Canon de Somoto and Telica Volcano

Angela and I just got back to Leon from Canon de Somoto and Telica Volcano. We did both of these trips with a guiding company called QuetzalTrekkers. Quetzal is a nonprofit organization that donates the proceeds from the business to a local charity for street kids. Volunteers sign up for three months to a year and guide volcanos and the canyon for silly gringos such as myself. Its a pretty cool program. The guides do not get paid and they pay for all of their costs while they are down here. This is especially impressive if you have ever been around a guided group full of difficult clients. Angela and I had a great experience with this organization and I highly recommend them.

The trips were great. We did the volcano trek first. Telica volcano is just outside of Leon and you can see it smoking from the city. It took us about 4 hours to walk out to the volcano and then a couple more hours to climb up to the crater. We crested a rise and were suddenly right on the edge of the crater. The crater drops away vertically for several hundred feet to the bottom where the gas pours out of the ground. We hung out around the crater for a bit before hiking down into the old crater where we camped out for the night. After it got dark we climbed back up to the crater rim. Looking into the crater we could see the lava glowing at the bottom. The noise the gas makes as it escapes is incredible. Its a hissing sound like a hot frying pan being put into a sink full of water, well a really big frying pan and a really big sink of water. We could feel the heat radiating out of the crater. We hiked back down to camp and slept out under the stars. We didn't even bother to take tents with us. The next day we hiked back to the road and caught the bus back to town. It was a bit strange having guides that did all the logistics, cooked all the meals, and reminded us to drink lots of water. We just had to sit around and enjoy the scenery.

We stayed in Leon for a night and then got up at 3:30 in the morning to start the long trip up to Canyon de Somoto. It was a really long bus ride made longer by the fact that the bus seats barely fit 5'5'' Nicas and certainly not 6'5'' gringos. I discovered my legs will bend in many extremely uncomfortable ways I was unfamiliar with. We finally reached the canyon after a long bus ride and a short hike. We slept on a gravel beach at the entrance to the canyon, again without tents. In the morning we met our local guide and hiked to the entrance of the canyon. The canyon makes a big 'U' shape so you can hike and swim one way through the whole works. It was incredible the canyon walls come so close together at spots I could almost touch both walls at the same time. We hiked, swam and scrambled through the canyon for six hours before reaching the end. There was a place to cliff jump into the water and places where we swam for several hundred yards through twists and turns so tight the sun did not reach the water. We slept out on the gravel beach again and then took another long bus ride back to Leon. I think we will head up to Jiquilillo Beach tomorrow for a few days. I suppose its probably my turn to step on a stingray now...

I'll try to get some pics up but Angela's card reader doesn't like the computers here so I'm not sure if that will happen.

From stingrays to volcanos...

Angela and I have been in Leon for a few days now. Leon is the main college town in Nicaragua so there is a pretty young population here. Leon also won the National Baseball Champsionship this week and everyone went out and partied last night until really late. I heard the last fireworks around 4 this morning. We´ve just been hanging out around the pool and sweltering through the afternoon heat. Angela loves it, I could go back to snow tomorrow and be just fine. Our last couple days out on the coast were pretty good although Angela discovered that stepping on a stingray can be a very painful experience. The ray got her in the heel of her foot. After much to-do, we took her to a local clinic that was surprisingly clean and professional. She got some anesthetic and the doc cleaned up the puncture, total bill about eight dollars. No wait in a long line, no demands for proof of health insurance, and when it was time to pay the bill I got an itemized list of the cost of all supplies used and more professional service than I have received in a number of American clinics. Fear not, the American Health system is still the best in the world!!! Unless you want affordable health care in a timely manner provided by professionals, then its no bueno. And enough about all that I appear to have taken a side track...

Tomorrow we are headed out to climb Telica, a volcano near Leon. We will camp just below the crater rim and then go up to the crater at night to see the glow of the lava. This will be an overnight trip and then we will be back in Leon for one night. After that we are headed up to Canyon de Somoto for a three day trip through the canyon. I am hoping both these trips will be a lot of fun. Thats all for now...

Las Vegas, Joshua Tree, and Nicaragua

So I should probably be keeping up with this thing better, but I'd rather go work on my sunburn instead. Angela and I are in the midst of an excellent trip. I flew out to the Washington DC area for Christmas and Angela went to Yakima, WA and Phoenix to see family. We met up in Las Vegas on December 29. We also met up with Nate Porter and his girlfriend Casslyn. We spent a couple of days enjoying the finer things that Las Vegas has to offer and then headed out to Lake Mead for New Years Eve. We rang in the New Year around a campfire complete with champagne toast. We went for a great hike on New Years Day in the park. The next day Angela and I headed off to Red Rocks to spend a few days climbing. We had a good time there and then headed out to Joshua Tree for about a week for more rock climbing. If you drive like me its only about three and a half hours from Vegas to J-tree. Joshua Tree lived up to the hype and I'm already plotting ways to return for some more rock time.

After a week in J-tree we headed back to Vegas where we got on a plane to Nicaragua. We spent one night in Managua, the capital, and then headed out to Las Penitas, a small beach town with unbelievable waves. We've been hanging out on the beach for a few days now and I'm starting to look like the tourist lobster that I've been aspiring to be since leaving Alaska. We'll probably be here for a few more days before trying to climb some volcanos or something. I'll try to post some pics next time. Temperature is 88F and sunny all day, everyday. Ok for now.

