Pete Curtis
A software architect, endurance athlete, and musician living in Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA.
This is my own humble place to share the things I enjoy.
contact (at) petestuff (dot) org
Here's a few photos to make up for my alarming lack of posts recently. It must be the holiday season... so busy... new snow... seasonal affective disorder... yeah, that's the ticket. From my Colorado trip in 2007.
Here's a video of last month's trip up the Barr Trail on the east side of Pikes Peak.
When I signed the register at the top of Quandary Peak, I noticed a Latin phrase printed on the sheet - along with Colorado Mountain Club and the names and comments of innumerable people. It stuck out because of the anachronism: the words Gloria In Excelsis Deo, also known as the "Greater Doxology". Now mind you, I'm the type of person who prefers the In Excelsis part, or perhaps a "Gloria In Excelsis Naturae". Nevertheless, the Gloria and other such nonsense has had some use in inspiring beautiful music throughout the ages - and this is an effect I'm not willing to gainsay.
The following "Gloria" was composed by Antonio Vivaldi and performed by the King's College Choir (audio extraction from Youtube posts by margotlorena.)
I've posted some more photos from my Colorado/Wyoming trip.
See more photos of runners from Laramie Daze.
Or more photos from Estes Park, Garden of the Gods, and Kite Lake.
Last week when I was in Colorado with Roger, Jane, Ian and Lori, I thought I'd try to show everyone back at home what climbing a mountain is like. And relatively speaking, Quandary Peak in September is pretty simple, requiring nothing technical. It's only a 3.75 mile, 3300 foot climb to the summit. And then you go back down the same way.
So here's a video!
I took this with my Canon camcorder, but I'm going to look into some other, more robust options for outdoor activity, maybe some combination of GoPro for ruggedness and mounting, and Flip for resolution?
Here's one reason.
The aspens are turning, obviously.
Success! Ian and I summitted Pikes Peak around 1:15 PM on Thursday afternoon. From Barr Camp onwards, we split up and went ahead of Roger and Jane. They arrived around 2 PM. We all rested at the summit house for a couple hours, and then took the cog railway down. I don't have any photos since I took video instead, and I'll have to wait until I get home to edit it down. As a replacement, here's the 14ers.com route map. We took the route from the east coming out of Manitou Springs, and the map only shows the last half.
It was very busy at the trailhead because the USAF Academy was doing a morning workout at the trail. I had to park way down in town and walk up to the trailhead. There's a lot of cool things along the trail, including the Incline Railway. Wait till you see the video of the cadets climbing up that!
On Wednesday we left Estes Park in the morning and arrived near Colorado Springs in mid-afternoon. We got settled in at the campground (which was nothing much to speak of, a commercial deal hemmed in by the four-lane highway) and visited Garden of the Gods in the afternoon.
The "Kissing Camels" are in the top center of this photo.
Here's some more pictures from my 2007 Colorado/Wyoming trip. These were taken at Great Sand Dunes National Park in the San Luis Valley of south central Colorado. The valley is dry, with prevailing westerly winds most of the year, and is hemmed in on three sides by some impressive mountain ranges - on the east, by the Sangre de Cristo Range. Over thousands of years, the winds have picked up, carried, and deposited sand into a pocket on the northeastern edge of the valley. They've formed a giant playground six or seven miles in diameter, tucked in the shadow of peaks rising seven thousand feet above.
The dunes are tall. One of the most popular hikes is up to what's known as High Dune, 600 feet above the valley floor. This is a picture looking south with High Dune off the right edge. The little black specks are people climbing up. And in the background, a nice anvil cloud brewing over New Mexico.
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