Sunday, July 8, 2007

Hikes and Headaches

So over the last 4 days, I've gone hiking each day. Unfortunately for me though, I've also had an almost constant headache during that time as well. I don't know if it's something in the air, the altitude, or what but it's really starting to bother me and Ibuprofen has proven useless.

Anywho, the hikes I went on were awesome.

The first hike was Wednesday morning when me and Josh hiked to the top of Elephant Back Mountain. It's just behind the dorm where I live and after a 1,000 ft climb shows a great view of the lake.


The darker patterns in the lake were being caused by wind over the lake and I could see them move with the wind. The building on the right is the Lake Hotel and just in front of that, the brown buildings are my dorm complex.

On Thursday evening Josh, Jen, Robyn, Hillary and I went hiking to Storm Point which was just awesome. The sun setting behind the clouds was amazing, but unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me as I didn't know I was going on the hike ahead of time, I just kind of fell into it. Maybe I'll get one of the other's pictures to put up here.


Then on Friday the same group as before went hiking up around the Roosevelt area of the park and went on the Lost Lake/Petrified Tree trail. It was pretty strenuous at the start, gaining about 800 feet in less than a quarter of a mile but soon leveled out. But man was it hot. The petrified tree was pretty neat to see and was a redwood over 50 million years old.


This is the last standing of 3 petrified redwoods found on this site. The other two had been destroyed by people talking off chips of them for souvenirs, hence the fence around this one. The girl see up top is my new friend Robyn from Montana.

Lastly, on Saturday me and Josh went on a 6 mile hike on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. We started out in some meadows, walked through a wasteland, and finally walked along the rim of the canyon and saw the upper and lower falls.


This wasteland was created by the thermal features found here as they killed off all of the vegetation. You can see how it is completed encircled by the forest. There was steam vent holes here that were over 20 feet across!


An Ansel Adams-esque shot of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.


If I were to step off the back of the boulder I'm standing on, it would be a 2,500 foot sheer drop to the canyon floor. Fortunately I'm pretty surefooted.


The Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River.

The Upper Falls of the Yellowstone River

Later that evening I went for a drive to pick up Robyn and Hilary who had went on a long hike (28 miles) for the day. They ended up being almost 2 hours behind their scheduled time due to a storm and 2 bear encounters. Fortunately for them the bears (1 black, 1 grizzly) in both cases were afraid of the girls and ran away. And fortunately for me, I got to spend some more time along the Eastern edge of the lake where I took this sweet shot of the sunsetting. The little black dots you can see are actually gulls as there was a huge flock of about 100 gulls in front of me when I took the shot.


Well that brings an end to my second week away from home. Time to start the third and hopefully find an end to all these damned headaches.

2 comments:

Grandma Mc said...

Colin....About 5 months ago, I had a headache for days....nothing would cut it. I finally relented to get one of those "Head-On" sticks. (Hate that commercial) Believe it or not, I have NOT had a headache since I used that thing! If you cannot find one there, (about $5) I will send one to you. Let me know.

jeremiah said...

what kind of Camera are you using for this pictures? I'm looking at digital cameras and I can't remember what kind your brother has, but I know it was semi-expensive... and I is poor.