Mountain Lions and Bears

Out on the bike again, and because I am deeply in need of a break, I am taking the opportunity to update y'all from the comfort of Starbucks with an iced coffee by my side!

A couple of weekends ago, Jen and I, along with another couple of friends headed over to Alberquerque, New Mexico. We arrived late Thursday evening, and hopped in our rental car which, in common with most other American rentals that I have had the misfortune to encounter, had the wheels attached to the chassis by means of a water bed. Luckily, the roads in this part of the world are fairly straight and wide, so by 2am we found ourselves north of Durango, Colorado, safely installed in a ski condo, with only some superficial scratches on the car, and having visited the wrong side of the road but a few times.

Friday morning came around, and we got our first view of the pine forest and mountains that we were in the middle of. It's times like this that I really appreciate the alternate Fridays off; I mean less than 12 hours prior we were in Houston, now almost 1000 miles away.

We headed off up the Million Dollar Highway, so called because it cost one million bucks a mile to build. An alternative explanation is that it takes you through many old mining towns, and past old mines. I like it either way. Our first stop was Molas Lake, just south of Silverton. This was the campsite that I had stayed at whilst doing my geological mapping project back in the days of Liverpool uni. We reserved ourselves a camping spot for the next two nights, and then went to stock up on lunch materials for our planned afternoon stroll.

Unusually, this walk begins downhill. It wasn't a gentle slope either, a pleasant walk through the alpine meadows at 10,500 feet gives way to a 1,600 foot decent into the precipitous Animas Canyon along the Colorado Trail. The route gives some spectacular views of the mountains, some topping out at over fourteen thousand feet, and the Animas river far below. The Durango - Silverton Narrow Guage Railroad runs along the river at the bottom of the canyon. We arrived at the bottom of the canyon just in time to get up close and personal with one of the trains; its very cool to stand a metre away from the tracks, in a wilderness area with a steam locomotive barreling towards you! We recharged with some cereal bars, and slowly began the walk back to camp. Suddenly the canyon looked much bigger than it had done on the way down! To make matters worse, the altitude really let's you know who's boss. 10,000 is a long way up.

That evening we popped into Silverton for a beer and a bite to eat, before returning to the campsite. Just as we were at the tents, a rather large thunderstorm hit, thwarting our plan to have a campfire. It was as noisy as hell, but great to be warm and snug in a tent, listening to the rain and thunder, having violet circles in your eyes from the lightning, and being in one of the most beautiful places on the planet.

Saturday morning dawned milky blue, with a light mist that was burning off as we breakfasted in Silverton's Brown Bear Café. We drove up to Andrews Lake and set off on another route that I'd found in the past whilst doing my mapping of the area. We took the crater lake trail up a series of fairly civilised switchbacks, before cutting off left, walking over limestone and sandstone beds and into an alpine meadow where we took a break as we watched marmots playing on the sunny rocks.

After some yomping through the flattish meadows, the trail took a turn for the more vertical, and proceeded up the quartzite slabs overlooked by the 13,077 feet of Snowdon Peak. The climb took us over the 12,000 foot contour, an altitude at which interestingly I can fly a plane over only for a maximum of 30 minutes without supplemental oxygen. We passed some snow patches left from the previous winter, and through stunted forests and topped out by crossing a saddle on a ridge into a land of wildflowers and shallow alpine lakes. This made for a good lunch stop, and yours truly took a quick dip in the water, which, for the record, was very, very, very, veryvery cold. Did I mention it was chilly?

We were chased downhill by rather black looking clouds through thick forests and pink quartzite boulders, until we picked up the crater lake trail that took us back to the car. Jen by this point was struggling due to the rather mental decision to go hiking without an insole in ONE of her shoes. Apparently it was eaten by the dog. As you can imagine, this caused a little bit of an imbalance, and pretty much ruined her ankle. Doh!

