Annual Backpacking Trip 2014

Me and the boys finally got around to our annual backpacking trip.  It got delayed a few weeks for different reasons, so we went a little later in the season, but we were hopeful that it would be less crowded because of the time.  School had already begun (at least for our school district), plus the forecast was showing some possible thunder showers.  I wasn't too worried, because it seems that 90% of my trips have a high percentage chance of rain showers, and I usually get good weather.  Besides, a little weather is good for you, makes for better stories, and more memories... or something like that.  When things don't go exactly according to plan/desires, we like to call them adventures.  So we planned for the weather to be a little chilly at night, and some possible light showers.

Because of school, we got a little bit of a late start, we left about 4:00, and headed up into the Uintahs.  Since we were getting a late start, we decided to do the same hike that we did last year, Wall Lake, since we knew the trail, and it was a short hike, only 1.1 miles.  As we are pulling out of the driveway, I look to the west, and see some dark clouds.

I wasn't too worried, that isn't too uncommon either, to see signs of a storm when leaving on a trip.  Onward and upward we went.  As we are pulling into Kamas, just before heading up the Mirror Lake Highway, I notice that the storm clouds not only followed us, but was escalating.

No worries, it's gonna work out just fine... it usually does.  We make it up to the trailhead for Wall Lake, just past Trial Lake, and just as we had hoped, the time and weather had scared off a lot of people, because the parking lot is usually full, and I've always had to park about 1 mile down the road in the overflow lot, and walk back up.  It was still pretty full, I think there were 3 or 4 empty parking spots, but we'll take it.  When we got out of the car, it was a bit cooler than I had expected, but still jacket weather.  We donned the packs, locked the car, and headed up the trail.

We actually made pretty good time, I thought.  We had another family with the same idea as us (Father with 2 young sons) trailing right behind us, but we were able to stay ahead of them, and as luck would have it, the campsite we found last year was still available, so we took it.  We set up the tent, and got it quickly situated.  No sooner than we had the tent set up, Zach was all over me to go fishing.  I'm not sure where it came from, but for the last couple of months Zach has had the fishing bug, he's always asking to go fishing.  For his birthday, he picked out a fishing pole, tackle box and some tackle.  Sounds great, right?  I enjoy fishing, so now I have someone to go with, right?  Ya, on paper it sounds great... in real life though, he is 8 years old.  He has an 8yr old patience, and an 8yr old attention span, and an 8 yr old fishing ability.  So that translates into "Dad, can you hook up my pole"  "Dad, my line is tangled", "Dad, my line is snagged", "Dad, I lost my lure", "Dad, can hook up my pole again", and of course he has to use lures... spinners, spoons... you know, the things that you have to keep casting and reeling in, and are MUCH more susceptible to getting snagged ...  So, in real life, Zach's desire to fish would probably be much better if I didn't like fishing at all, since I never have any time to do my own fishing.

So here is how the evening played out.  We got the fishing stuff, and walked down to the lake.  We sat down, and I decided to do Zach's pole first, since he is the most excited about fishing.  Naturally he wants a spinner lure so he can cast out and reel in.  He picks one out, and I put it on his line.  Then I start with Nate's pole.  Nate actually took my advice, and decided to use power bait.  It's a little longer for the initial rig job, but should last him longer... if he can leave it out in the water like he's supposed to.  I get about 1/2 way through rigging up Nate's power bait, when Zach comes back over... ya, he lost his lure, and needs me to redo his setup.  Like the mean father that I am, I make him wait.   I finish setting up Nate's line, and then set up mine, so that it can at least be sitting in the water while I'm doing Zach's line again.  Unfortunately by the time I get Zach's line redone, there was lightning flashing in the sky overhead, so, as the mean father that I am, I make them pack up and head back to camp.  It was around 7:00 - 7:30ish, and right as we get back to camp the heavens opened up and started unleashing it's wrath on us.  This is also about the time that I notice Nate's fishing pole.  He hadn't fully reeled in the line, and just left it dangling in the wind on the short walk back to camp, and the slack in the line had given it the opportunity to unspool from the reel, and end up in a HUGE rats nest of a tangle that used pretty much ALL of the line on the reel.  That is a project for another time, though, because the rain was really coming down.

