Sunday, August 15, 2010

Spontaneous Camping Trips

I decided to go on a spontaneous camping trip this weekend. It was rather enjoyable. I went rock climbing up at paramount and led a route soy buddy cade and his date could go climbing. Then I had Kenny and Gabe meet me up at paramount where we were climbing. Kenny hen climbed up the route and had a lot of fun. Then we saw that it was getting dark and that the rain was starting to come down.

I had wanted to go up Kelly canyon to camp, but as I looked up the canyon and saw how much it was raining there, we decided to go on a road that followed the river where it wasn't raining yet. We drove up there a ways and found a nice spot to camp. We even lucked out at finding some coals left in a fire pit so we had an easy time starting our fire. We also set up my tent really quickly and got everything ready. We were cooking our hot dogs over the fire when it started to rain. It passed over quickly though.

The next morning we woke up and had a delicious breakfast cooked over the fire that was starred from the same coals we had saved from he night before. After that we packed up and went climbing. Then I drove back to Idaho falls and met up with mom, dad, and David. Then david and I met linden at a park in ammon to go play a round of frisbee golf. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed myself this weekend.

Overall I rate going on spontaneous camping trips as a load of fun :)

Backpacking






I was a male chaperone for a backpacking trip that the girls ranch girls went on. We went on a hike to green lakes up northLeigh canyon on the border of wyoming and Idaho. It was a 5.5 mile hike. We started out on the wrong path thanks partly to my guiding the group up he wrong trail. Luckily it dead ended before we got too far up the trail. It also made for an excellent analogy on if you mess up that it doesn't matter. You can always turn around and get back on the right path. The same applies to our journey through life. If we ever find ourselves going down the wrong path we can always repent and make the change.

The rest of the hike went really well. The girls on the thick were quite fun to go backpacking with. They sing a lot more than guys do and are generally much more willing to pack up the group gear.
When we got up there there were quite a few mosquitoes to go along with the gorgeous lakes that were there. I also realized that I forgot to bring a tent for myself and since I didn't want to sleep in a tent with just girls I made a leanto shelter out of a fallen down pine tree and a groundcloth that was available as well as with some rocks to help weigh it down. It was just big enough for me to fit into it with about 8 inches above my head. I spent the night in this nice little shelter and weathered out a very windy and rainy night. It led to me not sleeping very much, but it was a lot of fun. Overall I reallyenjoyed myself on the trip. No one was hurt and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. On the way back from our hike we also stopped and drank some very refreshing huckleberry shakes.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Hiking the Middle Teton, oh and why not the South while we're there.



Well, I had been wanting to go on a good hike for a while, and had debated about going and Hiking Mt. Borah. I didn't want to go by myself so I asked a buddy and he suggested hiking the Middle Teton. So thats what we decided to go and do. After working all week landscaping, I stayed at the cabin in Victor and Dillon and hislittle brother came up and spent the night there as well. Then Fridaymorning we got up at 2:30 and left to go to Grand Teton National park. We parked at the Lupine Meadows trailhead and started up the trail at 4:30 am. The sky was perfectly clear and there was a mostly full moon to guide us up the trail until the sun roseabout 6:10 am. We made pretty good time getting to the meadows, where we stopped and ate breakfast, and saw a nice doe and her fawn grazing 30 feet from us. We thencontinued on up the trail and made it to the saddle where we could see iceflow lake below us. We stopped there and ate "lunch" at 9:00 am and took a little break. We then set out to summit the Middle Teton. It took us about two hours to get to the summit, where we took several pictures, and made some phone calls and just enjoyed the view. We then decided that since the weather was so nice, and because we weren't all that tired, that we would also summit the south teton as well. So after making it back to the saddle, we continued on hiking up to the summit of the south Teton. After another hour of hiking, we made it to the top. It gave some very nice views of the valley. We then hiked down, and slid down all of the snowfields that we could to make getting out as fast as we could. It was quite the hike, we went up about 7,000 vertical feet, and hiked about 16 miles round trip that day. We got back to the cabin at 9:30 that night, and by the time we went to sleep, we'd been awake for about 20 hours all together. It was quite the ordeal. It was well worth it though.