BMS Graduate...

My return to Denver after 1 week in Albuquerque, NM was uneventful and on time considering I flew United Airlines.  After a sound 4 hours of sleep, I awoke at 3:30 AM Saturday all geared and ready to climb Mt. Bancroft in the Indian Peaks.  This climb was a make-up day for my Basic Mountaineering School class from the spring and was the last requirement needed to graduate the class.

Basic Mountaineering School is a class offered by the Colorado Mountain Club in Golden, CO.  It is designed to hone the skills of a budding mountaineer in the areas of route finding, crampons, ice axe, rock climbing, and confidence building.  This class did all of that and more.  While I feel good at altitude on routes that require minor rock climbing and scrambling, true rock climbing with rocks, biners, rappelling, and knowledge of rock climbing knots were an area that I had little knowledge of...this class addressed that.

Mt. Bancroft stands at 13,250' and is a class 3/class 4 climb (read scrambling/low rock climbing) with the additional cruxes of an 80' rappel, low 5.2 rock climbing and serious exposure on the ridgeline (read "a fall here is fatal).  We left the trailhead at 6:30 AM and after 4 hours of scrambling, climbing, rappeling, and trekking stood on the summit.  I have to admit this mountain pushed me as some of the "unprotected" areas were sketchy but with the instructors giving their assurance I was able to get past these areas and continue to build solid mountaineering skills that I'm sure will come in handy in the future.

Climb On!

Enchanting...

Hello again...it's the long lost blogger who fails to blog.  I figure if I do short blog bursts rather than long diatribes, I will blog more.

I'm currently in the New Mexico - the "Land of Enchantment" - teaching a 5-day GIS class to introductory level students.  The class goes great with a lot of "ah-hah" moments being witnessed as well as "1000-yard stares" starting to develop after 5 days of GIS lectures/exercises.  It's to be expected...

The PLUS side of my business trip is that I've been able to spend a total of 7-days visiting Karen and Ethan.  Feels more normal to be around one's companion rather than long distance phone calls several times a week.  We've enjoyed our "family" time with Bakugan brawls, Transformer cartoons, marathon Uno games, hikes to Jemez Warm Springs, and pizza!  Karen and I have enjoyed some together time as well with our dinner dates while Ethan is with his father.

I leave for Colorocky in about 5 hours - it will be nice to be home too to see Tsali the "wondercat" who's probably abandoned me after being gone for 1 week.  Then in a short 14 hours from now, I'm awake, geared up and heading to my "make-up" route finding day for Basic Mountaineering School.  Saturday will be a day of hiking, rock climbing and rappeling...more to follow...

Climb On!