Climbing Mt Yale

My friend Matt and I decided to continue our quest to climb all of the 14ers in Colorado. On Wednesday we drove up to Buena Vista and found a great camp site (in the daylight) and set up camp. Thursday morning at the crack of dawn, 5 am we broke camp and left for the trail head. Below is a picture of the surrounding mountains that lie to the west of Mt Yale. This picture was taken fairly early in the morning and as you can see I'm still below tree line (which is 12200 ft for my non hiker friends)

This picture shows the ability of biking clothing to be made useful in different sports, I'm fairly certain that this vest could be seen from space.

This is getting closer to the top, note the elevation at which the trees stop growing, again this picture is looking west from Mt. Yale

Here I am at the top of MT. Yale, 14206 ft. If you look behind me you can see path we had to follow to get the summit. A path of snow that was flanked by large drop offs on both sides made this rather interesting. It took us almost 5 hours to get to the top. Our total time for the hike was 8 hours with time alloted for stopping for lunch and of course bathroom breaks. It was a great time, and I had no problem asking my massive cycling legs to propel me up to the top of Mt. Yale.

More pics from early summer

Hey guys so I have finally found some time to get some pics up from the last week or two. I went up to Fort Collins to see our friend e-strong grind it out on sunday. Walking back to my car to leave for my dads house, i noticed someone who has fantastic taste in fine cycling equipment.

Next is my dinner the night before this bike race from above. I marinated a t-bone and grilled it. Next I placed asparagus on the grill with EVOO and S/P. I plated these two items on top of a bed of Parmesan couscous. It was delicious!

Below is a picture of my new bike rack(no matter how I uploaded this pic it was sideways)

Here I am driving to my dad's house

The Pics have finally arrived!

The trip back continued to be lesson in cultural differences. The bus service that we paid for to get us to and from the airport and the dog show site every day, never came to get us for the return trip to the airport. We were lucky that the one taxi driver at the hotel with a large SUV whose name was Andres pulled up just in time to save the trip to the airport. When we finally get to security to get to the gate, the federal police decide that the dog (which is flying on the plane) cannot go through the x-ray machine with out documentation. After a few minutes of me arguing with the security guard I got an American Airlines employee to come over and explain that it was ok for the dog to ride inside the plane with the passengers. Once finally through security after an hour of discussion, it was time for me to have a drink. The trip back was uneventful.






These three pics are of murals inside the palacio Nacional painted by Diego Rivera.







These pics are of the ceiling inside where the Mexican govt has its meetings. Note the all seeing eye.






Look at these plants



Drinking at the Dog Show


Keeping myself occupied






This is what the dog looked like
at the airport


Look at this crowd!