Last trip of the year...

I am back in Anchorage for the winter. My last trip in the Wrangells for the season was with Alonzo from Denali's backcountry crew. We flew into the toe of the Copper Glacier where we landed on the smooth river bar. We spent a few days exploring near the glacier. We hiked up a canyon with tall steep walls. At one point I could touch both walls of the canyon at the same time. The walls soared more than a hundred feet straight up. After exploring we floated down the Copper River in packrafts all the way back to the ranger station in Slana. Most of the float was pretty straight forward. It took two days of floating to reach Slana with only a couple of pretty rough sections, maybe class II+ or III.

I finished my season in Slana and now I'm back in Anchorage. I'm working until the end of November and Angela and I are planning a trip to Las Vegas for New Years with a week of rock climbing in Red Rock Canyon and a week in Joshua Tree. Then its back to Vegas and a flight down to Nicaragua. We will be in Nicaragua for a little over three weeks. We're planning to spend some time on the beach and maybe climb a volcano or two as well.

Here are a few photos from my trip with Alonzo.

The dropoff point near the Copper Glacier.

This is the canyon we explored.

The inside of the canyon. It was really hard to get a decent photo of the canyon.

Alonzo on the Copper Glacier.

Alonzo and I getting ready to put in on our first day of floating.

Looking south at Mt Wrangell and the Copper Glacier from our put in.

Nice view while floating down the river.

Floating the Copper River.

Gratuitous hero shot!

Purkey Pile to Wonder Lake

I was able to return to Denali to do a patrol with a couple of rangers that I worked with for many years. I joined them for a patrol from Purkey Pile (on Boulder Creek at the far western edge of Denali Park) all the way back to Wonder Lake. We drove out to Kantishna and then flew out to Purkey Pile. We started hiking almost immediately and continued hiking for eight days. We crossed big rivers, hiked across broad tundra plateaus and suffered through dense brush. One night the bugs were so bad we used headnets and then a few days later we got snowed on. We got a little bit of everything on this trip. The weather wasn't great but it always seemed to be just good enough. We did get incredible views of the mountains on a couple of days but it was usually only for a few minutes and then the clouds would move back in. The trip took us eight days and I think it was about eighty miles long. I was really lucky to be able to go back to Denali to do one of the trips I've always wanted to do.

Mt Foraker from the west.

Alonzo packrafting across the Swift Fork of the Kuskokwim River.

A brief break from the brush.

Hiking along through the brush and rain.

Mt Foraker with our tent.

Alonzo with Denali in the background.

The weather did not always cooperate. I used a compass on this trip more than I ever have before.

Alonzo, Jess and myself above Iron Creek with fresh snow behind us.

Denali from the McKinley River Bar, near the end of the trip.

Another great trip!

Summer is starting to wind down up here in Alaska. Fall has officially arrived with the start of hunting season and the colors are changing. I really wish that I was getting ready to jet out of here to some exotic locale with cheap food and incredible climbing, but its not to be this year. I'm staying put for a few months and trying to save money for our trip to Egypt in January. I'm not a very big fan of fall in Alaska, its cold and rainy but not usually cold enough to build a good snowpack in the mountains. Even worse I'm actually looking for a job this fall to help fund our Egyptian adventure. It'll be worth it though to sit on the beach in January.

I've done two more trips since my last post. The first one was a week long trip in Wrangell St Elias from Chisana to Solo Creek. This was a great trip that I did with Mike and Matt. Matt is a ranger in Kennecott. We took our time and even spent a day climbing one of the peaks along the way. We had pretty good weather but it was smoky at times.

Beaver Pk is the one on the left.

Heading up the glacier on Beaver Pk.

Matt high on the summit ridge of Beaver Pk.

Cruising along the trail on high alpine tundra.

The airstrip at Solo Creek where we were picked up.

On my last post I wrote about a river that Nate and I were unable to cross. This is an aerial photo of that river. We flew over it on our way to Chisana. Its about two miles wide and we made it MAYBE a 1/4 of the way across. We'll get it next time!

Lakes and Rivers

I just got back from a patrol with Nate Porter. He came over to volunteer on a week long trip that was supposed to go from Nabesna to Chisana. We were not able to cross the Nabesna River because of really high water. It was by far the biggest river I had ever messed with and the river won quite handily. We changed our plan and instead hiked out to Soda Lake.

Before the trip with Nate I did a fly in trip with a couple of other rangers to Sheep Lake and Grizzly Lake. This area of the park doesn't see much use until hunting season starts but we were disappointed to find garbage and a lot of human impact in the area. The mountains and valleys near these two lakes are just incredible. I'd really like to return to this area at some point.

Final approach onto Sheep Lake.

Looking north across Sheep Lake.

Mount Blackburn in the distance.

This is actually on a small island in the middle of the river, we still had a very long way to go.

Soda Lake

A closer look at Soda Lake, I'm standing on the landslide that formed the lake.

Nate decides volunteering is stupid and his partner is an idiot.