We hunker down in the tent, and the rain was coming down so fierce, that it was hard to even carry on a conversation in the tent over the noise.  Plus the frequent lightning and thunder from overhead.  Of course that wasn't a big deal, thanks to technology.  They both brought their phones (ie. handheld gaming devices), and we all had ipods.  So they played minecraft, and I listened to music in between our attempts at conversation.  We were hoping that the rain would stop, even long enough to go out and make some dinner.  No luck.  Mother Nature had other plans for this weekend, and us having a dry, enjoyable dinner that evening were not in that plan.

We just stayed in the tent listening to the rain, and thunder, watching the lightning, and in spite of it all, we were having a good time.  Like I said, it was an adventure.  Sure it would have been nicer to have been able to fish until it got dark, catch a few monster trout, and cook them in the fire under the stars, but just cuz things don't go as planned, doesn't mean that it can't be enjoyable.  At the very least, we were making memories.

At one point, I wanted to see what was going on outside, so I crawled down to the door of the tent to unzip the door, and discovered that our tent wasn't exactly water proof.  The tent had sprung a leak somewhere.  I couldn't really see where it was coming from, probably from the zipper on the door, but we had a significant puddle starting at our feet.  This should make things a little more interesting.

Zach decided to go to sleep about 9:00, and I think he was out pretty quick.  Nate on the other hand has inherited his father's insomnia, and has a hard time falling asleep.  So most of the night when I'd pull my head out of my sleeping back to check on things, I could see a faint glow through his sleeping back.  So he didn't get much sleep, but I think his minecraft game got a lot of work done. 

About 5:00-5:30ish, I felt a little extra weight on top of my sleeping bag.  I thought that Nate had moved around, and had his feet resting on me.  I pulled my head out to check on him, and it took me a few seconds to figure out what was going on, it looked like someone had thrown a tarp over me.  As I went to pull it off, I realized that it was the tent.  The rain had turned to snow, and the snow had piled up on top of the tent, and the weight of it caused the tent to collapse on top of me.  Luckily, it didn't break the poles, or pull them out, so after hitting the side and roof of the tent to knock off the snow, it popped right back up.  Obviously, this is good, especially since it was snowing so hard, and the snow was so wet and therefore heavy, that it collapsed on us 5 or 6 times between 5:00 and 7:30, not counting the few times we decided to do some preemptive strikes, and knock off the snow before it caused a collapse.

Finally, about 8:00ish we decided to venture out.  We didn't hear the pitter-patter of rain, snow or sleet on the tents roof, so I climbed over to peak out the door.  The puddle had gotten much worse, the foot of the boys sleeping bags were soaked, I was on a pad, so my bag was dry, but the pad seemed to have a magnetic pull for the water, because the water was under about 3/4 of my pad.  Better under my pad, than under the boys' sleeping bags.

We climb out of the tent, and decide to start our morning routine.

I pull out the pocket rocket stove to get some water boiling, and we have some hot chocolate and instant oatmeal.   Nom Nom Nom.   It was a gorgeous morning... at least it was when the sun was out.  

The problem is, that the weather was still a wild card.  It would look great for 5 mins, then the wind would kick in, and the sun would go behind the clouds, and it would get cold.  Nate pointed out that there were at least 2 different levels of clouds on complete opposite wind currents.  So when it looked good from the West, there would be some storm clouds blowing in from the East.  When that would kind of clear up, there would be some gray clouds coming in from the West.  I asked the boys what they wanted to do.  Nate was all about staying, he said either way it would be an adventure.  Zach on the other hand decided that he was done with this adventure.  He was cold, and he wanted to go home.  I told them to figure it out, and come up with a decision.  They weren't able to, Nate just wanted to stick it out, and Zach was done.  As the tie breaker, I decided to take a more practical approach to it.  I am all for a good adventure, however, we packed for chilly nights, and maybe some rain.  So we had some long pants, a hoody and a cheap disposable rain poncho for the boys.  No coats, or thermals, or anything for winter weather. Plus, after last night, 1/2 of their clothes were wet.  We looked around to see if there was any chance of finding some dry wood.  Nothing.  Nothing even remotely dry, nothing even damp, it was all soaking wet, and most of it was also covered with an inch of slush.  Zach was starting to shiver a bit, so we made the decision to tuck our proverbial tails and run.  

