First Attempt at Fishing

Since Trey left, I'd primarily been working on getting the first coat of green paint on the outside of the cabin. I finished the front and two sides. It looks a lot better than it did before I started.

The weather had been great here the past few days, and I wanted to have a littler more fun before I came back to Kentucky. Trey and I had bought some night crawlers to go fishing, but never got a chance to use them (they've been in my fridge since July 4th). I decided that I'd try to find a good spot to go fishing and use up as many of the night crawlers as I could. Grizzly Gulch is a short drive away, and somewhere that my dad had recommended fishing. I loaded up the jeep with my fly rod, waders, and a few provisions and headed off for the day. The road up most of Grizzly Gulch is gravel, but passable by two wheel drive vehicles. I opted to go a little further, on a forest service road that was in fair condition, high clearance 4 wheel drive at worst. There were a few small creek crossings, and some rocky areas, but overall, the road was pretty easy. It followed Quayle Creek and I got out of the Jeep periodically to check the stream and see if there was any potential for fishing. The stream was fairly small and didn't look too promising, so I kept going up the gulch, in hopes of finding a pond. I came to a section of road that looked a bit more difficult, and less traveled, but walked the road for a short distance and decided to give it a shot. There was s fairly difficult spot with a steep break over angle and a large rock that I didn't think I could clear. A path around the obstacle had been created by other vehicles that went through a narrow section of trees, so I decided to take that route (I forgot to take a picture of the obstacle). The bypass was on a slight side slope and when the rear wheels went over a root, the back end of the Jeep slid into a tree. A short, stubby branch gave me a nice love tap.



I made it through the bypass, only to see that several trees had fallen across the trail 40 yards later. There was  another bypass, but this time I decided to walk further down the trail to make sure it was worth continuing. The trail had deteriorated severely, and after another 50 yards, another set of trees had fallen across the trail, completely blocking it with no alternative way around. I had driven as far as I could go without a chainsaw and would have to turn around. Needless to say the trail was pretty narrow, so turning around was an adventure in itself. I managed to get turned around between two trees, though both bumpers were hitting the trees each time I pulled forward or backwards. I was definitely glad to have steel bumpers at that point. After nearly making the 180 degree turn, I ended up with my right front tire just off the trail, between a rotting stump and a small tree. The Jeep was pretty well flexed out (though the front sway bar was still connected). and I just couldn't get enough traction to back up the slight incline onto the trail.


 

You can see I had very little room to rock the Jeep, or get momentum to back over the stump. The front bumper rested against the tree almost every time I stopped. The front left tire was spinning on some slick rocks, the front right tire was spinning on the rotting stump, and since I hadn't disconnected the front sway bar, the rear right tire wasn't making much contact with the ground. I also hadn't aired my tires down, thinking it wouldn't be necessary, because the road was in relatively good shape (I also don't have a reliable method for airing my tires back up, yet).

I keep a small shovel in my Jeep, so the first thing I tried was digging the stump away. I got part of it out, but I don't have an ax (yet), so I couldn't get the whole stump out. I was able to back up a little further after that, but was still slipping on the stump. I was definitely stuck, and not getting out under the Jeep's power. Luckily, a good friend had given me a hand winch and a snatch strap as going-away gifts before I left Kentucky. Right now, those are really my only two recovery accessories, but they definitely saved my trip. Since I don't have a tree strap (yet), I used the snatch strap to wrap around a tree, then connected one end of the winch to the strap and the other to the hook in the receiver on the back of my Jeep. Several cranks later, the front right tire was sitting on top of the stump. But that wasn't good enough. I tried backing up, but the tires still didn't have enough traction to get the Jeep back up onto the trail.


(Granted, this is just a soft shell jacket, but I didn't have anything heavier to put over the winch line)

I needed to find another tree to loop my snatch strap around. It turns out that the max range of the hand winch was only about six feet, and since I only had one strap, my tree options were limited. After wrapping the strap around a couple different trees that were either too close, or too far away, I figured out the small tree behind the first one I had use was the perfect distance away.



This time, I managed to pull the Jeep just far enough past the stump and towards the trail to give the tires enough traction to get all the way back onto the trail.


On the way back through the bypass of the obstacle, The right side of the Jeep slid into the same tree that dented my lift gate. I didn't think that it had done any damage, though I later noticed it had indeed given me another love tap. All the little dings are unfortunate, but I suppose they build character.


