I’ve been a little weather obsessed lately. To compliment the snowy pictures here’s what things looked liked around campus last Thursday evening. It was warm, I was in shorts and a sweatshirt. Being from North Carolina it is odd when it stays light until 9 pm but none of the trees have any leaves on them. The grass is getting green though, there is some color emerging from the whites and browns of winter.
It is supposed to be cold for the next couple of days but I know spring can’t be too far away.
Over the weekend I went with the MSU Ultimate team down to Pocatello Idaho to play in the end of season tournament for the Big Sky Section.
It is a nice drive and only having to travel 4 hours is basically nothing. We didn’t win the most games but we had fun doing it. It must have been 70 degrees on Saturday which was the warmest weather I’ve been in around here in about 6 months.
There was more to my trip to Missoula last weekend than just Obama. It was actually Hilary’s birthday on Friday. Happy Birthday Hil! Now she has joined me in the 28 years young club. It is fun to have a friend from North Carolina living so close. 2 and a half hours away is basically next-door in Montana terms. If everyone I knew lived out here I’d probably never think twice about moving back east.
I met her posse, a nice, down to earth group of folks, and we went out and experienced some of the Missoula scene. Good times. I don’t go to bars in Bozeman much these days, and If I’m not in bed by midnight I probably turn into a pumpkin.
The two city shots were from a short hike Hil and I did on Sunday, which offered some good views of Missoula and the surrounding area. Even with the clouds (basically a given in these parts recently) the weather was decently warm and it wasn’t snowing and we weren’t walking in snow, all of which I was thankful for.
On a warmer note, the high is supposed to be 67 in a couple of days, and since it has been snowing basically everyday for the past week that will be a nice change.
One last thing, I’ve been making the pictures a little bigger these day, if they are too big let me know.
As promised here are a few more pictures I took of Barack Obama in Missoula, Montana on April 5th.
Describing what is was like being there is a difficult task. The energy there was like a concert, Obama was a rock-star as he stood up on stage surrounded by eight-thousand cheering fans. He spoke for an hour or so on a variety of topics such as energy, education, and foreign policy. He spoke about the change that our country needs desperately and immediately after the eight year political train-wreck that has been the Bush administration.
After he finished talking he spent about twenty minutes interacting with the crowd, shaking hands and holding no less than three babies (I don’t know what compels people to hand famous people their babies.) before waving a last goodbye.
You left feeling good about the world and good about politics, which was a nice change. I felt inspired to try to bring about a small part of the change that this man is obviously working so hard to impart on our great country.
I’m including a video of a short part of his speech, someone has segmented it into topics and uploaded it onto Youtube.
My friend Hilary and I saw Barack Obama speak for about an hour on Saturday in Missoula, Montana. He is an excellent speaker and it was one of the more powerful events I’ve been to in a long time.
The last place we saw in the Grand Canyon was Desert View. It is the first overlook coming from the east. Stopping there was almost an afterthought as I’ve been to the Grand Canyon twice before but never considered this area interesting enough to warrant a stop. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise as the tower itself was a remarkable building and the view of the end of the widest part of canyon was nice as well. (Unlike those other cruddy Grand Canyon views.)
The last two pictures are from hiking in the canyon looking up at the tower sitting on the rim. It is easy to have no idea of scale when you are looking at giant things that are far away.
In the morning we packed up our stuff and hiked back down to the wash from our hilltop campsite. We left our big packs against a tree and followed proceeded to follow the wash upstream. It was a lovely hike with sun, sand, and water. The abundance of vegetation was rather surprising and ended up stopping us a little short of our goal. We basically hiked as far as you could go. I’m going to say we hiked to the end of the wash. My best guess was we went about 4 miles from where we had left our packs
After we got tired of navigating the spiky bushes we turned around, hiked back down and grabbed our bags where we’d left them, and continued all the way back to our car. It is interesting how walking the opposite direction things can look completely different. The hills and turns of the trail seem different. With the different light it was like another hike altogether!
Arriving at the car with a decent amount of daylight we got started on the drive back to Bozeman. About an hour north of Salt Lake we found a hotel parking lot and slept in the back of the van. This trip really made me appreciate the minivan in that it is like an RV except reasonably sized and with way better gas mileage.