Not sure how the rest of the weekend would have gone if we had stayed, but I wasn't looking forward to spending the whole time cramped in a flooded tent, and I had no way of making a fire to dry wet clothes and warm up my boys.  The hike down, however was very nice.  The weather held for us, and stayed very pleasant, except for the occasional (and often) slush ball that would fall from an over-hanging branch, and land on the back of our necks.

We did make it back to the car in one piece (or 3 pieces, however you want to look at it)

Driving down the canyon, I thought it would be cool to stop at the Provo River Falls.  I thought the boys would get a kick out of that, which they did.  They had a ball climbing around the river, and following it down to find other waterfalls.

Me, on the other hand... well, this last stop would have been better if we had passed it up.  As I'm following the boys around, watching them scramble across wet and slippery rocks on the edge of waterfalls and the river, I start to think back to my younger days.  I've always enjoyed climbing around, and scrambling around on rocks.  I have put myself in some pretty precarious situations, but I've always done alright with them.  Unfortunately I am getting older, and should probably be taking things a little slower, be a little more careful with what I do and where I go.  As I am think all of this, I am watching my boys climb up a small, yet rocky tributary waterfall that is coming down the side of a steep embankment, and into the river.  They are having a great time, and still heading down river.  I go to cross the waterfall, testing the rocks as I go to make sure they are solid.  I am stretching for the last rock before I'm across, and it feels solid... until I put my full weight on it, and it instantly rolls out from under my foot.  I'm about 1/2 way up the waterfall, and as I mentioned, it's not a very big one, but it is a rocky waterfall.  So my foot rolls off the rock, and into the water.  That sucks, but it's not the end.  As I mentioned, it is rocky, so as my foot goes into the water, it lands on another rock,which makes it very difficult to keep my balance on, so I'm stumbling.   My other foot goes in the water as well trying to find some stable ground to gain my balance on.  Unfortunately, that foot doesn't find a good perch either.  Now, typically, to be a waterfall, it has to have some sort of steep decline in the landscape for the water to fall.  This was the case for the waterfall I'm now dancing with.  The other element that is pretty important for a waterfall is gravity.  These two elements were not my friend at this moment.  I'm stumbling around on loose rocks in the water, and gravity is pulling me downward too.  Eventually I lose my battle and do a little bit of a swan dive, and fall head first into this rocky waterfall.  I landed on my side/back in a pile of rocks.  my right side was now soaking wet, and I banged my knee pretty bad on the rocks, but my back took the brunt of the abuse.  I landed right on a sharp rock, right behind my armpit.  I jump up and make sure there was nothing broken, and notice that my Nikon also made acquaintance with the waterfall.  It looked like it was OK, the case was wet, but the water didn't make it to the camera. *WHEEEEW!!*

So that is when I became the spoil sport, and told the boys we were heading back to the car.  I changed out of my wet clothes, and headed home.  My shoulder hurt SO BAD!!!  Every time I had to shift gears I would grimace, and let out a whimper.  It made for a longer ride home.  To make it even worse, when I got home, and examined my camera.... ya, it did get damaged... :'(  .  I think the lens hit the rocks and tried to pull the lens off of the body, because I couldn't get the lens off.  I finally forced it off, and there was a screw sticking out of the body that holds on the lens plate.  I screwed that back in, and the camera seems to be OK, but the lens (which is my all time most favorite lens ever!!) isn't working...  *SIGH*

Any way, here  is something that I don't think I have seen since Nate was probably 9 months old

Nathan NEVER sleeps in the car... he claims he wasn't sleeping, but he was like this for about 20 or 30 mins, so.... I think he was asleep.

