Eating in the mountains doesn’t have to be a miserable experience. With plenty of pre-cooked meat, some cheese, some tortilla shells or buns, some Waylon on the jukebox and an arsenal of hot sauces – the possibilities are endless. There are a lot of hot sauce aficianados out there – so i’m not gonna bother trying to step on anyone’s toes. I’ve scratched the surface but still feel I’ve, personally, made some decent headway in the Rocky Mountains. First off, there is no such thing as too much hot sauce. Hot sauces should be taken as seriously as post-climb beers on every trip to the hills. Don’t be ashamed if you need to get a suitcase to carry around all your sauces and don’t be ashamed to apply a few drops to each individual tortilla chip you consume around the campfire. At the major markets alone – you can get in to a decent amount of trouble with the selection. Gilberto, Tapatio, Tobasco and Cholula, along with local favorites Horsetooth, Boulder and High Altitude all sell noteworthy sauces. Keep reading…
Once in a blue moon I get an opportunity to work out of my company’s headquarters in Durango. As fortunate had it, last Wednesday through Friday were my dates for 2013. A Durango-based work trip, leading into the weekend, in the middle of the driest, most reliable month to hike peaks in the San Juans? Sweet! I was stoked for weeks leading up to the trip. Little did I know mother nature had other ideas. Enter the record monsoonal flows of mid-September, 2013. Read more…
hough they may not be particularly grand in stature, the Gores are a special set of peaks. The more I venture into the range, the more I look forward to heading back. A recent thread on this site highlighted different aspects of the area that make it unique. I won’t go into them here, but suffice it to say I’ve been humbled and impressed by what I’ve seen of the Gore thus far, and I was more than ready to get back in there for another adventure. With the entire day free and a good weather forecast this past Saturday, I decided to try my hand at Peaks X and Z which reside at the head of Boulder Lakes basin. Keep reading…
A weekend trip for Dallas Peak from Denver? That’s a crazy bunch of driving for one summit. So Ryan and I looked for some new mountains somewhere sort of en route, and landed on the Truros, which most place in the Sawatch though one old CMC book I have considers them part of the Elks. Kevin K and I drove over Independence Pass, then north/east on Hwy 82 to the turn for the Lincoln Gulch 4×4 road to Anderson Lake, where we roused Ryan from his dreamland. Keep reading…