EDIT @ 9pm: Jen has just asked me to point out that she is not physically inferior in any way (and that is wasn't nice of me to imply that), it was merely an "equipment malfunction" that caused the problem! I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I was very impressed with the resilience exhibited, and if it were me, I would have lain down on the ground and refused to take another step until the helicopter arrived.

We rewarded ourselves with a decidedly mediocre meal at the Pickle Barrel, again in Silverton, avoided a bit of drizzle by having a sunset photo opportunity at Molas Pass, and retired to the tents to do the campfire thing. We managed to get the wet wood burning quite efficiently, it turns out a bag of charcoal and a block of firestarters works a treat.

On Sunday, we scarpered earlyish, and drove down the 50 miles to Durango, where we stocked up with coffee and pastries for breakfast. Destination for the day was Santa Fe, back in the state of New Mexico. We wound our way there the long way, made slightly longer thanks to the so called Hertz NeverLost GPS (subsequently christened 'bitch'!) whom we had clearly confounded by taking it to a place with no roads that it knew about.

The others picked up a car in Santa Fe, as rather stupidly they had to head back to Albuquerque to catch a flight for work on Monday, but we all had chance for a quick walk around the pueblo and a bite to eat. Jen and I took the "low road" to Taos which, after passing through the crappiest town in the USA, turned in to a spectacular drive through red canyons lit by a hot sun that was also illuminating huge thunderstorms ahead of us. We thought the distant thunder sounded like rocks hitting the windshield, until it turned out that it was rocks hitting the windshield that sounded like rocks hitting the windshield. Unfortunately, one left a 5cm impact star as a memento.

It was a thundery Taos that greeted us that Sunday evening, and we went directly to the Cottonwood Inn, a simply stunning B&B that I'd found for the night. On the Taos ski valley road, it was excellently located for a little evening stroll and some further sunset photos high up by the ski lifts.

If you're ever in Taos, stay at this place! The owners, Shantel and Brantly, are ex Houstonites, and had the good sense to get out of the oil patch and head for the mountains. This tells you all you need to know about them! The building itself is a beautiful Adobe home, with stunning gardens where breakfast was served in the morning.

We had chance on Monday for a walk around Taos, and took the high road back towards Santa Fe and on to Albuquerque for the return flight home to Houston.

We were out of the airport by 11pm, and home shortly after. A great weekend, with a lot packed in to four days. Carpe Diem!

Oh and no, we didn't see any bears or mountain lions.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Labels: colorado, New Mexico, Travel

posted by Sam @ 17:53 0 comments

Of Weddings

I'm 38,000 feet over Massacheusetts as I type this, bound from Gatwick to Houston aboard British Airways flight 2027. We've still 3 hours left to run, so following a nice afternoon nap I thought I would have a chat to you all.

The trip to the UK for Tom and Lindi's wedding was great, the wedding itself was a fantastic success, with both the main characters showing up on time and in great form! After months of sustained rain in the UK, the weather relented and we had a superb day, with completely clear blue skies, and temperatures in the upper 20's (that's in Celsius for you Yanks...)



The day before the wedding, after trying on the fancy dress provided by Moss Bros., we headed to the local pub for a beer or two, and thence to the rehersal at the church where we were instructed in the minutiae of the service itself. It involved a lot of ushering people around, moving to certain places, in a certain order with certain people. This was very complicated. I was mosty worried about getting up to the pulpit to give a reading without tripping over my own feet, the pew, the kneeley mat things, the flowers, the steps or the bride.

After the rehersal, we headed to the pub (yes again, but we were told to by the God bloke (Canon I think)). Dave (best man) spent a while scaring Lindi with potential material for his speech, and Lindi scared him back by informing him he was to be Master of Ceremonies, a duty until this point, unallocated.

A couple of beers later, we headed back to The Swan, where the Clayton Brothers were staying, along with the Garveys (The Germans!). We sat outside enjoying the superb weather and more beer was consumed until midnight, when an early night was had by all to prepare for the big day on Saturday.