Torch Run

Every year for New Years Eve, Alta ski resort does a Torch Parade and fireworks. I've gone a few times to take photos, and really enjoyed it. However, it has been a few years, since it is usually pretty cold, and there is only so much you can do photographically to come up with new images. I have been toying with time lapse photography lately, and had the epiphany to try the torch parade as a time lapse. I realized that all of my time lapse so far has been 10 fps, and with night photography, my exposures have generally been 30 to 35 seconds long. The torch run is maybe 1 hour long, which translates into 120 shots, makes about 12 seconds of video. That just isn't going to fly. So I looked up online, and saw that Snowbird was doing a torch parade on Christmas Eve. I figured if I arrive early for both of them, and stay late, with a view of some stars and maybe the road to get the cars leaving, I could make a decent length video from the 2 different days.

Phase one of the plan: Break the news to my mother that I wasn't going to be able to make her traditional Christmas Eve dinner. That actually went over easily enough (probably should have known that was not a good sign). I did want to at least stop by, and spend a little bit of time with the family. Unfortunately, that made me late getting up to Snowbird. The plan was to hike a little ways up the mountain across the road, so I can have a wide view of Snowbird, as well as parts of the road. Unfortunately, once I started climbing, I soon found out that there was no where easily accessible to set up my equipment, without having a lot of branches obscuring my view. So I tucked my tail between my legs, and accepted defeat. I hiked back down the mountainside, and set up right in front of my car on the side of the road. That was kind of nice, because I could sit in the car while the camera was shooting, but it wasn't the shot I had envisioned. As I was getting the camera set up, I noticed some red flares heading down the cat track, which posed 2 problems: #1 I was not set up yet. Not only did I not get there an hour early, I was late. #2 It was at the other entrance to Snowbird waaay down the mountain. I had gone too far. I hurried and finished setting up, and started shooting. I soon realized one other issue with missing Christmas Eve for Snowbird's Torch Parade. There is really only one requirement to participate in the torch parade, which is that you have to feel comfortable enough with the technique of "snow plowing". To the best of my knowledge, you can't snow plow with a snow board. So torch parade participants are mainly skiers. Well, if you are a skier, and you want to ski with other skiers, you go to Alta. So... the torch parade at Snowbird was... well, lets just say it was a let down. It seemed to last for about 5, or maybe 10 minutes. The fireworks for some reason, were just as disappointing. They seemed to launch of about 10 or 15 fireworks, which barely made it over the top of the lodge. I did tough it out, and shot the snow machines, groomers, and the traffic for another 2 hours. Unfortunately, there was another miscalculation... I figured at that time of night, there would be more traffic going down the canyon than up the canyon, so I would get more red tail lights than white headlights. Well, I got a lot of bright lights from vehicles coming up the canyon, which I thought were rather distracting. I decided not to put that video with the one of Alta's torch parade, mainly for that reason. They just didn't seem to match.

Fast forward to New Years Eve. My wonderful wife was willing to let me go and spend the first half of the holiday evening freezing my tail off. And that is just what I did, it was sooo much colder this night than it was on Christmas Eve. Daren decided to come with me, and try some time lapse of his own. We actually got up there about the time I wanted, and since I've done this before at Alta, I know where it would be, so I set up where I wanted. I decided not to shoot from across the road this time, since the lights were so distracting. I got the shot framed up so I got plenty of sky, the entire cat track, as well as the lift at the bottom. I started shooting as people were arriving, and standing in line to ride up the lift. I was playing around a bit with the exposure, trying to keep the sky bright. In hind site, I should have just let it fade to a dark blue, instead of constantly adjusting it until it was in fact dark. It would have looked a little more natural for it to fade into dark as the sun sets. Lesson learned.

Alta did not disappoint with their torch parade. The skier only ski resort had plenty of volunteers to participate in the parade. The parade lasted almost 1 hour (vs. Snowbird's which lasted 11 minutes). The fireworks, on the other hand were a little bit on the shallow side. I remember much more fireworks in the past. At least it gave me time to put together a decent length video.