The whole process took around an hour. I was in the woods, a decent distance from civilization, and every time I heard a noise, I'd frantically search around the Jeep for any sign of an unwelcome animal, namely bears.  Needless to say, this experience caused a shift in my priorities, and I've got a list of accessories I'll be investing in very soon, namely more recovery straps, shackles, an ax, and bear spray. I also learned that it's a good idea to disconnect the front sway bars and air down no matter how tame the trail looks.

In spite of the brief scare of being stuck in the woods, I did have a good trip, and at least saw some cool ruins and great houses along the way. This house was pretty far up Grizzly Gulch and had solar power and an outhouse. In the winter, I'm sure it's only accessible by snow machine. Pretty sweet.

flickr for the rest of the pictures from this little adventure

I did manage to go fishing that day, though only in Clear Creek, near I-70, which is still too high for good fishing. I caught a few small rainbow trout, but didn't get any pictures. The only decent size one I caught was a female that started releasing eggs as soon as I got her out of the water, so I released her as quickly as possible. Here's a picture of an old wooden damn that I fished above. It must be from the gold and silver rush days, but has survived pretty well.

Cabin Painting

The past few days I've been working on painting the front and sides of the cabin. I finished scraping and priming the old wood yesterday and started painting the addition. The color is 'new grass green' and it's possibly the brightest green I've ever seen. Only in Silver Plume could you get away with painting a house this color. I think it looks like radioactive slime... about the same consistency, too. It looks like lime pudding in the paint can. At any rate, I had gotten kind of fond of the gray primer. It made the cabin look kind of modern.

Here's one side of the cabin primed in gray:

And the addition with the first coat of bright green:

Meet Phil

Phil is my Venus Flytrap. I bought him right after I got out to Colorado. I've always wanted one, and there are lots of flies in the cabin during the summer. Well, Venus Flytraps are supposed to live in humid environments, which the mountains of Colorado are notably not. When I first bought him, I fed him a fly and a couple other small insects. After a week, or so, Phil started to turn brown, a couple of his heads died, and the ones that I had fed opened up and released their food. I thought he was done for, but kept watering him just in case. About a week ago, one of the heads that had opened earlier, closed back around the fly I had fed it. The rest of the plant seemed to be getting greener and looked healthy again. So, it seems Phil  is making a comeback. Now, the problem is that I won't be able to take care of him while I'm gone. I'll have to try and get him on the plane to take back to Kentucky. Think I'll be able to get him through airport security?

Trey's Visit

Back to some more adventures. My brother, Trey, came in town for the 4th of July weekend. We spent Friday hiking Argentine pass, exploring old mining structures. We found two mines that were still open and went into them. Both began in hard rock (as opposed to being first dug through soft top soil), which is why we suspect they were sill open, not caved in at the entrance, as most mines on the mountain side are. It was a little erie when we came to a cave-in while we were in one. These pictures are of the first mine we went into, which went back into the mountain a couple hundred feet. It had at least one branch off of the main tunnel, and possibly a second, which was caved in.




The second mine only went into the mountain horizontally for 20 feet before going straight down a long way (we tossed a rock down and heard it fall for several seconds). We couldn't get very close to the edge of the shaft to look down or take more pictures because we couldn't tell how large the shaft was and didn't want to risk stepping on rotten wood and falling through.



We also found this rock symbol near a high point on the ridge of Leavenworth Mountain. The cross was oriented such that it may have been a compass. Not real sure, though.


By the end of the day, we'd hiked 6.5 miles in about 6.5 hours. Here's a plot of our hike.

flickr for the rest of the pictures from our hike

Saturday, we packed the Jeep and headed up Guanella Pass for some 4 wheeling and camping. There are two dirt roads above Guanella Pass road that lead to Waldorf Mine. We were following a trail ride on the GPS that we found on traildamage.com. It followed the lower road, which is significantly worse than the upper road (which a 2wd car could handle). We managed a couple of good creek crossings and rocky hill climbs on the way to Waldorf Mine. This is a picture from our 4 wheeling adventure.

flickr for the rest

We stopped several times to explore some old mining structures, but it turns out that all of the mines in the area had either collapsed, been dynamited, or barred shut. Near the top of McLellan Mountain, we explored the Santiago Mine ruins, which are still in remarkebly good shape. The mill still has most of the original equipment in it and we felt safe enough to go inside and check it all out. Here are a few pictures of the Santiago Mine ruins.

flickr for the rest

Here is a plot of our path, starting and ending in Georgetown. In the future, I'll try to geotag photos along the path.

