Busted up to the top of the mountain in my best time yet – 3.5 hours for 7 miles and 4,000 feet. Sunday saw another 8 miles but that day was an up-and-downer – just kills my knees. But on that trip I looked for hidden treasure, so to speak, and was partially successful.
I guess it’s kind of a big secret, but there are some who “know” but don’t want to advertise the fact that the hidden treasures are up there in the mountain, hidden as they are in plain sight.
Sometimes I’m so blind I can’t stand it.
But these are three images that I did see on Sunday’s romp around the mountain.
I keep telling myself that one of these days I’m going to create a flash gallery of wildflowers of the Sandias. Yes, and there is this bar with live music in Santa Fe that I’ve been going to write about for 5 years now.
Meanwhile I’ll just post here.
I’ve got another of one of these critters from late June I’d like to post – but I don’t know how to go back in time in Word Press and fill in the blanks, if it can even be done.
I’m impressed actually, not with myself, but with the camera which for many would be a piece of junk, but for me is the alternative to 15 pounds or better of gear that I feel is best left at home. My Olympus 5060 zoom – “brand new it was 699.00 but you can buy it now on ebay for $200.00.”
I bought mine just before going to Italy in the winter of 06, it’s been a great hiking camera, and great for low light shots inside of cathedrals etc. It has an articulating viewer so I can put the camera down near the ground and get close-ups without having to lay in the rocks.
I’d probably buy another if this one broke.
No fireworks tonight, at least not at the local country club.
It was great however, to be up on the roof and watching the horizon explode in every quadrant with flashes and booms and all the noise that is the celebration of the 4th.
We, my hiking friend from Michigan and I, are very tired. Today was the third successful climb of the Sandias in 3 days. That’s 12,000 vertical feet and something around 21 miles of walking.
Tomorrow will be a chill day.
This is the second day in a row that I’ve climbed the Sandias. Yesterday was a brutal climb up the chimney route and today was the more usual route up the LaLuze trail. Took no images yesterday that qualify for recording here, maybe in a log of the trail, but nothing to memorialize.
So today we get two images, first from the deep creek bed in the old LaLuze trail, the second from higher up on the mountain out in the direct sun.
After we finished off the trail it was off to Santa Fe for a soak in the tubs at 10,000 waves, followed by one of my favorite pastimes, the Santa Fe Chili’s, a Dixie land jazz band that plays every Saturday from 3-6 at Evangelo’s. Dinner at the Santa Fe Grill was followed by a quick drive home and one last loading up of the water bottles for our 3rd attempt on Sunday.
I was hoping that you could fake out a blog, but it seems that is not possible, unless I’m just missing something.
I wanted to go back in time and create some entries, but this thing seems too smart to let me insert posts for back in February.
I suppose what I can do is at least catch up for a bit of June and then try to be more diligent in getting at least some kind of entry posted from time to time.
So this entry will have have to go back to the fifth of June, a week after I restarted hiking in the Sandias. The work schedule and the massive amounts of snow kept me off the mountain for all of the spring. I hiked up for the first time since January on the 30th of May and then became determined to overcome boot issues to try and get back into shape for an upcoming marathon of hiking on the 4th of July weekend.
The route I take basically goes straight up through the center of the valley until it reaches a series of switchbacks just before the saddle. This is the shaded route and occasionally the sun breaks through the canopy to highlight the wildflowers.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
This last flower reminds me of a miniature trillium, but I doubt that it is part of that family. The entire flower is just less than the size of a dime.
Even when the only thing you have is a phone camera – sometimes the photos can come out “all right.”
Went to an associate’s birthday party in Los Lunas on Saturday afternoon and was so pleased to see this bed of tulips in his mother’s front yard.
I’m inspired and next year, these will grace my front yard as well.
Afterwards we went to a local venue, The St. Clair Bistro in Albuquerque to listen to a band that I heard about when I was in San Diego on Friday. My associate there said that I “had to go hear them,” even though he has never heard them in person.
The group, le chat lunatique, was all that it was billed to be.
I’m sold, lock stock and barrel. We will follow these guys around Albuquerque.
No wonder they got voted best of Burque 2009.
Filthy, Mangy Jazz – can’t get enough of that!
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