We also had a nice lesson in the diversity of people. The group parked behind us offered us some hot chocolate at least 3 or 4 times. They came up and chatted with us, and were very friendly. The group in front of us was parked in a way the took up at least 2 spots. One guy tried to parallel park in front of him, and all he did was honk. When the guy realized he wouldn't fit, and the other guy wasn't about to move, he pulled out, turned around and made a comment to the guy about taking up 2 spots. The guy just said "I was here first". A little while later, another couple tried to fit, and weren't going to be deterred by some honking (until that honking was from the car alarm after he backed up into him). Now the first guy was willing to get out of his car, but only to yell and curse. They ended up calling the cops, and filling out a report... and the guy finally backed up a couple of inches, just enough to give the other guy enough room to pull out, without hitting his car again. So back to my original decision not to set up across the street, because I thought the lights would be distracting... since the cop parked right in the middle of the street, with his brights on and his red and blues flashing.... good decision on my part.

OK, back to the video. We shot from about 5:00 until about 8:30. When I started putting the photos together, I realized that I needed to slow it down quite a bit. At the 10 fps I usually do it, the action went too fast. So I slowed it down enough that it went from about a 50 second video (at 10fps) to about a 2 minute video, and it seems to be a little easier to watch. On that note, the first part of the video was taken as people are lining up, and heading up the lift. Unfortunately, I was using my 11-16mm lens, so there was really no zoom, and it was pretty far away, and the people were tiny. So with this last edit, I zoomed in on the people, and slowly zoomed out as the video progressed. I thought it made the first part of the video a little more interesting. So here is the next step in my personal education.

More Disneyland, again

This will probably be the last post I'll make about this trip to Disneyland. I am just posting 2 or 3 more videos, and hopefully it will work this time. You can also check them out on Google+, the quality will be much better.

The first one is Grandpa, Jackson, Mel, Nate, Zach and me on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. My boys really liked the ride, but Jackson but bumped around a bit, and ended up with a bit of a goose egg on his head, so he didn't care much for the ride.

hmmm, for some reason that video won't upload, so here is California Screamin' with me, Nate and Mel

OK, for some reason the other 3 videos won't upload here, so you'll have to check them out on my Google+ account...

More Disneyland

So, as I said, we spent a few days at Disneyland ("we" being me, Mel, the kids, Jackson, and my parents). My boys were amazing, and went on every ride they were tall enough to go on. Zach's favorite was Thunder Mountain Railway, and Nate's was California Screaming, with Splash Mountain and Grizzly River Run close 2nds. Addi loved the horsies (merry-go-round), and the Little Mermaid ride. I think that Jackson's favorite ride was Grizzly River Run with Star Tours a close 2nd. I think that for mom (as always), her favorite ride is (SIGH) It's a Small World, which we were all obligated to ride.

The weather was fairly good. The first day was the best, with sun and warm temps. until the sun went down, then it was more comfortable with a jacket. Thurs. and Fri. were a little more cool, with overcast skies that looked like it wanted to rain, but it held out until the walk back to the hotel late Sat. night. The nice thing about the weather is that Splash Mountain and Grizzly River Run had short lines.

The part that disappointed me the most was the food. It didn't matter where you ate, it was all the same... Hamburger, pizza, chicken nuggets, or fish and chips. The burgers were all over cooked, the buns were stale and crumbly. I remember the parks having better food... maybe I'm mixing up my memories of Disneyland and Disneyworld/Epcot, but I was hoping for better food.

The kids were excited that they got their own room and bathroom (which adjoined to ours by a louvered door). It was also nice for us to be able to put the kids to bed, and still do our things before bed.

Dinner at the Golden Horseshoe. Probably the best food we had in Disneyland, and the show was very entertaining. Addi really loved the music, and was dancing and clapping her hands.

Addi liked "It's a Small World" better than I did...

The boys also got to do the Jedi Academy. Nate fought off Darth Maul, while Zach and Jackson fought Darth Vader.

Stupid lady wouldn't move out of the way...

Addi LOVED the Little Mermaid ride. Not sure if the same can be said about my mom, and Nate }:)

Not sure which one is more scared of Ursula...

The World of Color show was really cool, as well.

Unfortunately, I gave up recording it, and put the camera away just before the good part... the Pirates of the Caribean part of the show.