Decorah’s Dunning Spring and Ice Cave area

This weekend, our family explored the miles of trails between Dunning Spring and the Ice Cave in Decorah. We found two geocaches (Above Ice Cave GC123FA and Dunning Spring GCWY1M) and hiked about 4 miles. Somewhat unintentionally. We started at the trailhead East of Ice Cave to get the Above Ice Cave cache, then took a wrong turn coming back and ended up kind of wandering around on the trails for a while, hoping to get back to our car at some point. We ended up coming out at Dunning Spring, where we had started the day before moving the car closer to Ice Cave. How we got lost with a GPS along is a kind of funny story involving having turned the GPS off, so being unable to retrace our steps, since the unit didn’t save our path. Also, the extensive tree cover in the area made the GPS point in almost the complete different direction the whole time. Our little Path of Travel arrow was pointed AWAY from the cache, while we were getting CLOSER to it.  It was a little odd.

Two more in the ‘hood

Today we found GC1739N (One good bridge…) and were quite stoked because it was listed as 2.5 stars in difficulty and we found it almost immediately. Gratifying to know that we are not incapable of finding urban caches after all.

Then we decided to pick up GC15R6C (Grand Tour of Des Moines: Playhouse). We found a good candidate for where a cache might have been before, but we didn’t find any cache. The last visit logged at geocaching.com was ALSO a Did Not Find, so perhaps it’s been taken. I’m watching that listing and will keep an eye out to see if anyone else finds it.

Wally did NOT think these were fun. I’m finding that many of the urban caches are Micro sized, which means they’re tiny and there’s usually not anything in them to swap out. That’s really the whole appeal for him at this point. All there was in the one we found was a small log, which he thought might be a treasure map, then he was kind of mad we just left it there…

Geocaching

So our family recently started Geocaching. Since that usually involves hiking – or at least walking – I thought I’d add our Geocaching stuff here too!

Last evening, on our “daily” family walk, we decided to try to scope out our first Iowa cache. We chose GC1767K, “what a raquet,” which is in the vicinity of the MacCallum tennis courts. Um, well, we couldn’t find it. We were hampered by Miss G, who protested whenever I stopped walking or, especially squatted or stooped. And by Mr. W, who was for some reason making as much noise as physically possible, thereby drawing the attention of the few people using the courts. After 20 minutes of aimless wandering, we decided to come back some other time when we could actually LOOK, with our hands, rather than just wander and use our eyes.

Mt Timp, again

This year, we went up Mt Timp, but with our 5 year old son (from the flatlands like we are) walking, and the baby (9 months) riding on my back. We got as far as the first fall, with him complaining the whole way, and ended up deciding to turn back.

I don’t know if it was because we went later in the season than we’ve ever gone (July 26) or if it was because it was Pioneer Day weekend, or what, but I have never seen so many people on that mountain before. The TERP cabin was even open.

Also the mountain itself seemed to have a LOT more snow than we’ve ever seen (we visit every 2-3 years). Our first visit was during a bad drought year, and my understanding is that the area is slowly coming out of the drought, so maybe this year was just the first “normal” year we’ve seen there? I don’t know.

Anyway, I could certainly have hiked faster and longer, but the little one was not happy about having to walk uphill. Also, despite our directions, he stepped into the deepest parts of the stream crossings and got his little feet SOAKING wet. Since on previous hikes, there has not been that much water, we were wholly unprepared for this and didn’t bring him dry socks or sandals or anything.

Tunnel Drive, Canon City Colorado

Tunnel Drive just outside of Canon City, Colorado, is a fun little hike, but if you go in late morning, it’s pretty much all exposed to the hot sun. The trail is dirt/rocks, quite wide, and winds along the ridge above the Arkansas River. As we hiked, we saw the Royal Gorge Line train chug by, we watched rafters float along, and we saw some wildlife, as well.  (Also a used condom, whoo hoo.) The trail features three tunnels dug through the rock, two of them rather short and one quite long. The road was originally built to service a redwood water main from the river to Canon City. The trail is only two miles in length, but we only hiked the first mile of it. (Wally, who is 3, insisted upon riding on Daddy’s shoulders most of the way, and Daddy didn’t think he could do the whole hike with his extra burden.)

