Be there or be square: Fuller Lodge talk, Sept. 19

The Los Alamos Mountaineers runs a monthly program of invited speakers. This month, I’m giving the talk. It will be at Fuller Lodge the evening of Wednesday, September 19. Exactly when is a little bit of a mystery to me; the talks are often billed as 7:30pm but don’t start until a little later. Given that it’s my talk, though, I suggest you show up at 5:30, or even midnight the night before, to make sure you have a seat.

The LAMC web site also carries this announcement. It’s free unless you want to slip me an envelope full of cash.

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How I learned to lead “Priedhorsky moderate”:
Forty canyon adventures from age 10

Dark Canyon, 1989

Part coming-of-age story, part exploration of local natural beauty, and part compendium of hilarious debacles, this talk is about the canyons of the Colorado Plateau. In photographs and illustrations, Reid will tell the story of his forty adventures in the ethereal landscape which inspired the alien worlds of Calvin and Hobbes’ Spaceman Spiff. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll demand a refund.

Reid was born and raised in Los Alamos and spent 13 years in Minnesota before returning in fall 2011. Actual excerpt from one of his trip invitations: “Difficulty will be standard ‘Priedhorsky Moderate’. You can look forward to extremely hard work, pain, terrible cold, blazing heat, bad food, intestinal disturbances, odor, risk of injury or death, and many other unpleasant circumstances. There will also be nice scenery and an opportunity to go places almost no one ever goes.”

This talk contains sexual themes and references to drug use.

Stevens Canyon, 2009

Death Hollow, 2005

Death Hollow, 2005

CSST 2012

CSST 2012 at Bishop’s Lodge was pretty awesome. We saw a cool sunset each night. This one wasn’t the best — the best one was a big electrical storm over the Rio Grande Valley.

Santa Clara Canyon rim hike

Erin, Calvin, and I went on an LAMC hike led by my dad to the rim of Santa Clara Canyon in the northern Jemez. This was Calvin’s first “real” hike, about 3.5 miles, and it was fun despite a little bit of fussiness on Calvin’s part (he sure eats a lot) and the long drive in (over 2.5 hours from Los Alamos). The views were extraordinary.

Upper Santa Clara Canyon from near the trailhead. The canyon has an interesting property in that it has no real head — it just slowly slopes over and begins draining into the valles, while staying quite deep. I wondered what causes this unusual phenomenon.

Puffball, approximately 4" across.

Changing Calvin’s diaper in a beautiful meadow. He was not a fan. One of the worst diaper changes ever, according to him.

This herd of cows was very perplexed by Calvin’s wailing regarding (yet another) diaper change.

Pizza in the cave

One of the things I enjoyed doing when I was in high school was to order a pizza, then take it into a cave and have a picnic. Somehow, I was able to talk Erin and our friends Amanda and Isaac into doing this. A couple of weeks ago, we hiked up to Cave of the Winds with a pizza and a diaper bag.

Erin with Calvin in the cave. He may be the youngest person to ever go in that cave, and I’d strongly suspect the first to be breastfed in there.

On the way out, we had a wonderful sunset. It looked very much like it might rain, but sadly it didn’t.

Trail maintenance with Craig Martin

Craig Martin is our local trails guru. He’s employed by the county; I believe his title is something like “open space specialist”. He’s been running trail work sessions for the past month or two, but I’ve always been unavailable because of Calvin. Yesterday, however, was a time I could make it. I was really excited to help out because the trails are something very important to me, and I want to contribute. Also, I like digging holes.

The meeting place for yesterday’s session was at the Nail Trail trailhead, off NM 501 about 500 vertical feet about the townsite. The goal was to stabilize a section of train so it wouldn’t wash away when the monsoons arrive. Of course, I biked there with all my junk in the basket. Craig thought I was a little nutty.

There were 8 of us. We hiked in 20-30 minutes, had a quick training session, and were off to work. The tools were a Pulaski, which has an axe one side and a pick on the other, and a McLeod, which is basically a giant hoe. It was very difficult, filthy work, with huge amounts of dust containing a mix of dirt and soot. I’m still pretty sore this morning.

My favorite part was filling in this hole. The profile is not obvious in this picture, but it was a gash across most of the trail. It’s about a foot deep on the right side of the trail, maybe 2-3 on the left, and the whole mess extends down the slope another 3 feet or so.

I believe it was caused by the root system of the stump at left burning away.

After! I (along with the help of several others) built a rock wall and then filled in the gap with rocks and dirt.

I suspect this spot will need more attention soon as the thing settles and the tree begins to rot away.

Side view of the rock wall we built.

Cletus gets mail

Small ponderosa

This Pinus ponderosa brachyptera seedling is behind Arizona Avenue.

Tools

I sorted out and organized our tools, removing extras and stuff where Erin and I had duplicates. I guess that means our relationship is serious now?