The Weminuche Continued.

And here is the rest of the video footage of our seven-day journey into the vast Weminuche Wilderness Area of Colorado. So far it's been a learning experience to edit and develop the video and to combine them with animated photos. I'll get better at it as I proceed, I'm sure.

I'll never forget the scenery and sense of solitude we experienced.

As the trip progressed I became concerned with battery power and disk memory and shot briefer bursts of video.

The last days on the trail were fantastic. Finally I had acclimated to the altitude. It took all of the trip for me to do so, and when I weighed myself on my return home I found I'd lost twenty pounds. Basically over the course of the seven days in the Weminuche Wilderness.

YouTube Video

Lately I've been experimenting with my YouTube channel. Originally I just got it as a place to post brief videos I'd shot on various trips so that I could embed the images here on my blog. But some of them began to get a lot of hits just from being on YouTube, and some people had encouraged me to do longer, more details videos and video montages.

So, I started to connect some of the short videos I'd made on various camping, hiking, and backpacking trips. In the past I was always constricted by how much video I could shoot by memory cards and primitive cameras. But now I can quite actually shoot three to four hours of video with the cameras and SD cards they use.

Starting on my next couple of trips I'll be able to generate a healthy amount of video footage to fuel and expand my YouTube presence. Currently I'm engaged in collecting all of the video I shot from my 2012 hiking and backpacking adventures in Colorado, mainly in the Weminuche Wilderness Area, the largest wilderness in the lower 48 of the US. I'll embed them here over the next couple of days.

Hiking in the Mount Sneffels Wilderness.

Acclimation hikes in Rocky Mountain National Park after our arrival in Colorado.

Our last acclimation hikes on our way to Durango.

The excellent train ride from Durango to the trail head.

Our first full day and campsite in the Weminuche.

Second day and night in the San Juans.

The West

Carole and I have taken several trips out west. And I took one without her to go backpacking. And when I look at some of the photos I took and recall the places I saw, I still find it hard to believe that I got to go and see those sights and experience those moments.

Two Medicine, Glacier NP.

Devils Tower.

Iceberg Lake, Glacier NP,

Bison, Black Hills.

The Needles, Black Hills.

Blue Lakes, Colorado.

Rocky Mountain National Park.

Longs Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park.

Weminuche Wilderness, Colorado.

Weminuche Wilderness, Colorado.

Absaroka Mountains, Yellowstone National Park.

Geyser, Yellowstone.

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

Sleeping Grizzly bear. Lamar River, Yellowstone NP.

Bull Moose, Grand Tetons National Park.

Joshua Tree National Park, California.

Outside Joshua Tree NP.

Carole, in Joshua Tree NP.

Wilderness.

My favorite places to hike and backpack are in wilderness areas. The main reason for this is that I have found that many wilderness areas give me the best chance to find solitude which is often lacking in many National Parks and National Trails (such as the Appalachian Trail).

Following are some videos that I've made while hiking or backpacking through various wilderness areas (the first, ironically, along the Appalachian Trail).

Geology

When I'm hiking and backpacking in the mountains I always stop to inspect and admire the geology. And I don't just mean the obvious mountain panoramas. Yeah, that's geology, but I'm talking about the specifics.

There are always strange and interesting rock and soil formations to see along almost every hike. Everything from odd outcroppings of minerals to amazing shapes eroded out of the topography. When I see something exceptional I generally stop to take a photograph.

One of the only times I saw something unique when I also did not pause to take a photo was once in Colorado when I saw fossilized ripples in sandstone made when the rock was once underwater. The reason I didn't take a photo was that I was so ill with altitude sickness that I didn't even want to take the time to snap a picture!

So...all of the following examples are from Colorado. I'll post some from other place I've hiked later...

Landslide. Weminuche Wilderness.

I took this one because of the large dike on the right. I will assume this is some kind of large, volcanic extrusion eroded out. But I could be wrong.

These towers of stone were interspersed along a chasm wall in the Weminuche. Nothing here to give them scale...but they were really tall.

 

We would sometimes pass creeks where some mineral or another was forming as accretions on the rubble. A couple of streams we passed were creating white residue on the rocks. Although the water was crystal clear and appeared clean, I would not want to drink this water. It could be safe...but the Weminuche is dotted with old mining operations. No telling what's leaching out of some of those old sites.

This creek had clear water, but reddish accretions on the rocks. Iron? Again, I would not drink this water. But it could very well be safe. I don't know.

At Blue Lakes. This is a glacial lake with a "rock glacier"feeding into it. Most of the ice is gone, but it's still considered a glacier in purely technical terms. There is still movement but what ice remains is buried under the rock.

A vast glacial moraine high up on Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. This moraine was indeed vast. Those trees at its foot are not tiny.

Pink granite. Weminuche.

I have no freaking idea...

How to Lose Weight

I found out the hard way last year that I am susceptible to altitude sickness. For some reason, it hits me after I crack about 11,500 feet above sea level. Back in 2010 I had hiked extensively in Yellowstone National Park, hitting peaks above 10K feet and feeling no ill effects of altitude whatsoever.

But, when I got to Colorado and started hitting really high (by USA lower-48 standards) peaks, I discovered that I do get altitude sickness. Really classic symptoms, too. Headaches, loss of appetite, dehydration, shortness of breath, nausea, reduced capacity to reason...most of the uncomfortable symptoms.

One thing about it, though...I lost a LOT of weight over the course of just a week spending most of my time between 11K and 13K feet. I pretty much stayed sick, so I had to force food down to keep from getting even sicker, and I was burning a lot of calories walking up and down those slopes at that elevation.

Another thing that I noticed is that I would awaken in the night gasping for breath whenever we camped at really high campsites.

Thus, the next time I go to such high country (and I'd like to do that in 2014...I've been looking at hiking in the Sierras in California), I want to make sure I'm in better shape than I was when I went to Colorado.

I think I weighed about 215 or so when I got to Colorado.

In Rocky Mountain National Park, on the flanks of the highest peaks in the Park, where I found out altitude sickness is some serious shit.

In the Mount Sneffels Wilderness a few days into the trip. I think I'd already lost a few pounds. Not much, but a few.

Coming down from one of the high passes we had to hike. This one had been very close to 13,000 feet.

Lying in my tent one evening. Cold. Sick.

Toward the end of the trip. I think we had one full day to go. I'd lost about twenty pounds by this point. My belt was all but useless. Had it cinched as tight as it would go and had to cram a washcloth in my waist to keep it tight.

Happy Trails!

Various photos from some of my hiking and backpacking trips. Just the trails, thanks. If I can recall where I took each one, I'll list it. (Let's see how well the old memory works.)

The Big Butt Trail, Black Mountains.

Trail in Big Ivy, Pisgah National Forest, Black Mountains.

Birkhead Mountains Wilderness.

Dolly Sods Wilderness, West Virginia.

Dolly Sods Wilderness.

Panthertown Valley, North Carolina.

Mount Rogers area, Virginia.

Kubrabow State Forest, West Virginia.

Appalachian Trail, Round Bald, Tennessee.

Avalanche Peak, Yellowstone National Park.

Mount Washburn, Yellowstone National Park.

Blue Lakes Trail, Mount Sneffels Wilderness, Colorado.

Weminuche Wilderness, Colorado.

Weminuche Wilderness, Colorado.

Switchbacks leading up to the Continental Divide, San Juan Mountains, Colorado.