Eager hiker for the first few steps!   The Royal Gorge Line.   The first tunnel.

The last (longest tunnel).  A cactus.

Hike completed: July 23, 2007. Total mileage: Just over 2 miles.

Star Hill Inn, NM

Well, our first hike of the season was an awfully short one, but we all enjoyed it. We hiked the Michael’s Fort trail around some of the grounds here at Star Hill Inn. “Trail” might be overstating the case a bit, since there really was no discernible trail at any point, but we vaguely followed the route suggested by the hand-drawn map, and eventually did end up at our destination. Total mileage: about 1. Total time: about 30 minutes. Wally walked most of the way, except through a patch of weeds that were about as tall as he is.

July 14: Mt Timpanogos, Alpine Trail, Technical and Photos

<– Mt Timpanogos.

<– Starting out. It was chilly at 6 or so.

< Sunrise

< The first falls. Less than a mile in. Lots more water than we’ve seen in years past. The trail is gravel and asphalt up through the second falls.

<– The trail right after the second falls turns to dirt (which I prefer) and features sections that are rocky like this.

<– Another feature we’ve not been able to enjoy in the past – vast fields of wildflowers.

<– Some of the snowfields we passed.

< The Goat passing a snowfield. These snowfields were not bad at all.

<- Wally on a break.

<– The trail as it crosses some scree and hugs the wall. This would not be scary normally, but with a wiggly toddler on your back, it’s a little nervous.

<– A very pretty waterfall.

<– Five-ish miles in, we found this lovely alpine meadow and took a break in the shade. <– More of that meadow.

<– Here we are at the Cirque and Emerald Lake. yay us. Wally nodded off right before we got there.

<– A little shelter house was built here in the 50s. –>

<– Here we are nuring a little at 9400 feet.

<– And here we are nursing outside at 9400 feet.

<– Some mountian goats came to say Hi. There is a herd that lives in the area, and I guess Emerald Lake is a favorite hangout. Apparently, they are fairly used to people.

<– The view of the valley below.

<– Emerald Lake. About 5.5 miles from the trailhead.

<– The “glacier.” It’s not really a glacier. But everyone calls it that.

<– The cirque was just beautiful.

<– The trail goes behind this waterfall. It’s about 3 miles from the trailhead.

<– You can see where the trail goes if you look. This is heading back down.

<– Our family at a break about 2.5 miles from the trailhead.

<– Nursing at the trailhead.

More photos are available here.

You can read Tar’s perspective here.

You can read Goat’s comments here.

July 14: Mt Timpanogos, Front side – Tar’s View

Posted by Tar

Whoo hoo!! I love achieving goals, and we achieved this one. I can now look at Mt Timp as we drive by and say truthfully, “I was up there!!” Not all the way to the summit – we have read that the climb from Emerald Lake to the summit is quite challenging, and neither of us could imagine doing it with a two year old on our backs. But we reached our goal of Emerald Lake, which is in a cirque just below the summit.

Whoo hoo!!

There will be a technical description of the trail to come, complete with photos, but I’m just not willing to sit in the Albertson’s parking lot for as long as it will take to upload the photos. (I also have no quick way of scaling the photos down while on the road, as this computer doesn’t have any of the right software on it.)

But here is my report. Whoo hoo.

The first mile or so wasn’t bad, considering that I had pre-determined that it was going to suck. This is the first hike that I didn’t have to carry Wally for the first part, and I think that made a huge difference. The trail climbs almost 1000 feet over the course of the first mile or mile and a half (to the second falls) and that’s all gravel and asphalt, which I personally find hard on the joints. Once we hit the dirt path above the second falls, it was fairly easy going. Gently sloping in places, steep rocky climbs in others. Several snowfields, none of which were very particularly difficult.

