Cass playing VBall

Couple of VBall plays by my girl:
Serving up a few points...

Passing and hitting...

Halloween

Probably our last one. In fact, Cassidy just hung out at home this year and watched Poltergeist. She said it was her favorite ever.

Cassidy is a zombie, and Max is Slash, by the way.

Monarch Crest

Probably the crowning achievement of my short biking career. This trail goes from the 11,300 ft Monarch Pass, and rides as high as 12,000 st along the continental divide. Total climbing is about 4000 ft and descent is about 7000 ft over 37 miles... which took about 6 hrs with stops. We (about 11 of us) couldn't have picked a better day to go. No wind, t-shirt weather, and fall colors. Amazing day!

Mount of the Holy Cross

This was the goal... MT of the Holy Cross. The kids' 14er for 2010, and 2nd one overall. Teri and I are up to about 13.

Incidentally, this 14er routinely results in more dispatched search and rescue missions than any other in Colorado. Not really technically difficult... but people seem to get lost in this huge wilderness all the time. We were very careful to study our maps and routes before taking this one on.

It was LONG... we had to take a few rests in the endless boulder field:

In the end... we did conquer! And even made it home without a search and rescue!

Until next year...

Backpacking Music Pass!

This was amazing... the highlight of my summer, maybe my year... I can't believe I don't get out and backpack more often. We will definitely squeeze another trip in before summer is over. About a 10 mile roundtrip with packs, plus a nice little day hike to get up to some pretty cool views.

Anyway... here are some pics to tell the story:

State Games Tri

Me and Jamie and Holly and Celeste Higbee did the State Games Triathlon a few weeks ago. Max would have done it with us, but he missed the age cutoff by a few months. We should have a much bigger group next year. Alisa... you should come up for this. It's a great event. We'll be going back every year.

Hiking the Manitou Incline

We made a spur-or-the-moment decision late yesterday to hike the Manitou Incline with our friends the Hansens.

This is a straight shot that goes up over 2000 ft in about a mile distance. Up a bunch of railroad ties. It's about an average 40% grade.




And a little over an hour later... here we are at the TOP!

Here's a little video I took. But it's kinda hard to capture the steepness with pics or video....



To come back down, you jog-hop-trip-slide the Barr Trail, cuz it'd be too dangerous and tedious to down-climb those incline steps.

The kids hike-climbed like champs. What a cool hike... can't believe we have lived in the Springs all these years and just got to this...