A Few More Mountaineering Pics

I have a few more pictures to add to the mountaineering collection that I started in my last post. All of these pics are courtesy of Frank. As you can tell, the quality of these pictures are a notch up. Frank took a lot more than I am posting here but he distributed those to the rest of the troop by CD so I am just posting the scenic ones and also those with me and the dogs.

Since Frank is not in too many pictures, I will post a nice one of him that someone took with his camera. Thanks for the pics Frank!
Earlier, I mentioned that we camped at Jack's creek trailhead on Friday night and then hit the trail on Saturday morning. Here's a picture of the trail map covering the area that we hiked. All of the features I mentioned earlier are on the map: Pecos Baldy, East Pecos Baldy, Baldy Lake, Jack's creek, and the associated trails.
Here's a nice picture of the full troop at the intersection of trail 257 and 25 as shown on the map. Notice that the kids are hanging on the trail marker. You can see the stand of "aspens" in the background.
Here's a picture of me on our return back through the same area of aspens. I know this because I have Sedona on a leash. There was a lot of horse hockey ($hit) on the trail and for some reason she liked to both eat and roll in it. She was completely covered in the stuff when we arrived at camp. I decided I didn't want her getting in the truck covered with horse hockey so I had to keep her on leash for the return trip.
I think the following picture is just beyond the stand of aspens when we were on our way in. You can see Homer off trail checking things out and Sedona is not in the picture (she is off trail somewhere nearby).
The meadows up in the mountains have a lot of wild flowers and the next few pictures give a sense of that along with what it was like to be in these wild wide-open spaces.
That's East Pecos Baldy off in the distance.
I'm not quite sure which mountains are shown in this picture. But its sure a nice picture and really gives you a sense of the size and scope of the lanscape.
After all that hiking we found a fantastic place to set up camp. It was a nice space amongst some trees perched just above (about 100 ft) Pecos Lake. Here's a picture of our camp. Thats me in the foreground with Homer to my right. Sedona is shown on the right in the picture and she is caught mid-air jumping over a log. The space that Sedona is leaving was our kitchen area. It was semi-closed by a set of large logs that we used as benchs to sit on when cooking and eating. I tried to keep Sedona and Homer out of the kitchen during those times. I was semi-successful at that.
Sunday morning -- after an evening of rain and hail in which we were huddled up and hiding inside our tents, we awoke to the sound of barking dogs. After a quick backcountry breakfast (instant oatmeal, tea/coffee, power bars) we began our ascent to the mountain tops just above our camp -- about another 1500 ft vertical. We don't have any pictures of our ascent but here is a picture of Frank celebrating on top of East Pecos Baldy. In the background is the 2nd highest mountain in NM (thats Truches Peak. If I ever get a scanner connected to my computer I will post some pictures of my Truches winter ascent which we also did from Jack's creek--but on snowshoes!).
Here's a picture of me and the dogs on East Pecos Baldy. This is Homer and Sedona's first mountaineering experience and they proved to be up to the challenge.
From East Pecos Baldy one can look over the edge and get a view of Pecos Lake below. We cannot see our campsite in the picture but its situated in the upper left quadrant.

After reaching East Pecos Baldy, we then headed west down a narrow ridge that connected us with Pecos Baldy. The picture below is a view to the west just down from East Pecos Baldy peak. We hiked this ridge to get to Pecos Baldy. The ridge beyond was more narrow than shown here but it was never too treacherous and the dogs handled it just fine except when Sedona cornered a marmet. More on that later:) The dogs were very agile and did a good job of scrambling along the ridge.
After hiking the ridge, we reached Pecos Baldy. Frank pulled out his tripod and used a timer to document our achievement.
At this point, I was very pleased and happy that there were no mishaps with the dogs. They had scrambled the ridge and arrived just fine at 12,500 ft elevation. Everything was good. We took a small break and then headed back down the ridge. Almost immediately, Sedona caught wind/sight of a marmet or a ground squirrel. I am not sure which, but she was all over it and she cornered it inside a little rock cave. She couldn't get at it and the animal was safe but she would not break free. At first, when she started barking I thought that she had gotten herself out on a ledge and couldn't get back to the main ridge -- so I was concerned. But then I realized otherwise so we just kept hiking down the ridge. But after a while, it became clear that Sedona was not coming along. I spent several minutes trying to call her but to no avail. By this time, we were probably 1/4 of a mile down the ridge and I was in no mood to go back to get her. I didn't have a leash with me either. I was beginning to worry but we kept hiking and now and then I would call back to her but she had no intention of coming just then. Pretty soon, we were about 1/2 a mile down the ridge and it was very difficult to see her but we could hear her barking. At this point, I had come to the realization that I was going to loose her. I rationalized that if she didn't come soon that she would die doing what she wanted. The weekend had thus far been an absolute paradise for the dogs and I thought that if she had to go then this was a good way to do it (I guess). By this time she was nearly completely out of site and we were just about to round a ridge at which point the line of site to where she had the marmet cornered would be blocked. Finally, Frank said, "Lets just sit down and wait awhile. Maybe she will come back." So we did just that. We sat, and we sat. I kept trying to focus my eyes on where I thought she was. We could here her barking off in the distance but it was very difficult to see her. Finally, I found her -- a small yellow spec on the distant ridge. Every now and then, the spec would move up to the top of the ridge and then back down below. She was really terrorizing that rodent. Then something happened. The spec moved up onto the ridge and it looked like it was coming our way. I started calling to her. And then the spec really started running down the ridge in our direction and I was really happy. But then I got worried. What if she takes a detour down the steep slope rather than staying on the ridge? There was a moment of truth when she was out of site for a couple of minutes. She was on the back side of a little bump on the ridge and she had to climb up and over that bump to get to us. There was a few minutes of silence and then there she was running full up over the ridge toward us. I started calling to her and she headed our way. She ran the ridge of about 1/2 mile in a matter of a few minutes. And then there she was back with us and I was relieved and I think she was too!