The higher we got, the steeper and rockier the trail got. The boulder field was not fun. Have I mentioned how much I hate walking through boulder fields?? I don’t like it much. Just passing the boulder field gave me a fairly sizeable sense of accomplishment, because it was shortly after the boulder field that we had to turn back last time. The thrill of seeing new things along the trail was nice.

There were a few places where we lost the trail, mostly because there are several shortcuts across switchbacks and there are no trail markings whatsoever. In a few places there are “not a trail – stay on trail” signs but the people who put those signs up have not been able to keep up! Anyway so we shortcutted a few times without really realizing it, but generally picked the right path just by going whichever way was the most up.

There’s nothing more discouraging than being able to see how close you are to the top, but not being there yet. We had this conversation numerous times – “we’ve gotta be close, right?” “you’d sure think so.” “Just around this corner/over this ridge/past this switchback.” Man.

Goat was dying carrying Wally, but I felt remarkably good with just the pack. We passed by a mountain meadow complete with shade and a small lake (really just a large puddle) and decided to rest for a while – about 45 minutes maybe – before continuing up to Emerald Lake, which we thought surely must be just around the corner, right? It was slightly further than we thought it would be, but it was there! Yay!!!

It was so pretty up there, too. There’s a small shelter house near the lake, which we headed to mainly because Wally was asleep but complaining about the wind in the cirque. We rested in the shelter house for a while, watching some mountain goats across the way. As we watched, they headed over in our direction, and eventually came within touching distance. They gazed at us somewhat unconcerned. There were several babies, none seemed to be nursing still.

Anyway, after a while we headed back down, and the way back down was hell with the constant pounding really hurting our feet and knees. We also ran out of water (I broke one of the bladders) and so were quite thirsty by the time we got back to the car, where we had cold drinks waiting for us.

PS because I know you’re dying to know. Cadence music – various Praise tunes (mainly Our God Is an Awesome God and Celebrate Jesus) for a while, then snippets of Sunday in the Park with George, then the script from Three Amigos where Steve Martin is chained up and trying to get free saying “gonna make it, gonna make it” then for a while I sang R rated lyrics to Hickory Dickory Dock, then back to praise choruses.

You can read Goat’s comments here.

You can view photos of the hike here. 

 

July 14: Mount Timpanogos, front side – Goat’s View

Posted by Goat

To quote Barry Manilow, “Looks like we made it…” YEAH! – (sorry for the Manilow reference). This morning we started up the mountain from the front side. I honestly thought, that I would not even make it to the first falls, much less to the lake. I started off with Wally and the first mile is up hill and on asphalt. It was definitely the hardest part of the trip, at least the hardest part of the beginning. More pain was to come. Like I said, I was honestly thinking about stopping at the first falls, but we continued.

At first the trail seemed new, as it had changed a bit since the last time we were there. Mostly due to a big avalanche that was still very evident. After the second falls, where the asphalt stops, we cut back away from the valley for a long trek that was not noticeably inclining, with long switchbacks and water running across the path a few times. We got to the first snowfield in not bad time. We had a few, three I think, to cross, and they weren’t as bad as the other day. With that said, I still slid a bit on one of the longer ones, and again, Wally wasn’t thrilled. This field was right at the beginning of the boulder field- you can’t miss it, it’s huge… we made our way across the field to where we remembered a lot of switchbacks. This is where we had given up four years ago because of a lighting storm that was making its way over the mountain. It looked quite different this time, not only is everything more green and lush around here this year, but the brush had grown considerably over the last four years. We realized where we were and continued up the trail… this was not an easy task as the trails are not marked, so you may not realize that you are short cutting until too late. Now, some of the more obvious short cuts are marked as “not trails”, so those you could avoid. Walking on boulders is not fun, the bigger chunks hurt and the smaller stuff slides. Anyway, we crossed over several streams and even under a waterfall, which Wally, half-liked, but still thought it was a shower, so didn’t like. By the time we got out of the boulder field and through the many, many, switchbacks, we thought that we should be there, but we weren’t. We continued on until we came to a fork, one part went up and around another ridge, while another went down into a meadow. We thought this had to be it, but there were only two pools, and no lake. But by this time, I was extremely tired, so we found a campsite area under some pine trees and took a long rest. We saw some other people taking the trail up and figured they must know where they are going. So after our long break, which I laid down and stretched and Wally ran around, we headed up that trail because we figured that if it were just right there, we would hate to miss it. Tar took Wally for this part. We also ran out of water in our first bladder, so in the process of switching to the second, we popped the drinking tube off and the bladder leaked big time in the pack, and since I was wearing it, I got a wet back and butt. We only lost about a ¼ of the water, but that would mean a lot later. The lake was not just over the next ridge, but it was pretty close, so we made it all the way to the shelter.