We hiked as high as 12,550 feet, exploring possible mine ruins. We camped near Leavenworth Creek that night, and both froze becaues we didn't pack warm enough sleeping bags. I was testing out my 40°F down backpacking bag, which apparently won't cut it by itself in the mountains. We spent the next day checking out all the old mining roads in the area and of course, watching the Georgetown fireworks. It was good to have a visitor for a few days and have some fun, rather than working on the house alone, as I had been for the last few weeks.

The Work Begins

After Sarah left, it was time to start working. We had recently had a small addition built on the cabin and it was my job to paint the interrior and put down the new flooring. Painting was straight forward, but I had to learn a bit to install the floating, laminate wood flooring. Along the way, I had to replace the toilette, which was crakced and leaking, and the shower head (which I just wanted to replace so I could enjoy my showers). The toilette would've been straight forward, but I replaced the seals in the tank twice before realizing that a hairline crack in the tank was actually what was causing the leak. The shower head was also not so straight forward. the shower head arm threads had corroded to the copper pipe in the wall and the pipe broke when I was turning the arm to remove it. So, then I had to break the tile from around the shower head arm and cut through a 2x4 to access the broken pipe. I then got my first experience with sweating and soldering pipe. I had to solder on a new threaded connection to the elbow inside the wall. It was dificult to work in the small space, but for my first time sweating pipe, I think I did alright. It isn't pretty, and I probably used twice as much solder as I needed, but it doesn't leak. I secured the new shower head arm, installed a new tile, and have since been enjoying great showers.

The other major job I've been tasked with is repainting the outside of the cabin. This requires scraping the peeling paint off, cutting out the old caulking from around the windows and doors, recaulking all the gaps, and priming the wood. At this point, I've finished scraping, caulking, and priming one side of the cabin. It looks a thousand times better than it did a few weeks ago. Maybe we should leave the color confederate gray? I'm currently working on scraping the front of the cabin so that I can get it primed and painted while the weather is still good in the mornings.

Here's a picture of progress scraping one side:

And that side primed:

Sarah's Visit

We unloaded the Jeep and trailer and dropped the trailer off the next day. I couldn't have been more excited to get rid of it. Sarah and I spent the next ten days hiking and camping and exploring the mountains. We spent two nights in Rocky Mountain National Park and tried to hike to Chasm Lake, but there was too much snow still on the ground for us to make it. Instead we spent the two days geocaching. We did a little 4 wheeling to put my new Jeep to good use and get a feel for what she was capable of. I was impressed, but I'm still new to 4 wheeling and I think that I was the limiting factor in what we could do. This is a vanity shot of my Jeep on a forest service road near RMNP.

The day I dropped Sarah off at the airport, I dove up to Fort Collins and picked up a roof rack for my Jeep, partially so I could get the full size spare out of my trunk.

A Little Help Goes a Long Way

It was finally time to head west. I rented a small Uhaul trailer, loaded it and my Jeep with all my prized possesions, and left for the mountains, with Sarah as my copilot.

We made a stop in St. Louis to visit the St. Louis Arch, but didn't get to go to the top because of our poor timing. It is a very impressive structure though, and I recommend that anyone who gets the chance visit and take the ride to the top.

So far, everything was going smoothly and the Jeep was running great. Well, near the end of the second day of driving, my luck ran out. The nut that holds the ball to the hitch had backed off on the highway, and one big bump sent the trailer out of control. Turns out those safety chains do actually serve a purpose. The trailer tugged and jerked in every direction, yanking the back of the Jeep, but I managed to wrestle the whole caravan to the side of the highway and get it all stopped. I was afraid to see the damage that the tongue of the trailer had inflicted on the back of my Jeep, but after looking, found out that I had gotten rather lucky. Two small scratches/dents on the left side of my bumber were the extent of the damage. Now, what to do about the broken hitch? The nearest town and our destination for the night) was 40 miles ahead (Colby, KS - near the west side of Kansas). There was nothing behind us, as anyone who's driven through Kansas can attest to. We'd just passed an exit with a gas station and a truck stop and decided to go back and try our luck there. I blocked the wheels on the trailer, unhookoed the chains, and drove the Jeep across the median. We struck out at the gas station, no hitches, but walked over to the truck shop with our fingers crossed. They didn't have any ball hitches either. Damn. Well, a trucker inside the shop heard our quandry and asked what size ball we needed, he just might have one in his tool box. "Two inch," I said, but thought there was no chance a big rig trucker would have a two inch ball hitch in his truck. After a couple minutes of digging around though, he pulled out just that. I parked my jeep next to his rig and he helped install the new ball hitch, using a sledge hammer this time, to make sure the nut wasn't going anywhere. He wouldn't accept anything from me in return, but hopefully knowing that he litterally saved our trip will be enough consolation for him. It was rather refreshing to experience such generosity from a complete stranger. Pay it forward, anyone? After that fiasco, we made it to the cabin with no more problems.

