Mostly Plants

The “Trap Dike” is a lovely little route up Mount Colden, in the Adirondacks, that ranges in quality from dry, blocky scramble to raging waterfall.  This is the story of how four intrepid adventurers from the Free Outing Club of Cornell/Ithaca ascended the dike in “slightly runny” conditions.
All photos are courtesy of my coadventurer Elaine [...]

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August 6, 2008
Around 7 AM
Gros Ventre Camp
August 5: Morning at Brooks Lake is gorgeous!  We filled up our H20 at the lake, and I shot the panorama shown in the previous post.  After some trouble with the stove, we had Quinoa cereal that Adrienne made for breakfast.  The last time I had quinoa for breakfast [...]

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August 6, 2008
Around 7 AM
Gross Ventre Campground, Grand Teton N.P. 
This is my first real chance to write so far on the trip.  A recap so far:
August 3: Our 5 AM departure became a 9 AM departure.  We were planning to drive 13 hours today and camp at Badlands National Park, SD, where buffalo roam freely [...]

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Tonight I leave Massachusetts for sixteen days of adventure.
I will take the bus to the commuter rail station, the commuter train into the city, the subway to South Station, and the Silver Line (a Dual-Mode Bus that runs through Subway tunnels on catenary wires) to Logan Airport, where I will take the plane to Chicago and [...]

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I didn’t write in my trail journal on Day 6, so this entry will be based on photographs and memory.

A Graphical Summary of the Trip

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This is technically the sixth day in the desert, but by that count there were seven. We Spent this day mostly on the road, so I do not count it–I give it an irrational number between five and six. Or maybe a complex number, with five as the real part and some non-zero [...]

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The walk from here to Lost Palm Oasis is only about 40 minutes. From the overlook, you see two oases–one down in the canyon, and one on the opposite rim. The trail descends steeply into the gorge, where we immediately encounter fan palms. Some are still well-covered in shag; others have recently burned. The canyon floor is very sandy and these are the beaches we read about–beaches without water. There is very little water here, only sparse seeps leak above the ground. Many of the seeps are fouled with decomposing organic matter. We find a few bones, too small to be Bighorn Sheep, too small to be rabbit. Coyote, maybe?

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3/18/2008
9:36 AM
Cottonwood Camp
Warm morning: everybody slept well. Ginger feels better. I’m wearing my kilt and t-shirt at 9:00 AM–a vast improvement over previous days! We cooked the rest of the bacon today, but fully half of it was consumed in a sudden grease fire. I washed the pair of pants that [...]

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In today’s edition, our intrepid heroes climb a mountain and hike through the desert to abandoned mines and the tomb of a desperado miner who died by the hand of a rival, fighting over a few scraps of land in the desert.

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From my hardcopy trail journal. Some of the first paragraph overlaps in content with the last post, but it moves on from there.
Monday, 3/17/2008 11:00 AM
The Sonoran Desert
Yesterday was angrily, bitterly cold.

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