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