Mgindle

Emily seems to have brought some of Chicago here with here in the form of cool, damp, and rain. Fine by me as we don’t see it often and I have the great confidence that we will be back to our regularly scheduled programming soon enough. In the meantime, Emily and I have been doing some hiking. On Thursday we went up Finger Rock trail 3+ miles before we decided to turn it around. That trail is great for the legs with plenty’o’steep.

Friday was spent with a morning pedal on the road and some errands followed by studying for my one and only final exam that evening. It has been years since I’ve taken a final exam, especially in a gen ed. type course i.e. lecture hall, tons of students, alternating tests for adjacent seats, wow. Check that one off the list. Saturday morning was rainy, Emily and I went over to the Summit hut and stared at maps for a while scoping out places we want to explore. We’ve got to get into the Rincons in the near future. I’m usually pedaling a bicycle when outside so exploration in those mountains has been a bit limited due to all the wilderness. I’m really looking forward too some trail running and hiking, maybe some overnights.

Later in the day once the rain stopped and we started to see some blue to the sky, we headed out to scramble around in La Milagrosa Canyon. We were met with water running all over the place which got me a bit cautious. The first crossing was almost knee deep with a pretty good push to the flow. Next we came to the convergence of Milagrosa canyon and Agua Caliente canyon. Too my surprise, Milagrosa was dry and Agua Caliente was booming. Must take a look at some maps to figure that one out. Anyway, we scrambled around, among the rocks and got to the ‘pools’ which looked like they had been standing quite a while, unimpressed, and with dwindling daylight we scrambled over the ridge and descended down the scree slopes to Agua Caliente. The water kept us in the scree and brush and by the time we got back to the convergence just as it was becoming too dark to see. Huff it back to the car and pick up some beers.

Dinner was grilled red snapper, pasta w/sun dried tomato pesto and a roasted beet salad, all washed down with Dogfish Head 60min IPA.

Today I slept in and headed out for a ride in TMP. Trail and weather conditions were ideal, nice cool air and super tack velcro. Today was a freebee day in the washes as traction was a plenty. We did some rather nice exploring on some faint, seldom used singletrack then moved around the main loop backwards. Toss in a few tasty side trails on the way and back down the hill into town. On the way down we hit up the back side of A mountain where the peanut butter mud was significantly less than the previous ride.

good night!