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Friday, February 24, 2012

Portland/Boise

Mallory came out to see me in Portland one weekend and I was in Boise later that month. It's hard to do a lot in a weekend, but we usually have fun.

While Mallory was in Portland, we met up with friends for drinks at a Peruvian restaurant and I had my first Pisco sour. I hope to have another in country sometime. The next day we went to McMenamins at Edgefield, and enjoyed walking around the grounds and the neat Grateful Dead room in the old basement. They were playing constant Dead videos.


In Portland, Mallory took on the challenge of making a chocolate meringue pie and it was delicious. The next day I challenged her to make fried chicken after I had some amazing chicken at a food cart in Portland. We went on a little snow shoeing adventure. I was also able to get a lot of work done on my trip planning.





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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Final Countdown

This summer I am heading off to hike the Continental Divide Trail (CDT). I'll be starting April 15, 60 days from today. I've been planning and preparing for the trip for the past couple of years and now it's time to get the last details in place. The countdown has begun.



After I graduated college I hiked the Appalachian Trail and loved it. I've always wanted to take on the CDT, and with my job coming to an end, it seemed like a perfect time to take off a couple months. The CDT is a little different then other trails. It isn't completely defined, and there are a couple of alternates that are more popular then the official route. So I took a lot of liberties when planning where I wanted to go. Below is a map.


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A few large variations I made include hiking: the length of the Sangre de Christo range in New Mexico; the Great Divide Trail to Jasper, Alberta; and part of the Idaho Centennial Trail. The plan is to start at the southern end at the border of Mexico and head north (green). When I get to Rocky Mountain NP, I'll bounce up to Helena and continue hiking north (yellow). In Jasper, I'll flip around to Spokane and hike south through Idaho (purple). I finish up there in Mountain Home where I'll get a bus to West Yellowstone (blue) and finish on top of a mountain in Rocky Mountain NP. All said it's about 3300 miles.

At least that's the plan. My schedule currently has me finishing by the beginning of October. During the trip I am going to be carrying a SPOT gps that will send out my location daily and update the map on the right side of the blog as well as facebook. I hope to occasionally blog from the trail. Should be a fun summer!

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Reno Visit

I made a quick trip down from portland to take care of a few things before I had a tenant move in.Mallory came to meet up with me and the major project was tiling the counter. Mallory took the lead while I worked on other issues. By the end it looked great, and I was impressed with all we got done.






Halfway through we took a ski break. It's been a pretty bad snow year, but we had fun. We took off early and drove the scenic route back past tahoe.