Sunday, December 30, 2007

Sunday Hike @ Magnolia

The weather over the foothills was still holding but we decided to head on up towards Ned anyway. We picked up Petey and made our way up the canyon, halfway up the we noticed the weather getting a little snowy and the roads got worse. When we got to Ned it was snowing and a little dreary but it had dumped some snow overnight so we would probably have some good deep powder to snowshoe in.



Dogs before the hike



Dogs after the hike


We had some knee deep snow to play in and also got in some "extreme" snowshoeing :)





We made it to the campgrounds and decided to turn around since the winds were starting to pick up again


I love hiking around Magnolia in the winter, not too many people out and there's always fresh deep snow to play in. Having the dogs there is always worth a good laugh!



Since we had a couple warm and windy days over the weekend, I'll be able to commute in to work tomorrow on the newly built mountain bike commuter. I'll have to hang up the CX bike until the roads get a little clearer but I'm just happy to be able to ride in again. I feel so guilty driving in wasting all that money on gas.

Saturday Hike Foiled

I find that most Saturday's are spent running around doing errands and then us squeaking something in afterwards. We had great intentions to go pick up Dan's brothers dog Petey and head up into the foothills for a nice hike. Unfortunately, some storm sitting over the foothills caused high winds down by us and what looked like really bad weather up there. We decided to chill out for a bit and wait for it to pass. Unfortunately, the storm didn't pass so we just walked from our house out to an open space trail for a 1 1/2 hr hike in the snow. It's amazing how tiring walking in the snow can be.

You can see the storm clouds just sitting above the foothills in these pictures.


It was coooooold and windy so we had to bundle up

Fortunately, Patch didn't seem to mind


We have to be really careful on this section of trail because there's a pack of coyotes that have lived there several years. We met a man out there while we were walking that told us that the pack has killed a dog last week and attacked the female hiker. That's really scary! We've heard several other stories from people walking dogs in our neighborhood about these coyotes, walking the trail at night is a no no. Luckily the other sections of this trail are safe and the coyotes don't seem to come around.

Afterwards we went to a brewery in Longmont called the Pumphouse for some good beers and burgers....yummy. We came home to find Patch devouring a bone my mom had sent him for Christmas.

Guess we'll have to try again on Sunday for the big hike in the foothills with the dogs.

Rear Axle Removal

Dan had the day off on Friday so he spent it under the Jeep removing the rear axle and some plastic fenders.





Thursday, December 27, 2007

Thanksgiving 2007 - got Slickrock?

The past 2 years we've been fortunate enough to spend Thanksgiving in Moab wheelin' with our friends. This year we left on Thursday, got into town about 6pm, checked into the Super 8, ordered carryout from Denny's and crashed. We got up early on Friday to let the dog out and found a couple inches of wet, sticky snow on the ground and it was still coming down. A little stunned we stood in the parking lot waiting for our friends to wake up trying to decide what we should do. After about an hour or so, we decided to hit up Poison Spider after checking out Potato Salad Hill.






Saturday we decided to hit Fins & Things, luckily the sun was shining and the snow was gone!



After lunch, it was my time to drive.



After that we played on Baby Lions Back and called it a day.




After a good soak in the hot tub we decided to hit the Moab Brewery for some good beers and food. Like always, we had a nice long wait ahead of us but all is good when you have such good beers to drink while waiting!

Sunday we only had 2 Jeeps in our group so we decided to check out Hell's Revenge and go home. This was my first time on Hell's Revenge and I must admit I was a little nervous at first. The beginning of the trail you have to climb a narrow ridge and I get freaked out on those, mostly because we're fully enclosed in the Cherokee and can't see the sides all that well.



It was cool because the trail crosses the Slickrock trail several times....we were driving on the Slickrock trail for 4 wheelers! We checked out the Hot Tub, Dan did the smaller Hot Tub. I can't believe how deep and steep the Hot Tub actually is and without a front locker on the Cherokee we knew we'd never make it.




We then watched a couple guys do the Escalator, we saw 2 get winched up and the 3rd guy winched himself up on his first try but made it his 2nd time up. Can't wait to be able to do that when the project Jeep is complete.



After that, we talked Dan into trying the Tip Over Challenge but he ended up getting winched out. The guy spotting him put him in a really bad position on the rocks and without a front locker it was nearly impossible for him to get up.



More pics for 2007 can be found here: http://weimie.smugmug.com/gallery/3895868#225901635

More pics for 2006 can be found here: http://weimie.smugmug.com/gallery/2180913#113356804

Day 1 of the blog

New Year's resolution is to create a blog of all the fun we have on dirt! Riding bikes and wheelin and when we're too tired hiking.

We just started a new project, building a rock crawler!



That will take up lots of time this winter. We removed the front axle and will start on the rear soon.



We also bought a donor truck for the axle's.



I got a new SS commuter for Xmas from Dan...now I've gotta step up and ride a SS to work. If it ever stops snowing!

Xmas was okay...kinda low key and relaxing. I had 3 days off of work so I spent most of the time hiking and hanging out on the couch. We hiked at Walker on Sunday with Patch and I hiked Betasso on Monday before hanging out with out friends for Xmas Eve dinner.







We've got a trip to Bootleg planned in January and a trip to Whistler (hopefully) planned for the summer!