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Human Power to Three Ponds
Being active seems to make my cold recede into the background, so I go with Ann for another outing today. We ride the bikes ten miles into Snow Canyon State Park, lock them at the Three Ponds trailhead, and start up the trail. Ann at the Snow Canyon Entrance It’s less than two miles to…
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Chuckawalla Wall Cures Runny Nose
I have a cold and my nose is running like a faucet, but our friend Justin wants to climb again, and somehow a few routes at Chuckawalla still sound good. Justin leads his first climb after a practice run on toprope and we move our rope left to toprope the next three. Ann and I…
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Utah Hills
The forecasts have been calling for colder weather, but the morning is so clear and warm we don’t believe it. Canceling plans to return to the sunny Zen Wall, we drive instead to the north facing Soul Asylum. This is a remote limestone crag, higher than town, and cool and breezy when we arrive. There…
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Movie: I’m not there / 2007
Much like his autobiographical books, Chronicles, this movie flirts with the personal life of Bob Dylan as a way of drawing our attention elsewhere. The real focus is on the swirling mythic interaction of his music and its audience, and that subject really is pretty fascinating. Dylan is played by multiple actors who all do…
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Campaign to Cure Paralysis
This project began with a sad irony – a Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation website dedicated to curing paralysis had become paralyzed itself. My browser froze for four minutes the first time I tried to load it. Fortunately there are cures for this type of paralysis. Marker clustering was the primary treatment, backed up by…
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Green Valley Gap with Justin
Justin, who we meet at the natural grocer here in Saint George, expressed interest in learning to climb. It’s hot this afternoon, so we take him to the Green Valley gap where we hope to find a little shade. This works pretty well, and we enjoy the short, featured sandstone routes into the evening. Justin…
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Scout Cave Trail Run
It’s another long run for me today. Ann drops me off at the Chuckawalla trailhead where I start running barefoot. My feet feel like they’re hungry for trail, and I quickly get into a flow that feels like I could maintain forever. But of course I can’t. After three or four miles I descend into…
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Book: Cold Mountain / Charles Frazier
The subject of love and war in a Civil War setting are not my usual interests, and so it took some effort to get into the story. The effort was rewarded with a telling full of finely crafted details. A reverence for the natural world permeates the writing and resonates with me, even though the…
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Hellhole Headstands and Utah Vegans
I read about a monthly vegan potluck in the area and decide to go. In the morning we hit the farmer’s market where I buy a load of local collard greens and onions. I take those home and prep them. We’d like to sneak a hike in before the event, so we find the well-disguised…
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Zen Wall Approach
We take a very Zen approach to climbing today, hauling our gear a few miles up a mesa to climb nothing at all. Every plant seems to have produced different colored blossoms to compete for our attention. The boulders hulk right next to the trail as if ready to give us a good-natured nudge as…