The day before we obtained a permit from the backcountry office in Zion to backpack in a more northern, mountainous region of Zion, Kolob Canyon. After the hour-long drive to the trailhead, the possibility of cold nights and hiking through more snow inspired the 2nd southern migration of our trip. We got our permit changed and drove back to the area of the park where we were earlier in the morning to hike up something known as the Coal Pit Wash.
With a name like “Coal Pit Wash” I didn’t expect too much except for warmer temperatures (the area is a lot lower than Kolob canoyn and basically a desert). It turned out to be a really varied and interesting hike. There was a good-sized stream the whole way, which we felt like only occurs in the spring when the snow melts. As you hike up the wash the water becomes clearer and colder as you reduce the time the snow melt has to flow among the sand and the red rocks. Also, as you follow the wash upwards the vegetation changes gradually from a very sparse desert to almost an impassible jungle as you get higher into areas more protected from the sun by the cliffs.
We woke up right outside the Grand Canyon park limits and followed the plan we had made to drive to Bryce Canyon National Park, located a couple of hours north and east of Zion. There was a fair amount of snow in this area on the drive down and we were worried that spring hadn’t quite reached Bryce yet.
The countryside kept getting snowier and snowier as we went north and into higher elevations. Upon arrival in Bryce we were greeted with about 3 solid feet of snow covering basically everything. After a very brief stop of pulling the car into a couple of overlooks and taking a couple of pictures, the plan was made to escape the cold and the snow and drive back down to Zion.
I’m sure Bryce Canyon is an amazing place, but it was too cold and snow covered to entice us to stay around for very long. Hiking around in several feet of snow wasn’t too appealing.
Arriving in Zion with 60-something degree weather and basically zero snow made the extra driving time well worth it.
Having camped at Cottonwood Creek, we packed up and started the hike back out of the canyon. . We hiked back up to Horseshoe Mesa and back to the rim by way of the Grandview Trail.
Happy to have navigated the snow covered cliffsides we stopped at Desert View Point to watch the sunset. Not much was happening as the sun was trapped by a big mean cloud, but patience paid off and the last several minutes before it dipped below the horizon made us glad we waited around.
We drove a short ways out of the part and camped in the Kaibab National Forest. The free and solitary camping in national forests has been one of my favorite discoveries of traveling in the west.
The plan for the next day was to drive to Bryce Canyon by way of the Glen Canyon Dam.
We started the next day on top of Horseshoe Mesa. During the day we made our way off the side of the mesa down to the Kaibab Plateau. The Kaibab is home to the Tonto Trail which you can follow for 70 miles east to west in the middle of the canyon.
We camped that night at Cottonwood Creek, which was doing pretty well due to all the melting snow higher in the canyon. It was a neat place to camp and completely different from where we had stayed the night before.
These pictures are all from that day and are presented in the order they were taken.
We camped a night on the rim and the next day went into the Canyon via the Grandview Trail. The top of the trail was snow-covered and steep but after a while things got better. It was an excellent trail with almost no one on it. This was quite a change compared to the heavily-trafficked Bright Angel and South Kaibab Trails I’ve done in past years.
The ranger at the backcountry station where we got the permit had told us about a cave and old abandoned mines near Horseshoe Mesa. We were excited about finding them and definitely managed to do so. I quickly realized that the idea of exploring caves or abandoned mines is much more appealing to me than the actual process.
We found the Cave of the Domes rather easily and explored just enough to see the hundred-year old signatures on the ceiling. Including the quite famous Kolb Brothers , who had a studio right on the rim.
As of tomorrow at noon it will officially be Spring Break for us Montana State folks. Kez and I are driving down the the Grand Canyon and plan on stopping by Bryce Canyon NP as well (I’ve never actually been there.)
We have had a bunch of snow up here and I’ve been enjoying it, but it’ll be nice to get to somewhere a little warmer and less snowy.
To tide you over until next week here are some random picture I’m pulling out from the vault. Except for the picture of the pine needles which I took today.
