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We're all enjoying learning about each other and the different kinds of hikes we take, equipment we use, and strategies for improving hikes. One of our favorite things to do is share photos, and we ask members to post only one photo in your message, and other photos (as many as you want) in the first reply, so our front page stays neat, attractive, and easy to maneuver around.

The Trailhead

Here's a place to check in if you don't want to start a new message. We'd like to know each other better, so use this chance to tell us what name you like to go by here, what your hiking situation is, and something else about yourself. I'll start...

I reserved cabins in the Porcupine Mountains State Park in the upper peninsula of Michigan for this summer -- I'll hike a short couple miles the first day, then about six miles to meet some friends at a cabin they rented - will spend the afternoon with them and then hike to the shore of Lake Superior (about 2 miles) to my second cabin. The next day I'll hike about 8 miles to another Lake Superior cabin, and the last day I'll hike about 8 - 10 miles back to the car. I'm excited about going, can't wait! Wish I could explain this to Alfred - he's going, too!

Alfred and I went out to test my new Garmin eTrex 30 GPS today -- we hiked 6.8 miles on an absolutely beautiful winter day here in South Florida.

There were more people on the trail today than I have ever seen before -- not crowded by any means, but we did pass a good number of people, some on bikes and others hiking.

Alfred's pooped out now!

Photos in the first reply.

I've been keeping up with hiking once a week at least, but not with processing pictures. Our computer is so slow, it's drudgery to do that, but now I'm caught up. Here are some snowy photos...

A bend in Campbell Creek in December


A moose cow and calf drinking from the waters of Russian Jack Springs...


Moose viewing with my skier friends. I walked/ran alongside the skiers.


More photos in reply.

We're snowshoeing more than hiking in Colorado but it's still fun to get out. Yesterday we went to Golden Gate Canyon State Park in the town of Golden just west of Denver. It was a short trail, 2.5 mile loop, but a long, steep uphill at the end. The trailhead starts at a scenic overlook, Panorama Point, which offers stunning views of the high peaks. The trail was tricky to navigate - sometimes deep snow, sometimes ice. Most of the trail is in the trees but we did break out at times and enjoyed some great views.

1/16/12...Howdy pardners. Yesterday my wife Ally and younger brother Dana and I, went on a short daytrip to Crystal Peak thru Verdi Nevada, and on out Dog Valley Road 27 miles. It is a nice drive without being too far, and a chance to see a portion of the lovely eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains pretty much right on the CA-NV state boundaries......
......Verdi(census 2010 pop.1415) is a quaint little town in NV right near the state borders, and right on HWY I-80 as you exit the highway. Sadly the current state of global recession has everything messed up, so I was sad to see so many of the few businesses in Verdi closed here and there. Bigger businesses there that are handling this recession fairly well like the Chevron Gas-MiniMart, and the big Cabelas Hunting and Fishing Outfitters, and 2 casino-restarant-RVparks Gold Ranch and Boomtown are in Verdi too. Though the population has fallen to less then half of the 2000 census, Verdi still looks like a nice place to live I think......
.....Anyway, to get to Crystal Peak, you need to get off of HWY I-80 right there at Verdi, and take Dog Valley Road 27 miles up to the Crystal Mine site on Crystal Peak. The road begins in Verdi as a paved road, but at the outskirts of Verdi it turns into a maintained dirt road clear up to Crystal Peak and the two or three nice campgrounds just below it. Along the way there are several forks to other dirt tracks going places into the forested mountain. You will see plenty of big and smaller trees in the forest of Ponderosa Pines, Black Pines, Grand and Noble Firs, and asundry other trees including a few Cedars and Junipers; while the ground is mostly covered with Manzanita bushes and some Service Berry, Salal, and a bit of Deer Brush and Creosote Bush. Anyway it is a delightful place to go and view some of our nature and forested areas. As the snow had just fallen leaving a few inches(6 to 12 maybe), any sign of wildlife was scant. I think I only noticed a mountain bluebird once. Soon we were passing the campground near Crystal Peak, and then came to the fairly rough dirt road going up to the mine site. Putting the HUMMRR into 4x4, we rolled right up the mountain passing a small parked passenger vehicle that counldn't deal with the snow. We were soon up the mountain at the site......
.......The new fallen snow from the night before was relatively undisturbed, as I pulled into the parking area that USFS officials made available right at the crystal collection site, so our older bodies didn't have to hike so far. It was almost hard to differentiate the very white quartz from the snow on the ground. We all piled out of the HUMMRR grabbing our bags, packs and rock hammers to fill with geological treasures. and donning coats and gloves we all headed up the gently sloping trails that pretty much converged to the peak. The evidence or many earlier crystal hunters was present in the many "glory holes" half filled with snow here and there. But since it is a mountain peak, there is plenty of it all left for many others to come. The prevalent minerals present on this peak are of course some of the purest white and translucent quartz I have ever seen, and relative amounts granitic rock and monzonite, with lots of silvery shiny and slick disintegrating felspar; and there was also the presence some pale green copper minerals that I thought looked mostly like malachite and maybe some chrysocolla and turquoise too. Hard to say though, without better testing. We all hiked around the peak finding our own little niche to explore, and begin to gather samples. Though the sun was shining nice and warm upon us in some spots, it was only a little while of an hour or so before we all began to take a chill, and were ready to jump back into the warmer HUMMRR with our individual bounties of cold and pretty stones....
.....Starting our drive back down the mountain with warm snacks and drinks, we were soon passing thru the forested dirt roads back to more developed civilization at Verdi, and on to the highway. The whole trip from Reno to the Crystal Peak site and back was only about 3-4 hours and 60-70 miles, making for a very nice but short daytrip enjoying the nature of the grand Sierra Nevada mountains.....
......Hope you all enjoyed this short little outing that was fun and simple and cheap. Happy trails to all our friends until we meet again. Peace out. Erik and Ally......