The Adventure Begins

The real adventure began about six months before I graduated, when I started looking for a Jeep. At the time, I drove a 2000 Honda Civic si. It was a great car that I loved to drive and was perfect for my city lifestyle, but I knew that it just wouldn't cut it in Colorado. So, I needed something bigger and with 4 wheel drive. I considered a couple different vehicles to do the job, primarily a Jeep Wrangler TJ. I also considered Nissan Xterras, which have good 4 wheel drive, but after discovering their less than stellar reliability, I crossed those off the list. I also considered Jeep Cherokees, but it was very hard to find them with a manual transmission. So, my hunt for the perfect Jeep Wrangler began. It had to have a manual transmission, hard doors, hard top, little to no lift (I wanted to do that myself), and be in relatively good condition. Turns out those requirements were very hard to find in my price range. Wranglers hold their resale value too well. I called about a few (that sold in less than six hours, before I could go see them) and flew to Indianapolis to test drive one that turned out to be a piece of junk.

I'd been doing most of my searching on Craigslist (through Searchtempest) and one Tuesday afternoon decided to switch my search from Wranglers to Cherokees (though I had little hope that I'd find anything). Well, I did. A 1999 Cherokee had been listed since Sunday in Georgetown, OH, that looked like the perfect car for me. I called about it and left a message, hoping neverously that it hadn't already been sold. A couple hours later, the owner called me back and said it hadn't been sold, but that someone else (coincidentally from Louisville, too) had just spent the last hour combing over every detail of the Jeep. He really loved it, but when it came down to it, his wife didn't agree. Great news for me. I flew up to Brown County Airport that evening and met the owner to look at the car and go for a test drive. I may have been a little over eager, but after about 40 minutes looking at the car and test driving it, I'd fallen in love and decided to buy it. A fifteen minute local plane ride (for the seller and his girlfriend) knocked $200 off the price and I paid $6300 cash for it. It killed me, but I had to leave it at the airport over night and drive back with a friend the next morning to pick her up. Her details can be found on my build thread on Jeepforum. This basics are that she's a deep Amethyst Cherokee with a new 4.5" lift and 31" tires (about 2000 miles on those when I bought her). She had 121k miles with an almost perfect interior and exterior. After more than six months of searching, I'd finally found my Jeep. These are pictures from when I first bought her.

imgur for more

That all happened about two weeks before I was planning on leaving for Colorado. I must admit that I thought I might never find the perfect car, but lucked out at the last minute. So, the Civic went on Craigslist, but didn't sell before I left for Colorado.

Why Colorado?

So, first, why am I here? Well, after spending the last five years studying mechanical engineering in Louisville, Kentucky, the most important thing I learned is that I don't really know exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life. I wasn't ready to jump into a full time career that I may be miserable working, just so I'd have a little financial security. I also feel like there are a ton of experiences that I want to have while I'm young, that having a full time job would hinder. With those two things in mind, roughly three years ago, I decided that when I graduated, I'd move out to my father's cabin, in the mountains about an hour west of Denver, and take a year off to figure things out. I've been thinking, planning, and saving up for my little hiatus since then.

A New Direction

So far, this blog has barely existed, mostly because it lacked a specific direction. I've decided to use this blog to document my adventures in Colorado, mostly to help me remember everything, but also for any interested friends/family to keep up with what I've been doing.

I had thought about keeping a blog documenting my adventures in Colorado before I came out here, but never ended up starting one. Recently, per the recommendation of a friend (thanks, Matt), I reconsidered the idea and decided that at the very least it would serve as a memory aid to me.

This first entries will attempt to recap most of the events up until now. I've already been living here for a month and a half, so they will likely be long and lack detail.