we realized that we just needed to find a good campsite. At a top of a big/steep hill we scouted the road ahead to make sure it was passable, headed down the slope, and right at the bottom was the perfect campsite just waiting for us.

We ended-up so far back that the next closest campers were another 1/2 mile up the road and tucked back into the forest. The next nearest group was well over a mile a way. Not bad for it being ~6:00pm on a Saturday night and a car-camping spot. Not to mention that the spot was perfect with us overlooking an awesome valley with a beautiful stream running through the middle of it.

View of the big dipper from our campsite:

The next morning after taking our time we headed-up a nearby hike and this is the valley we overlooked, quite the views considering this is the lesser visited area:

The hike was not the best trail in the world (due to us missing the original trail we wanted as it was improperly marked on the map) as this trail was pretty much just straight-uphill. We didn’t quite make it to the top as a big thunderstorm rolled-over us right as we were getting into the most exposed terrain. We high-tailed it down to some cover, left the established trail, and followed game trails through some awesome hillside meadows, marshes, aspen forests, and pine forests for about 2-3 miles back to our campsite.

After we got back to the campsite we hung-out at the creek and enjoyed some snacks and delicious beverages before heading back to Denver.

Heading down the dirt road in the civic, needless to say we were the only non-truck (not even subarus) along the entire 4wd part of the trail. People were giving me some strange looks:

On the way back we cruised all the way to Denver. Not a car in sight and we witness some incredible sunset action along the road.

Mt. Antero (14,269 ft) from the road. I was driving at least 75 MPH while I snapped the pic (one of my favorites from the trip) taken right as you are heading up to the Hwy 24/285 interchange:

As mentioned before, we crusied back via Hwy 285 (3 hrs 40mins), when I-70 broke the record for the busiest day ever and instead of seeing bumper to bumper traffic for 3 hrs we were looking at this:

Peace.

Elevenmile Canyon

Posted: October 30, 2008
By: andylibrande
In: Camping, Colorado, Rock, Southern Mountains
0

When: October 4-5th, 2008

Spent a chilly but beautiful weekend camping with Rambo, Chris and Page down in Elevenmile Canyon, which is a little bit outside of Colorado Springs. Really sweet place, while we didn’t have a whole lot of time there, but we covered a fair amount of ground.

The canyon is awesome as it is where the South Platte flows from a dam so the river is running full even at this time of the year. The area has a large amount of trad, sport, and boulder routes as well some sweet fishing. Anyways tried to take some shots but didn’t do a whole lot of photographing, but here is what did take place.

Here is some bouldering on the first night after we cooked dinner:

Spillway Campground A: Dragon’s Head Boulder

Anyways spent the first day doing a couple trad climbs with Rambo; hilarious since it has been a few years since I have climbed trad and Rambo has been doing it 3x a week all summer on long Red Rocks climbs in Nevada. Anyways good to mix up the climbing and do something a little different.

Enjoyed a good campfire with a special treat of smores:

Spent the next day trying to get to the Murray boulders without success due to the cold river crossing. Instead headed-up to a really sweet boulder.

Side view of the Spray Wall Boulder:

Crazy Problem on the side of the Spray Boulder. Has quite the crazy landing as it is all downhill and there is a dynamic move a few moves up.

Another view to give you a sense of its size:

Rambo gearing-up for a overhang crack:

Shot from above the Spillway campground:

Sasquatch and Beans:

Rambo (me trying to belay and shoot…ha):

Definitely check this place out.

More Details: http://mountainproject.com/

Southern Colorado Road Trip

Posted: July 03, 2008
By: andylibrande
In: Camping, Colorado, National Parks, Random, Southern Mountains, Travel
0

Dates: Saturday June 14th – Monday June 16th

Miles Traveled: ~775 Miles (over just three days!)

Route: Sat: Denver to Durango (stay in Durango at our crazy cousin’s bed and breakfast), Sun: Parents start bike race, we head to Mesa Verde NP, then back through Durango over Molas pass to Silverton, over Red Mtn Pass to Ouray, then to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison for camping, Mon: Black canyon back to D-Town.

What the Hell Happened: This trip began as my parents had the crazy idea of riding their road-bikes from Durango to Breckenridge with Ride the Rockies and convinced me to drop them off for the race. So, my sister and I decided we make the best of it and explore parts of Southern Colorado, an idea which morphed into an excellent adventure.

Lizard checking out Molas Pass on the way to Silverton:

Sunset over the Black Canyon:

Of course in true Andy style planning we pretty much started the trip with some ideas but no concrete agenda which allowed for us to just check out some cool spots without really worrying about time. After getting to Durango we stayed the night at our Cousin Al’s and his wife Emma Lou’s Bed and Breakfast http://www.lousbandb.com/. The next day the real journey began as the parentals set off on the bike ride and my sister and I headed out to Mesa Verde NP.

Mesa Verde is really cool to check out how this civilization lived and how they abandoned the cliffs; pretty interesting stuff and really crazy to see how fortified some of the dwellings are and how desperate their culture must have been at one time.

While there I had the pleasure of scaring the shit out of my sister when we did one of the tours and she had to first climb a 32 ft ladder to get into the Balcony House Dwelling and two 15 ft ladders (on a steep cliff face) to get out. She did not enjoy it too much, but I had a great time watching her…hehe.

At Mesa Verde:

After that we headed up and over the passes to Silverton where we hung out in the town. A little different then in winter when I visit that place. Taking the road up and over Red Mountain Pass was probably the most beautiful drive I have done in my life. The mountains were so lush it did not feel like we were in Colorado, instead it felt like a mix between amazon jungle and Siberian pine forest. The rivers were flowing at maximum and my picture taking skills just did not represent how gorgeous this place was at that time.

Our last major destination was the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a huge chasm that cuts 2000ft deep into some of the hardest rock on earth. Here we camped out and spent a good chunk of the next day hiking and exploring this insane geological feature.