......another short story of four wheeling and hiking adventures for your enjoyment.....
1/1/12.....Howdy pardners. My wife Ally and my younger brother Dana and I went looking for some new to us caves today. The Flat Top Caves 1 and 2 over in Churchill county south of Fallon, and apparently right off of HWY 95 near Russell Pass. I had never tried locating these two caves before, and had no idea of what they had going for them that made them even mentioned on some old maps of the area. So this day I decided that we would explore for them and see what they were about. Of course I had hopes of finding them full of early paintings, drawings, and artifacts; or maybe just the treasure of lost gold never found in Arizona's Superstition Mountains. I wasn't feeling to particular, I just wanted to find something neat and exciting and new to me. So off we headed towards Fallon, supplying up for the needs of the daytrip with gasoline and healthy snacking munchies and drinks. Stopped to have breakfast together at my favorite place, Jerry's Diner on HWY 50 in mid-town Fallon. And we were soon gone along our way, heading south on HWY 95 and a spot on the map marked as Russell Pass.....
.....It was soon pretty easy to discern Russell Pass(@4515'ELE.) and the topography of the nearby area to our west that kind of matched the data on the topo map, and so I searched for dirt tracks possibly heading somewhat west and into the relatively flat and sage covered desert adjacent to the eastern most slopes of the Desert Mountains Range in the shadows of nearby and westerly Desert Peak(@6404'ELE.). It was kind of rough getting in closer to the slopes we all thought would be most likely to contain any caves. We went on a track here and a track there. At first to no avail, and then a cave looking grotto not too high up with obvious track going into it. We were not exactly certain if this was one of the caves we were looking for. But after talking about it for minutes, we decided to keep looking as I re-interpreted the topo-lines on my map, and we continued on exploring the best dirt roads first, and then some more difficult to see tracks bearley discernable from the hard desert scrabble before us.......
.......From the highway right near Russell Pass, we had seen a dark cavernous looking spot among large looking rocks and boulders. So we tried to find that spot while I tried to maneuver thru thickly bouldered terrain in four wheel drive low. Eventually we reached the point of no more forward progress, and alighting from the HUMMRR, we began hiking towards the outcroppings that I thought we may find something. The terrain was encumbered in steep rocky mountainous slopes, and outcroppings of banded rhyolite that seemed interesting and unusual to us, Ally and I both collecting up samples, while we all took photos with our cameras, and soon we came to the opening of FLAT TOP CAVE 1, looking much like a mine. After some examination, it was possible to see that this grotto was both carved out by tidal actions and general erosion....
.....As we approached the cave, it was so square that it looked very man-made I thought, but I could see no signs of machine-made tracks or evidence of rock drilling and blasting near or into it, or evidence of timber shoring to hold anything up or to prevent caving in. As Dana entered into the cave first, he exclaimed that there was soot and carbon coating the cave ceiling from fires/campfires, and as I entered the cave behind Dana, he said there were some paintings on the cave wall present and to come take a look. On close examination, I found that the soot/carbon coating the ceiling seemed to have mineralized from aging, as were the paintings on the cave walls. Thus establishing roughly that they were very old compared to our lives of much less than a hundred years. The ceiling coating of