Hello Blog Readers,

I’m finally back to civilization and able to update the blog with my recent travels.  It will probably be a slow trickle of updates though, as I’m still in vacation mode and out and about with family and friends.

I feel like I’ve needed this vacation because there’s just been something in the air back home in California.  I hear it whispering to me each morning during my commute up the 5 to work.  It’s a constant nagging, a feeling of discontent with life that I can’t seem to brush aside. I’m ready for a change of some sort, but not entirely certain what that change is going to look like.  A change in geography?  A new and exotic land hopefully free of the social ills of Northern California and begging to be explored.  A change in carer?  The pursuit of something I am truly passionate about, though with the potential costs of a return to school, the writing off of all I’ve worked for in life, and the judgmental gaze of those who don’t understand I haven’t felt happy in quite some time.  Or is it something else entirely?  I need answers.  What better time than now to be on the road.

I hopped in my Jeep first thing Monday morning, and I drove until I could not drive anymore.  The next morning, I woke up in the desert, holed up in a motel in Price, Utah, the culmination of a winding trip along Highway 6 from Spanish Fork.  The Great Salt Lake and Salt Lake City were engulfed in horrifying thunder and lighting, but by the time I made it to Springville, the storm had disappeared and I felt as though I was in a fantasy land of candy green mountains, puffy white clouds, and industrious, clean people.  No one was homeless or heavily tattooed, as I see everywhere in California these days.  People looked poor, but they also looked like they worked hard and had hope for life.  There was an innocence to the place that was quite beautiful to me.  For the first time in a long time, my anxiety started to dissipate, and by the time I reached Price, my memory was sparked back to my parents taking me to this town, back during my dinosaur obsessed schoolboy days.  I had forgotten all about those days until that moment, and I felt a common thread between my current self and the boy who I thought died long ago.  But the desert was not the place I was looking for in life, and so at the crack of dawn I drove and drove again, until I was deep in Colorado country, and the behemoths of the San Juan range filled my field of view.  The mountains sparked a sense of awe and respect-for-God in me that was similar to the feelings I felt when seeing the Bugaboos and Kootenays for the first time last summer.  I wanted to be in these mountains!  Gatekeepers to the secrets of Telluride and Ouray.

I pushed up Highway 550 past mountain towns and towards the upper pass.  A mixture of fear and adrenaline was pumping through me as the highway’s edge overlooked a sheer cliff with no sign of a guard rail.  “This place is wild!” I thought, and eventually turned up a dirt service road winding along icy blue rapids and towards the Ice Lakes.  It was time to find out what there was to learn from conquering these giants.

My trusty pack, Blueberry, ready to tackle the Ice Lakes.

The trail to the Ice Lakes was strenuous, but just about right.  It pushed you to the point of exhaustion, but not so far beyond it that you’re cursing at the world.  It’s a Floe Lake Jr., if you will, and comes complete with a rapid ascent to high elevations (I was feeling mild altitude sickness near the top, but this is likely because just the day before I was down near sea level in California), several precarious leaps and bounds over fast moving waters, a bit of scrambling, and (because it’s still June) a whole lot of snow up top.  In fact, there was so much snow that I never got to see the famed Ice Lake, as it was still frozen over, but the lower lake luckily was thawed.  So, if you’re looking for a picture of the thawed lake in its pristine glory, try Google.

The Lower Lake

Um, yeah.  No lakes up here yet.

Backpackers for scale.

Oh!  And I saw a beaver.  It was a pretty big one, and decided to join me while I was eating lunch.  I took a picture of it.

Amateur beaver photograph.

As for the whole soul searching thing, the countryside left plenty to help the mind detox and drift into deep thoughts.

I also bumped into a couple from Arizona.  They were academics and spending their summer hiking Colorado and eventually California.  They couldn’t believe I was from Red Bluff, and had all sorts of questions about Lassen and the PCT.  They were good people.

After getting off the trail, I decided to pitch my tent at the river across the street from the trailhead.  It was peaceful, but when I awoke in the morning, my tent was frozen over and the temperature outside was 27 degrees.  The cold invigorated me, and made me excited for my next adventure.

More tales to come!

Cheers,

Rob