Now that we had our full troop of dogs, Frank and I decided to take the scenic route back to camp. On our way up, we had taken a direct route up to an intermediate saddle point along a mild culour. This time, we would return through the woods along a scenic trail. Frank took a couple of really great shots and here is one of them.
There is a yellow spec within the view framed by the trees and its in the lower right quadrant. Thats a yellow tent but its not ours. Our camp was set up just to the left of the yellow tent in the grove of trees above the lake.

All in all the weekend was alot of fun and alot of exercise. My legs and neck were sore for a couple of days but it was worth it and I'm really super happy that I took the dogs along. They had a lot of fun and I really enjoyed watching them run through the woods. The picture below is a great shot of Homer -- such a picture I have been unable to take myself because Homer has never been as wiped out and calm as he is in this picture and he's even looking into the camera! Wow!

Trip to the Mountains (1st round pics)

To all of my fans (maybe one:)) I am sooooo sorry for the long hiatis. I have been bitten by the triathlon bug. If your interested you can see my training log at BT. But enough about that -- I want to share some pictures with you from last weekend's mountaineering adventure in the Pecos. That's a set of mountains near and around Pecos New Mexico. Sadly, my camera battery went dead almost immediately after the trip started but I still managed to fire off a few good shots. I'm posting all of them here so that my fellow hikers can pick them up if they like. All of these picks were taken on Friday night and Saturday morning just before we hit the trail. We camped out at the trail head (8000 ft elevation) Friday night and then hit the trail on Saturday morning. Saturday evening we camped at Pecos Lake which is at about 11000 ft elevation. Sunday morning we awoke to the sound of barking dogs and shortly thereafter we hit the trail -- climbing two mountains -- Pecos Baldy and East Pecos Baldy. Both are about 12,500 ft in elevation. Thats a quick summary--now lets get onto the pics. Enjoy!

Here's a pic of one of our fearless leaders (Augie). This was at the "Panchuella" campground. We arrived late Friday evening at about 8000 ft elevation and pitched our tents along with a bunch of car campers.
Frank is another one of our fearless leaders.

The next day (Saturday morning), Augie made a gourmet breakfast for the troop out of the back of his SUV before we headed out on our main mission (to bag Pecos and East Pecos Baldy). You can just make out the propane wok. We also see Frank in the background carefully studying his gear -- or maybe he's saying a prayer hoping that he'll make it through the weekend:)

Finally we get to our first action photo. Here we see Frank and Augie in good spirits and ready to rock and roll on the trail.
Finally, but most importantly, we come to a picture of our campaign-pecos CEO, aka Fernando (on the trail we called him Dr. B). Dr. B is shown in the foreground with Ken casually sitting in the background. We are just about ready to hit the trail and Dr. B is doing some final work on his pack.
Now the troop wouldn't be complete with out some kids. Here is a nice shot of Brice and Neal with Sedona-puff.
And here's a cool shot of Neal hamming it up with Sedona!
And another shot of Neal with both Sedona and Homer.
Here's a group photo of our fearless troop leaders. From left to right we have Augie, Dr. B, Ken, and Frank taking a picture.
Finally, we find a group picture that has Andy and his dad Ken (shown on the left). Also shown is Dr. B with his two boys Neal and Brice.
The trip wouldn't have been the same without our trail hounds Sedona and Homer. They typically ran point and darted on and off the trail looking for squirrels and birds, etc. They probably ran on the order of 100 miles over the weekend. Us hikers logged about 17 miles but the dogs did way way more than that and they made the trip a lot more fun.
Have a good day.
Jak