Gray's & Torrey's Peaks - April 2002
I'm
Sorry Skip Directly To The Pictures
I apologize for
the delay. These things take time, as well as the right mind-set to
do, and the late Spring of cold, cloudy, and rainy
weather sapped my energy and made everything I did feel utterly
worthless, particularly typing HTML tags ad nauseam. By the time the
weather (and my mood) turned, I'd be damned if I was going to waste it
looking up clever bits of Javascript. For anyone else that
reads this and finds their mood heavily influenced by weather, I've learned this season that
boxed wine can do wonders for a
40 degree, rainy, saturday afternoon. Maybe these are
excuses, or maybe my
muse is
defective and I should trade her in. ¡Basta! Here it
is:
Site Navigation
While my words here can only be described as "pure
genius" or perhaps even "a staggering work of art in epic
proportions," I realize that, unfortunately, web writing has been regulated to MSN's endless
top ten lists, ESPN's garish assault on the senses, and the
general enabling of click-happy surfers. Generally people used their index fingers more than their eyes, pausing briefly before continuing on to Yahoo's most often viewed photos. If this is you, whenever
you see a page with a lot of words (such as this one), feel free
to scroll down, click on the big link, and watch the pretty pictures
taken with McNattin's Father's very expensive camera.
It's kind of like a photo album without the annoying person that took the
trip holding the pictures, and determining how long you should look
at
each one. And for the rest of you, now that I think about
it, this is less "genius" and more "miserable hack job" than I would like
to admit. Reading this will not guarantee
enlightenment, but it will guarantee
me what everyone ultimately seeks -
an audience. Thank you for your time.
Negotiating The Trip After weeks of haggling over
when we would leave to drive down to Colorado, how much acclimation
was necessary, how much work to take off, and who was willing to drive
late into the night, a cyberfare came up from MSP to COS saving the
day. Props to McNattin for
catching the deal. What a difference a cheap, pleasant
flight makes when
compared to last year's 30 hour drive. We
arrived 10:30am on Saturday in Colorado Springs, and immediately
headed towards
Georgetown, an hour west of Denver, 10 miles away from the
trailhead. On the way, we stopped to carbo-load at a McDonalds near Littleton, bought a bunch of water and then drove the rest of
the way to our hotel.
We were checked in
by a lethargic
Slovak
boy, and drove immediately to the road leading to the trailhead to
see if we could drive up. According to one of our sources,
"[Forest Service 189] is steep but passable for most passenger cars...In
the winter [it] is closed." As we were still on the cusp of winter,
the sign at the start of the long, steep road had all passenger
cars Xed out. Although
we knew the road was supposedly limited to SUVs, we were in a rental
and were most likely a lot less cautious than government officials so
we gave it a go.
I replied, "Hey, it's OK though, we're driving a
rental!" He looked at me, unhumored, " I've
made it up once in a car but would never do it again. It is a good
way to drop a trannie."
We thanked him, ignored his advice, and tried to navigate around some of
the craters. Then we heard an awful,
awful scraping sound, not unlike demons shrieking coming from below the car. We turned back, found a place
to park a little ways down the road, and walked the rest of
the way up to the trailhead, still dressed in our travel clothes. It was a
good mile and a half to two miles, and steep enough for me to
be sore the next day.
Progress was slow, and about a mile up, we hit a particularly nasty patch of road. About 50 feet ahead we could see gigantic rocky holes (more like
a "fox holes" than "pot holes") and we weren't sure if we should attempt
to drive up any further. A granola couple happened to
be walking down the road. I rolled down the
window and asked them if the road
cleared up at all after the ditch. The young man, dressed completely in
trendy, outdoorsman clothes said, "I wouldn't go any further. It gets rough
up there a little
ways."
Amazingly, there were cars all
the way up, trannie's intact. Scoots worked his GPS united, borrowed from
a friend, and gave us minute by minute reports on whether or not his brand
new cellular telephone was getting analog or digital
coverage.