Someday I Plan to Backpack Rather than Just Hike

A view towards South Sandia Peak from Embudo Canyon

Me at the top of Peak 7840

Looking down through the canyon towards Albuquerque

Vuyo doing a little bouldering (he is 3 years old this month)

On Thursday I went hiking with the goal of getting to South Sandia Peak.  With more than 2 miles left to go I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make (I had to get to work that afternoon too) and Mark called me on his lunch break.  He suggested another peak just to the south of Embudo Canyon, Peak 7840.  So I managed to make that one. 

On this Thursday, I will drive up to Colorado to meet Mark for a hike up Mt. Elbert, Colorado's tallest mountain at 14,433 feet.  Whew!  Hopefully we make it on Friday and then can enjoy the success of that hike for the next 2 days. 

Today my younger brother turns 30.  And we celebrate my mom (also known sometimes as "mommalupe" or "mommaloo").  Nate and I definitely plan to celebrate her and how much she cared and cares for us next week (May 18-27) when mom comes to Albuquerque!

Being Clement

Whew!  I'm going to try to sum up the last 3 months rather than try to post lots of different updates on all the things that have happened and then move forward.  :)

In February, I made my first trip to New Jersey/New York City - lots of fun.  Mark and I enjoyed it thoroughly (you did, didn't you Mark?).  We had pizza in Hoboken, went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, walked through Central Park, attended Evensong at St. Patrick's Cathedral  St. John the Divine and bought a pair of USA made jeans for me.

The end of February, Mark and I began a competition to see who could reach the summit of the most peaks by September 9 or so.  I hiked to the high point of the Manzanitas (just east of Albuquerque), there was no trail and I made it mostly by compass and map and persistence.  I was winning for a few weeks with that one peak and currently Mark is 5 and I have 4 summits.

In March, soccer started up and two weeks ago I scored the first goal my team had scored all spring up until that point.  I also apparently helped break the drought because one of my teammates scored a goal last week too.  This Sunday is our last game for the season.  The middle of March, I made my first trip to Florida to spend the weekend with Mark and his parents.  We celebrated Mark's birthday and one year of dating.

April -- I took the National Counselor Exam a couple weeks ago and didn't like it, so certainly hope I passed and don't have to do it again. 

Upcoming in May -- May is a busy month for me.  Mark is getting an unexpected business trip to Denver the middle of May and so I am meeting him in Colorado for the weekend and he hopes to hike to the top of the highest mountain in Colorado - Mt. Elbert.  I'm hoping that I am the only one that makes to the top.  The next weekend after that I am helping run a K9 water clinic for my search and rescue team. Teaching dogs to search on the water for people. Then the next weekend, Memorial day, I am flying to Maryland to help my parents pack up all there stuff and move it to Wisconsin and Mark will be there too. 

Just Keep Searching for a Vulneray Weekend

I was in Durango last weekend.  All I am going to say about it is that I went snowboarding, the first time by myself.  So to substitute for the brevity of my words, I'll post ALL the pictures I took from my weekend trip (all of which were taken within the space of the same ten minutes).  The really noteworthy thing to post is that by this time next week I will be holding hands with my boyfriend in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Those Wonderful Day Hikes

On Sunday at the yurt trip, I took a day hike with my friend Jim.  We had a plan to head to a ridge, but the huge blisters on my feet made me decide to just stick to the forest road and leave the snowshoes at the yurt.  Well we weren't were we expected to be and I like to forge my own way, so we ended up in the deep snow trucking through wherever my whims and my navigation took us. 

Made it back to the yurt and had lunch and then strapped on the snowshoes and headed towards Trujillo Meadow Reservoir.  We made it down to the meadow and decided to turn back since we had to climb out of the valley before dark.

The topo of our day hike (all markings are approximations) :)  I certainly do like some of the things on my new computer.  I think I drew too small to read it though...so....the purple is the yurt location, the maroon arrow is the road we thought we were hiking and the black arrow and black route above the yurt was our actual location in the morning and the orange arrow and black route below the yurt is the afternoon snowshoe to the meadow. (click on the picture though, then you get the details).

Barely seen between the two trees is Jarosa Peak, the peak we hiked up last year at Grouse Creek yurt on the other side of the mountain.

Yurt, Yurt, Yurt

So, it happened a couple weeks ago, but here are the details of my snowshoe trip to a yurt in southern Colorado (Trujillo Meadows, just west of the reservoir that my family camped at when I was a child) over MLK jr. weekend. There were five of us that went, compared to last year's 8 in the same size yurt. Imagine all that space we had this year!

I started getting blisters on my heels from the very beginning. :( So I spent Saturday morning with a wilderness first aid book taking care of them. The forest road that we followed out to the yurt had been plowed, so halfway through the hike, four of us took off our snowshoes (the fifth person was on skis) and walked.

I became known as an instigator because I started a couple of heated discussion Saturday night. I'm pleading some innocence because I simply read something from my Outside magazine, I didn't come up with the topics on my own.

Tory Murray's Yurt!
The Yurt (yurt, yurt)

A Grey Jay, we saw several and Chickadees

Wednesday Play Day!

So in my efforts to enjoy moments while working on getting things done (I haven't mentioned that I am taking a national exam in April for board certification), I am trying to designate Wednesdays as the play day. I have to be at work earlier on Wednesdays and so not really worth trying to get some things done. This past week, "play!" was the first thing I wrote on my list for Wednesday (how many times have I typed Wednesday so far?). I took my dog Vuyo to the foothills of the Sandias - Embudito trail. Very nice. This weekend (really later today!!!), I am snowshoeing out to a yurt in northern New Mexico.

A view from the trail
Vuyo's love of burrowing into the snow. I was rushing so much to capture it, I didn't take the time to compose it (i.e. getting my hand out of the way)

The top there was my goal. Alas, I had to turn back when it was quite close.

Christmas Organizing

My room in the middle of rearrangingThe final result

Man, oh man, I can't sleep. My computer arrived today and after about 6 weeks without my own stuff on my own computer, the thought of doing all sorts of things, like catching up on my finances on Quicken (exciting, hey?) is keeping me awake. So I have gotten out of bed after climbing into bed just over an hour ago and downloading the Quicken 2010.

I also received a letter from Mark today. I was torn between setting up my computer and sitting down to read his letter. The letter won out first, the computer took second place.

OK, so on to the actual blog post about Christmas:

When your parents come to town just start rearranging the house. I have decided that is a good sort of valid reason for things being messy. So I started moving things around in my bedroom before my parents arrived on December 20.

Mom and Dad were in Albuquerque for one week, leaving the day after Christmas with everything they had been storing at Nate's house. They left their dog behind, no room in the truck. OK, so they also wanted some stability for the dog over the next 5 months while they transition between two states, households and retirement. Three dogs in the house now.

I felt like there was no end to the gifts I received from Mark for Christmas. Christmas Eve, I received a dozen red and white roses, but the card said that wasn't really my Christmas gift. Then a box was delivered that my brother wrapped and put under the tree. That was a dozen jumbo chocolate-covered strawberries Christmas day I was notified of a subscription to Backpacker magazine. Marks says that he received a Christmas gift from his parents that I will really like, but have to wait to see it instead of him telling me what it is (feels almost like another present, just with the excitement and suspense) and then he also said there's more. So the Christmas excitement and anticipation is still around.