We rested there a while as it was quite beautiful! The air was crisp and cool. The water was clear with some blue ice at the bottom of the “glacier”. And then there were the goats! At first I them going over the ridge around the backside trail, and then Tar saw them high on a ridge. We watched them come down this very steep ridge, and across a huge snowfield and then we noticed another group coming from a higher meadow. They all made there way across the stream and up to where we where. Wally loved them, as did we all.

When we finally decided to head back it was 1:20, so we knew it would be a hot one. We were right. The boulder field was Hell, the whole way, even with the behind the waterfall trip, the boulders sucked downhill twice as bad. The snow fields seemed to have grown, but we did have our “YakTraks” that we purchased after our first attempt. They helped, but we took them off after the first field, forgetting about the others, and they were too difficult to get on, on very tight single- track trails of boulders and steep drop offs. After the boulder field, Tar wanted to stop for a break, so we did about an hour after the field. When we started again, I noticed that we had drank the last of the water. Not good, as we were both hot and tired and pretty much dehydrated already. I didn’t tell Tar, as I figured there was no need for both of us to worry about this. With about another 3 miles to go, she turned around for a drink… no keeping the secret anymore. We hiked that next 3 miles pretty fast, or at least as fast as two exhausted, dehydrated, and very sore people could. I kept praying for that very asphalt that I hated on the way up. I knew that once we hit it, we would be almost done. Asphalt feels twice as bad going downhill than uphill, especially on sore, worn out knees. Good news was that we did make it down from the lake in about three and a half hours. A total trip time of 11 hours and some change.

Even though it took us longer than we thought and it beat the tar (not to be confused with Tar) out of us, we are very happy to have finally made it to the lake, which has always been my goal.

Next time we’ll have to hit the summit.

Goat

You can read Tar’s perspective here.

You can view photos of the hike here. 

 

July 11: Mount Timpanogos, via Timpanokee Trail, Utah – Technical Description & Photos

We started on this hike at 7:20 AM. Approx. 6900 feet above sea level.

The trailhead is located in the Timpanokee Campground. It’s well-marked. There’s a trail register at the trailhead, which was kind of neat seeing who had been on the trail recently.

The trail was pretty unremarkable. Easy to follow, easy to walk. It was gently sloping, with a few steep parts. There were a few boulder fields (but you’d expect that on a mountain, eh?), some parts that were covered with scree. In general, though, this trail was quite nice.
<– This is part of the trail, towards the trailhead.
<– This is Goat hiking about midway through.

<– A boulder field.

<– One of the snowfields. This is not as easy as it looks.

<– The view towards midway through our hike, nearly halfway up.

<– So, so pretty.

<– Goat next to the edge of one of the snowfields.
<– This is the one we didn’t cross. It was about 9120 feet above sea level and 5.5 miles from the trailhead. It was around 1:00. (We took a few breaks so Wally could stretch his legs.)

<– Avalanche damage, a tree broken off. This is the top half.

<– This is the bottom half, on the other side of the trail. Interesting to us Iowans.

We hit the car at about 3:30 or 4:00, we walked as fast as we could coming back down.

You can also read Tar’s narrative and Goat’s narrative.

All photos are here