After leaving breakfast until the last minute (10 to 10!), I stuffed myself with bacon sandwiches (that's decent bacon for you Yanks!) and had a bit of a wander round the little village we were staying in. It was all very English, with a village green, pubs, a church and narrow roads with tunnel-like vegetation closing you in. There was even a Foot and Mouth outbreak barely 10 minutes away just to complete the picture of rural England.

Labels: england, Travel, wedding

posted by Sam @ 14:25 0 comments

and bang goes the Mountain...

Hello Ladies and Gents.

Well, I got back from Seattle OK - and now I have to tell you all about it!

If you don't like words, all the pictures are in the gallery here.

So. To start at the beginning... Drove myself up to IAH ('Intercontinental Airport Houston' I believe) and parked in the cheapo parking lot (only 6 bucks a day - pretty good for airport parking!). On to the shuttle bus that took me merrily to Terminal E for check in for Continental, the USA's least worst airline. I had crammed everything into a carry on bag, so already had my boarding pass (printed at work) so proceeded to get undressed for security as is the norm nowadays. I was airside in just a couple of minutes, so now I had over an hour to kill before boarding.

Thanks to my contribution to Global warming in the past year, (Chile 3 times, Round the world once, and back to Europe - oh - I don't know - 6 times) British Airways had rewarded me with their 'Person Most Likely To Create a Grape Growing Industry in Britain' card, otherwise known as the Gold Tier of the BA Executive Club. This is rather splendid, as I was informed in the glitzy literature that accompanied the aformentioned card that it could be used to get in to BA lounges regardless of who I was travelling with that day. I decided to give this a try, and wondered through to terminal D where I found the BA lounge had been commandeered by China Airways. Never one to be put off that easily, I entered anyway and was duly directed to the bar where I partook of some Gin and Tonic, and some nice sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Not to shabby. I also collected up all the british newspapers I could find (they'd come in on that day's BA flights) and fed them into my already overstuffed bag.

So the hour of waiting passed rather nicely (stuffing newspapers into bag), and so I boarded the Continental Jet to Seattle, 4 and a half hours away. Due to the 2 hour time difference, it was 11:30pm when we reached Seattle-Tacoma Airport, and I headed straight for the Hertz rental area. BHP has a deal with Hertz, and therefore if you make a reservation on their website, your name simply appears on a display screen, and you just go to the numbered bay next to your name. There you find your car, with the keys in the ignition and the contract all signed and sealed hanging from the rear view mirror. Very quick and simple - I was driving out of the airport within 20 minutes of landing, and spent the next 20 minutes driving in circles to find the hotel thanks to my trusty GPS having the wrong address in its database. Ah well.

Saturday dawned with an overcast sky (Seattle gets millions of inches of rain a year), but undaunted I headed south and then Northwest bound for Olympic National Park. I crossed over the Tacoma Narrows (site of the infamously wobbly bridge that wobbled itself to destruction in a great example of resonance), and passed through thick forests of evergreen trees for much of the route.


Finally, Olympic National Park hove in to view (what the hell is hove anyway - I'm not even sure its a real word???) , and I wound my way upwards to over 4,000 feet (I think). We hit the snowline, which made for a nice walk through the forests, with meltwater streams rushing off downhill. There was a lot of spiky mountainy snowy foresty stuff going on, which made for a great contrast to Houston. These mountains are not volcanic - just your common or garden 'plate crashing into plate' type.

Next stop was the fairly remote northwest corner of the USA (apart from Alaska of course), but halfway there the car dropped out of cruise control and the 'check engine' light came on. I pulled over, and checked that the engine was still there, and it was, so I carried on for a bit. The light resolutely failed to turn off however, and I was a little concerned about heading further away from civilisation in a car that may well cease to provide motive force. In desperation, I looked in the manual that said that I should return the car to a dealer immediately, not drive it anywhere, and not tow it anywhere either. With this particularly helpful bit of advice in my head, I proceeded to drive it 150 miles back to Seattle at 70mph. Still keen on a little bit of touristing, I cut off the rather large detour through Tacoma, and took the ferry across Puget sound to Seattle. This was quite good fun, and I was rewarded with 40 minutes of fat tourists with cameras taking pictures of each other. I joined in a little with the photo taking bit, but drew the line at the getting fat bit.