soot/carbon was quite extensive, going deep into the back of the cave. We found a slight crack through which daylight was bearley discernible and could feel the air moving, enough to perceive that the early inhabitants or users of this cave had thus created a safe draft for smoke and fumes to exhaust from the living area. The paintings on the cave walls were fairly limited and some very hard to make out what they were, except for an arrow and stick person painted in whitish mineral in one spot. The most visible thing was the monogram R. B. with the year 1862 below the sort of fancy letters, painted in black. I pulled out and carefully used my pocket-knife blade to scratch at a discreet spot of the pigment to discern that the markings were permineralized, and quite hard and permanent now, again indicating relative great age to them......
.......After looking over the cave and paintings, and the cave floor for sign of artifacts to no avail, we headed outside to examine the area outside of the cave. Aside from the area being very arid and barren of much at all, it was hard to imagine that anybody ever lived here or used this cave for shelter, without imagining back in time to eras of much greater precipitation or other sources of moisture, that would have made this region more hospitable and bounteous before the coming and settlement of us more modern humans. I walked around this strange stone pediment of which contained the cave, that wasn't much at all; and found a ladder or step like access to the cave top which was indeed quite flat with three terrace like levels from which it was very easy to deduce it being both a great little fortress for safety, and also a hunters blind for observing and hunting game for nourishment. From atop the cave, it was very easy to see at how in times past when Carson Lake and surrounding areas were much wetter, at how this area would of just seemed like a lakeside house for the inhabitants of those earlier times. This whole mountainous area was layer upon layer neat flow-banded volcanic rhyolite that is largely a soft pinkish grey separated by bands of much darker purples. We collected up a few pounds of samples and headed back out.....
.......Soon we hiked back to the HUMMRR and reversed our trek out of this rocky terrain, and continued our quest to find the FLAT TOPCAVE 2. After driving a bit along the north edge of the eastern most portion of the Desert Mountains Range. As the day was wearing on with only a few hours of daylight left, we made haste to try and find Cave Two which I believe we all spotted up behind a fenced portion the quarry. A crushed rock, sand and gravel quarry kind of surrounded the edge of the mountains between the caves roughly, and blocked a portion from us and further exploration. Mine and quarry owners/crews are most always very begrudging of outsiders/strangers coming into their works, not that we mere rock collectors would be wanting of their commodities there. Driving by the gated entrance of the quarry area, I spotted a big light-colored boulder of monaznite with some sunlight reflecting off of something shiny in it, and we stopped to examine it. It was some veins of almost snow-white shiny magnasite with some common opal present in it; which though not especially rare, this was a nice example of this mineral, so we got out our rock hammers and exracated ourselves a nice little handful of mainly the common opal. It was now getting late as the sun was hitting the western horizon, so we headed for Silver Springs and home. It had been another good and safe daytrip full of new adventures and sights, so Dana, Ally and I were all happy and satisfied with that.....
.....Hoping you all enjoyed another little adventure in the wild west of Nevada and the Great Basin. Happy trails to all until we meet again. Yours truly, Erik and Ally......

