Archive for the ‘Travel’

christmas and skiing/boarding in park city12.26.10

we headed out to park city for christmas. lil’s sister melissa was great with child (verily) and way past being able to fly, so her whole family headed out to park city to be with her and jonathon for christmas. lil and i got to do 3 good days of skiing/boarding and then christmas with the family. somehow lillis and her sisters/mom ended up somehow spending about 65% of the time we were not skiing cooking. they cooked (or attempted to cook) any number of unique creations. speaking of unique, hangar one makes a pear flavored vodka. i bought a bottle out there and tried it. highly recommended.
anyway, we did our skiing in park city and at the canyons. it snowed about 4 feet in the 2 days before we got there. the first day was a little bit cold and there was some wet snow falling (which made it tough sledding – so to speak) but the next two days were fabulous.
lil and i stop for a quick picture at the canyons
“lil and her mom have a fun, quirky tradition,” said charles. i’m concerned that it seems unlikely they’ll grow out of it.

when the sun came out, it was completely gorgeous out there. here’s the view from the top of the terrain park.
lillis thinks my helmet makes her head look large. i think so, too. it’s very “great gazoo”-esque.
here i am with most of lil’s family at park city. everyone skied all morning, and then everyone but me went and road the roller coaster in the afternoon. i opted for more boarding (i only get a few days each year).
here’s the view from our cabin (quite) early on christmas morning. on the right is a GIANT tree that someone had outfitted with christmas lights.
i have no idea how to spell this dog’s name. it’s pronounced “nolla” like “holla.” anyway, nala, was checking out the nativity scene while melissa worked on making some waffles in the kitchen.
that’s me. and my wife. and some mountains.
same mountains, same wife, lil’s dad, and her sister, and nola.
beautiful country out there.
here lil and her sister lacey perform a lillis family tradition of resting ones hands on someone elses abdomen. good times
it was a good trip. no broken bones, or travel hassles. plenty of good snow and good food…and santa was able to find lillis and sneak some icebreakers clothing into her stocking.
below is the video from our trip. we didn’t get a whole lot b/c lil was only skiing with me for a 1/2 day most of the time and we really didn’t do much hitting the terrain park or anything. next year, i insist on more “big air” opportunities.

anyway, the rest of the pics are here, and see below (if you’re on facebook, you’d have to view this post in it’s source or at charlesbreland.com) for the video.

2010_12_25 Skiing in Park City from charles breland on Vimeo.

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Benton McKaye Wrapup11.01.10

Lil and I had a great time out on the trail with Matt and David. It was DEFINITELY a little tougher hike than I’m used to – 12 miles with a 40 lb pack on with some pretty steep ups and downs for the better part of a day (almost 6 hours of hiking) was TOUGH. It was fabulous being outside, though. The nights got a little cold (around 30), but we were tented up and geared up and slept well after our daily physical exertions. I will say the new Neo Air air matresses made a HUGE difference in that. Going from a 3/4 size 1 inch thick pad to a full lenght 2.5 inch sleeping pad was fabulous. Anyway, it’s been a little bit of a more muted fall here (or so my wife tells me) but it was still plenty gorgeous on the BMT (we started the trail – Section 8 – just outside of Cherry Log).
The first night we hiked in about 2 miles before setting up camp. It was already a little dark and cold by the time we got set up that night, so we pretty much just boiled some water, ate our “mountain meal” and then headed to bed. The next morning we reconsidered our decision to camp just off the road when a cadre of hunters showed up at 6:30. Lillis stayed in the tent while I mingled with the laid back country folk.
I got a few pics while we waited for the sun to get up in the sky and for us to start the big day’s hike.
David mapped out the key waypoints for the day as the sun rose over the ridgeline and matt continued to snuggle up next to his dog phelps in the tent.

lillis wasn’t sure if it was quite time for her to come out of the tent yet. so, i brought her her little mug of starbucks “via” coffee so she could sip it while still inside our cozy little home on the trail.


speaking of the trail. here we all are traipsing down it. that’s phelps (yellow lab) trailing matt. i liked phelps b/c she’s a little old, a little chubby, and she has short legs. she was the only one on the trail who moved at anything close to the speed i was physically prepared to go.

about 5 or so miles in on saturday we stopped to fix some lunch. it was good and it was needed. i was pretty pooped at that point.

eventually we got to flat top mountain (saturday night camping spot and high point for the trek). it was beautiful atop there in the late afternoon, and i spotted a little mini-rainbow in the sky.


here we’re gearing up to fix our pad thai that night. david does up the fancy cookin’, well beyond the basic “mountain meal” packs.
i snapped this pic on a long exposure of the night sky above the fire. it’s worth clicking on to see if full size (i think).
that’s lil on the left (your left, not mine) and me on the right as we hike down on sunday to the takeout spot.
view of the gorgeous fall foliage from where the trail meets the road down. this part of the mountain was obviously NOT subdued.

here’s the topographic side view of our hike. i can point to places where i thought i might be about to have my heart go into to super ventricular tachacardia. i don’t really know how to spell super ventricula tachacardia, but suffice to say, it was beating pretty fast on some of those climbs. also, i love that this topograph was apparently made using a commodore 64 or the computer from war games. you don’t see this kind of graphics much west of the oregon trail.



here is a link to the rest of the pics for anyone interested
.

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Two Miles into Benton MckayeTwo Miles into Benton Mckaye10.30.10

Hit the trail last night about seven and got 600 feet of elevation in two miles before setting up camp and having dinner and some beers. Twelve more miles to cover today to flat top mountain and then down to our takeout location. Beautiful but 30 degrees got a little cold last night. Eggs and bacon in a freeze dried pack, and off we go! Not totally roughing it as Lillis had her Via coffee from Starbucks this AM

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