So, back in Seattle, I went back to the airport and swapped out the car for another. This time they gave me a Subaru Mega-Guzzler XLT which had only 96 miles on the clock. I took it out for a test drive to the Northlake Tavern and Pizza House which had been reccomended to me by a workmate in Houston. I spent the drive back swerving across multiple lanes of Seattle's freeway system as I was playing with the Satellite Radio system - never had the opportunity before.

Sunday saw me head south, and away from Seattle towards Mount St Helens, the real reason for the trip. This mountain blew it's top about 7 days before I was born

Fifty-seven people were killed; and 250 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles (24 km)
of railways and 185 miles (300 km) of highway were destroyed.

--Wikipedia

Trees were laid flat up to 17 miles away. For those that don't know, it's lava dome that had been steadily growing collapsed in a landslide on it's northen flank, causing a huge relese of pressure, analogous to taking the cap off a hot car radiator, just with more lava involved. Apparantly, if you'd been standing on the ridge where the visitor centre is today, and held up a metre square frame, 60 tonnes of rock would have flown though it.

Every Second.

For Three Minutes.

That's a lot.





Thanks to the high peaks, the crater itself was largely shrouded in cloud, but I took a walk for a couple of miles along the ridge towards Spirit Lake which was partially filled in by the mudslides and pyroclastic flows from the volcano. The land even now looks very harsh, with thick layers of ash cut deeply by streams and rivers. You can see a layer of dead trees - big ones - 150 feet tall some of them - that are buried by a couple of metres of debris. Quite amazing, and all very recent. The volcano is still active of course, and a new lava dome is growing as we speak.



The walk took me along the first ridge that the blast would have hit - about 5 miles or 3 seconds away from the crater. The ridge is pretty well blasted, with fallen trees and very hummocky ground that was basically formed by the debris being deposited on the lee side. It was pretty cold too, with the snowline not far away, making me glad I brought a decent hat and gloves! As it was almost exactly 27 years to the day that Mt St Helens last erupted, the amount of snow was possibly similar which explains the huge amount of meltwater that would have been caused by the eruption that in turn created massive mudflows that washed down rivers, destroying bridges and property many miles away.



I spent the night about an hour away from the Volcano, and on Monday thought I would head around it's south side for a different view. This time the drive was very different, travelling through thick forest all the way, and winding my way up roads for hours! Unfortunately the spur road to a viewpoint 5 miles from the crater was still closed due to snow, but I got the odd glimpse of the peak in the breaking clouds. The mountain is surprisingly steep - just like you'd expect a decent volcano to look!

I ended up in Mount Ranier National Park on the way back to Seattle, I had roughtly planned to drive through the park, but it turned out all through roads were closed as several sections had been washed away due to the huge amount of rain in 2006. These are not little dirt roads by the way, but fairly reasonable paved highways. Therefore I went on a shortish walk around in the forests, and wondered down to Silver Falls in the southeast corner of the park. The river was full, carrying meltwater, but even so it was flowing in a canyon that had a good 5 metres from rim to river. It was therefore pretty amazing that a footbridge crossing this canyon was still in the process of being repaired, as it too had been damaged by flooding. An incredible amount of water was involved!

It was time to head back to the airport for my 5:50pm flight, and the journey out of the mountains was uneventful. Dropped off the car, checked in and found a BA lounge in which to sit and wait.

We took off under clear skies, and had the most incredible view of Mount Ranier off our left wingtip about 10 minutes after takeoff. The pilot announced it's imminent arrival, and said that it would only be 10 miles off our wing, and as we were still climbing up to cruise, although we were already at 13,000 feet, the peak would be higher than us, topping out at 14,410 feet. It was pretty amazing to see such a huge mountain so close! Got some good photos though! You could see the entire volcano, with some stunning views of the snowfields and glaciers.

