Yeah so I know that this is the Idaho Rocks blog and all of my recent posts have been from places other than Idaho, but that is what happens when you work out of state all summer and have family scattered through out the country. Hey, also Colorado is rainy and cool, while Idaho is hot and
everything is on fire.So the Lawellin family for the past couple years has been trying to have a little get together every year, some times it works out and some times it doesn't. Last year we went to Lake Powell, but Mark and Kelsey couldn't join us; the year before that I was in Iraq and the first year after I got back from Korea and before I came to Idaho; Dad, Sara, Troy and myself went backpacking down by Bluff, Utah. This year we went llama packing in the Gore Range in Colorado, unfortunately not everyone could make it this year either, but it was still a great trip. So on the 13th Jennifer, my Dad, Cathy and myself headed out of the Rock Creek trail head and began the trek to Boulder Lake. We set up camp in the fading light and had a great dinner by of fresh salad and spaghetti by headlamp. The next morning I woke up and enjoyed the wonderful view you can see in the bottom
picture. After having a awesome alpine start of noon we started hiking to our next destination; Slate Lake. We where hiking right along
enjoying the trail, the dogs-well Kulgogi was- were more or less behaving themselves, and the scenery was amazing when we got to Slate Creek which turned out to be pretty sizable creek crossing. Almost as soon as we got there so did the rain; not just any rain either, big fat rain drops that hurt when they hit bare skin, the kind of rain that makes a person start thinking about heading to higher ground, or in my case start cracking jokes about Noah's Ark. After crossing the creek a couple times to shuttle llamas, scared dogs and trekking poles, Jennifer and I took shelter under a large pine to get out of the rain a bit. A half hour later Dad and Cathy crossed the creek which was rapidly becoming a river and we all decided to continue up the trail some more since the rain had slackened off a little. We trudged through the rain and mud for a couple more miles before making camp and falling short of our goal of Slate Lake, since it was getting dark.
We woke up to more rain, but it had slackened off immensely so after discussing our options a bit we decided to head back to Boulder Lake so we could meet Mark and Kelsey and get out on our planned date. The rain gradually began to disappear and by the time we made it back to Boulder Lake the sun was out. We spread out our gear to let it dry and grabbed the fly rods to attempt to land some yummy fish for dinner. Unfortunately the fish where not interested, but they where also very small as the lake was pretty shallow. So after being defeated by the fish we retired to camp and wined a bit before bed. The next day we hiked out back to the truck and met Mark and Kelsey on the trail. All in all it was a pretty great and relaxing trip up in Colorado's wilderness.
I wanted to do one last hardcore adventurous thing before school started; I had to get it out of my system you could say. Originally I was going to climb Baron Peak up near Grandjean, but there is a large fire near there and I didn't really feel comfortable hiking around there; so that climb was out of the question. I needed something else to do, preferably somthing close though epic, safe but dangerous enough too have some adventure in it. So I decided to do the Boise Ridge Traverse, which is considered to be the ultimate long distance mountain bike or trail run in the Boise area. It stretches all the way from Lucky Peak to HorseShoe Bend, a total of 39 miles....I did it all in one big long day. Now you might be either saying "yeah right" or that I am "some sort of sick masochistic freak." Well either way you would be right, because I finished my trek at Bogus Basin which is still a rather respectable 21 miles. Regardless it was still a pretty long day and my feet where pretty tired at the end of the day.
