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Day 4 – McCarty Canyon to Bridger Pass
On the divide we meet the one person we see all day, a guy driving around in his truck smoking a cigar. We appeciate the three bull elk that just jumped the fence in front of us. Pete’s knees are hurting him, so we’ve chosen the more gentle route with less certain water. The guy…
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Day 3 – Divide Pass to McCarty Canyon
Starts to rain at night, still raining while we break camp. Stays with us until we reach fresh water. No more yuck water! The road walking begins, a relief at first from the snowy hills. The only major road hosts RV traffic for the 4th of July weekend, after that we see no one. Rinsing…
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Day 2 – Red Mountain to Divide Peak
We wake up pretty dry! First resupply rendezvous at Battle Pass is excellent – hot drinks and all. Slow slogging up snow to Bridger Peak. More minor misnavigations – keep thinking we’ve gone further than we have. Much snow along the divide, bright sun, and quite a few mosquitoes. Again I think we’re further than…
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Day 1 – Border to Red Mountain
Posting from Rawlins! The phone system works, but consumes too much time and battery power, especially with a weak signal. So probably no real posting from the trail, oh well! Sunny and warm to start, and even a nice bit of cross-country navigation. Soon we’re into snow, and I lose the divide and find it…
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Sendoff
When we arrive at Bottle Creek campground, Pete remarks that it looks like “the Land of Mordor”. The surroundings are beautiful, but the campground has been clear cut to remove trees killed by pine beetles that could fall on campers. The entire region is peppered with brown trees fallen victim to beetles. Eventually it will…
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Gone Hiking
Wyoming is the land of my birth, the source of scars, friends, habits, and fears. It’s a patch on the earth with nearly as many quarter sections as citizens, dappled by clean bright light and dark dreams. The same air that kisses the skin for an hour can flare into a wicked icy wind the…
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Hyde Park Circle
This a perfect refresher hike. A good climb, nice ridgewalk, fresh air. This post is almost more significant than the hike – the first draft of the map was posted from my phone! It’s a precarious stack of home-rolled and bleeding-edge open source software that I balanced on to accomplish it, but I’m going to…
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Rails Trail
We kind of expected this hike to be easy. That probably ensured that it would the hardest yet. The combination of heat, flies, monotonous trail, and unexpected difficulty finding the southern trailhead bruised our resolve. We hiked in opposite directions to avoid a two-car shuttle, and perhaps hiking alone made it harder too. Ann used…
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WordPress Geo Mashup Releases 1.2.6 and 1.3alpha1
Release 1.2.6 is a collection of small fixes issues including some leftover strange category line behavior, the disappearance of tabs on the option page in WordPress 2.8, some wrong icons in the visible post list (issue 226), and future post info windows (issue 213). Release 1.3alpha1 is a preview of some 1.3 features – see…
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Ann’s solo hike in the rain
Ann did a backpack trip on her own starting Friday afternoon. During the night a heavy rainstorm moved in, and kept soaking her through the day today! She managed a nice 22-mile route with about 6,000 feet of climbing over the crest of the Sangre Cristo mountains regardless, and caught a ride home with some…