Arrived back in Houston just before midnight local time, and the plane promptly had it's windows cloaked in condensation as we touched down thanks to the killer humidity! Nice. Home and in bed shortly after 1am for a short week back at work.

Labels: Travel, Washington

posted by Sam @ 20:13 0 comments

Brief Catch Up...

Jesus. It's March.

Since I last put fingers to keyboard to finely craft a post here, I have bought Christmas presents, got on a plane back to the UK, made it as far as Gatwick before transferring to a British Airways Fog Busting Bus to Manchester, seen the family for Christmas, even seen the Germans (Shout out to top cousins Ashley and Lewis!), before travelling back to London, spending a week there for work, travelling back to Houston, settling back into the routine for a brief 2 weeks before starting a new job, doing a little local flying before travelling to Geneva and onwards to Morzine for a Ski Holiday with the parents and Tom 'n Megan. Back to Houston a week later, and the following on board another plane to Santiago, Chile for a quick work gig, back to Houston for 2 and a half weeks to pick up the new job for a bit before back to Santiago again.

I have been back in Houston for nearly a week now, and have just about unpacked and got my apartment back to looking reasonably presentable again, although the odd sock still loiters under cushions awaiting a trip to the washing machine.

So, yes, it's been busy, and I've had little time to get bored, although have just recently been thinking about spending vast amounts of money that I don't have on some property. We have an ancronym at work - OPM. It stands for "Other People's Money" and I think it sounds a great idea. I should head down to have a word with the nice folks at Wells Fargo Bank about getting myself a mortgage. I just think that I should get some tangible assets behind me.

With this new-found ambition, I headed out on Friday (day off) to have a little look at some of the new apartments that are being built near work. There's one that I really liked, but looks like I slightly misjudged the market - it's $720,000, which needless to say is just a little more than I can afford right now! Ah well... Back to the drawing board... There are lots of lower priced properties around here too, a little further out of town, but Houston is a bit weird for holding real estate value over time - as there are no planning restrictions or zoning laws, new developments appear all the time, so areas can drop in value quite substantially after as little as 5 years. Not what I want in an investment.

So maybe I should just keep renting - it's a great for no hassle...

Anyway - back to the opening paragraph...

Skiing this year was in Morzine, not far from Cluses and Geneva. We had a great self-catering Chalet on the slopes on the edge of Morzine Village and right next to the lifts. As the snow in the Alps was pretty bad this year, we were lucky to be able to ski from the door, but we could and did all week. We had a huge dump of snow one night which made for one of the best powder days I've ever had the following morning. The holiday was marred somewhat by Mum managing to wreck her cruciate ligaments whilst getting off a chairlift on the first day. A really annoying injury, and potentially quite serious, necessitating an emergency evacuation from the slopes and an ambulance to a clinic where X-Rays were duly taken, and hundreds of Euros extracted for crutches, a leg brace and various drugs. Recovery is proceeding well, but these things are slow.

The Alps really are amazing, and it's great that we've got the opportunity to go most years.

Once back in Houston, I only had 3 days back at work before heading off to Santiago for another session speaking about Petroleum to the Graduate Programme. Again, it went down really well, and I had a great time, this time spending a lot of time pounding the streets of Santiago. The city is really busy, bustling, with plentiful parks and fountains, but at night the parties start late and go on until daylight. I went to see the statue of the Virgen (yes, that's how they spell it!) Mary standing atop San Cristóbal hill. She looks out over the city of Santiago which sprawls along the foothills of the Andes. The statue is partly the work of French sculptor Bartholdi, of the US Statue of Liberty fame.

I repeated the trip just last week, this time spending Saturday there as well, which was yet another opportunity to see more of the place that I had before.

Labels: Apartment, Chile, France, Houston, Travel, Work

posted by Sam @ 00:07 2 comments