Boreas Pass is a favorite snowshoe trail. It's a fairly high area - we began at 10,500' and climbed about 500'. It's a gentle uphill so you don't feel like you're struggling. Even so, I was out of breath. The views are breathtaking. You look across the peaks to the Breckenridge ski area and the Tenmile Mountain Range.

The clouds over the pass were very interesting. One looked like a flying saucer over a mountain meadow. It was a picture-perfect Colorado high country day.

There's a cold front moving through south Florida today, so it was a bit cloudy, windy and in the 60s -- nice day for a short hike in the state park.



We saw what I think was an eagle's nest off in the distance with a bird in it chirping away - was pretty far off so I couldn't tell what kind of bird it was.



There's a river that runs through the park, this is the approach to the look out.



This area is often filled with water, but it's been pretty dry around here lately, so it looks kind of brown and dried, but it's still somewhat swampy.

1/5/12....Howdy pardners. On Thursday last, my wife Ally and I went on safari into deepest Nevada's outback. Not really that deep, just thought it sounded poetic......
...FIREBALL RIDGE AND RED CAVE......
.....I wanted to show Ally Fireball Ridge which is a igneous volcanic mount setting upon some old limestone strata not too far from where we live in NW NV, up in Pershing county to our north a bit. Getting there we traveled I-80 east from Fernley to the Nightingale exit, which is right at Brady Hotsprings(which is now being tapped for geothermal energy) at the northern edge of the Hotsprings Mountain Range. From there we traveled due north on a well used dirt road, up to the rough dirt tracks going closer to Fireball Ridge. As there is plenty of evidence of old mining, poleline, and asundry trails in the area near the ridge......
......I love the geological features of Fireball Ridge; which include the decaying limestone at it's lower elevations evident of the early prehistoric seas once here, and plenty of volcanic basalt layers establishing the igneous nature of the mount, and best of all a niche carved out and then filled with red and pink and purple sediments that filled the cavelike hole with the eroded and colorful sands thus derived thru the eroding tidal actions of the waters of the ancient Lahontan Lake that was here following the decline of the ice ages in far more recent times......
......Red Cave, as I call it, is hardly visible until you are right there going up the very steep southern face of the mount. Since I enjoy looking for caves of all kinds with hopes of making my own achealogical discovery for artifacts of ancient or prehistoric man, this feature caught my eye when I originally discovered it. And though I didn't discover any signs of early habitation or use by early people, I very much enjoyed the high up solitude there sitting in the cave looking out afar, and the colorfulness of this geological feature in this very arid region....
......Ally and I hiked up to the cave in relative short order, and enjoyed the sights and shooting many photos, before descending to continue on with our adventures.....
...NAZELDA MINE SITE.....
.....I wanted to explore some areas north and west of the ridge, from whose peak we could see some old roads or trails in the distance. Looking for and following trails going up into the Truckee Range, and from data garnered from old maps, there was evidence of an old mine called the Nazelda somewhere into the mountains there...
.....Soon after a short and bumpy trip into a canyon, there was the evidence of the old mine with tailing piles, mine roads, and here and there old remains of human activity of lumber and tin cans. Greeting the many range cattle grazing here and there, with efforts not to frighten them, we continued on into the ascending canyon mining roads finally to come out on top to see much more signs of mining in some old shack, and various delapidated buildings, an old stone and cement foundation, a headframe, and some shafts and tunnels. Exploring only slightly the open tunnel, we discovered some old ore bags of fine crushed ore (obviously left because of dropping or no values in their possible contained treasures).....
....We took many pictures for awhile, and collected up a few pounds of rock specimens, and then concluded our days travels; heading back to civilization and the Fernley Pizza Shack for a cold beer to wash away the dust in our parched throats. It was another great day of outdoor adventure and fun with my dear wife......
......Hoping ya all enjoy this adventure. Happy trails to all until we meet again. Erik and Ally. Out.....
....PS: There are lots of pictures in my new albums "Red Cave on Fireball Ridge" and "Nazelda Mine Site", for your viewing enjoyment. Ty...