Project Pictures

Season Ending: A Post Season Review

To those of you who have been following my blog this summer thank you. It has been a wild summer and I wish I had been able to update more. The results are here and it has been a successful season despite several large interruptions. I'm not going to get into it much, but I will mention. On August 19th 2009 an Army helicopter crashed on Mount Massive. This caused the mountain to be closed for several weeks. This put us back with our hours. This also prevented several volunteer projects from taking place.

After this occurred we worked very hard to finish the key sections of trails. These key sections that were worked on this summer were an upper reroute that begins about a mile up on the flats and completes at a cairn near an glissade (sp?) social trail. The second reroute we constructed is on the ridge. We built cairns to direct along in confusing areas. The new social is a section of stairs and walls built through a rough loose section. It looks great now. It was confusing and loose before. I'm happy with the end result. The primary pieces that needed to be constructed are there. There are a lot of areas that still need restoration. The area parallel to where we built the reroute has a significant amount of re contouring and plugging to finish. It looks like we will be about to do some more this upcoming week on out High Mountain Institute Project (HMI).

I will write more later about the season.

cheers,

-Joe G
CFI Project Manager

To come soon...

Notes on rock work

Notes on restoration

Heading up for a ten day hitch

It's Saturday night and I'm in Leadville. I wanted to update you all before I head back up the mountain. I am meeting a group of Rocky Mountain Youth Corps (RMYC) tomorrow morning. RMYC has partnered with CFI in the past and it has worked very well. The RMYC area a youth corps ages 18-24. They spend a summer doing mostly trail work in the rocky mountains. They will be spending the rest of the summer with us. I expect that we will get a lot of good work done. Don't be saddened though. There are still opportunities to volunteer. If you are interested in working with us just check out our website 14ers.org and contact us. We will take people anytime we are up there.

End of July: some old work, some new work, and some views.

You can see Buffalo Peak in the distance just poking above the clouds. One morning the clouds swept in like an ocean in the valley.



A staircase we build.



The flowers this spring/summer have been amazing. All of that rain we received in June made July very beautiful!



A staircase some volunteers from Overland Summers built.



These are some more stairs Overland Summers built.

Some work done and some to do.

MT Massive from around 13,000 ft in elevation.



These are "Old Men of the Mountain." They are in the sunflower family. They turn to face the sun.



This is a wall and 4 stairs that Zack from Overland Summers built.



These are a set of five stairs that Riley from Overland Summers Built

First Volunteer Session

More Photos

Drew standing outside of the bear fence. The was just after we finished setting up the basecamp. The fences runs at over 7000 volts. Zap Zap.



Massive Basecamp is ELECTRIC! I mean we have a solar system to run some essentials like the bear fence, charging phone (yes cell reception), and charging batteries. In the gray box you can see two marine batteries that are hooked up to a "solar controller." That device helps regulate the current from the solar panel to the batteries. The red box on the right is pretty much a capacity which builds up current and pulses it though the bear fence.



The mules are loaded up and ready to go. We use mules to pack in our basecamp equipment. Loaded on the mules are the solar panel t-posts and tools.



This is Provin Grounds. I go there for internet. This is where I upload these great photos.

Some Pictures

Welcome to basecamp! This is the inside of our basecamp tent. You can see the stoves in the back. Those propane bottles are HEAVY. They Weigh 40lbs. We have hiked up 2 this summer.



This is Climax mine. It is in Leadville, CO. As you can see they have removed a side of the mountain. This is part of the heritage of Colorado.



Welcome to Leadville.



Leadville is a historic district.

MT. Massive Pack-In

It’s been two+ weeks since my last post and that time has flown by. In the last week the weather here in the Leadville area has improved. What I mean by this is, it’s now noon and the morning was sunny and during the time that has passed as I wrote this post it has gone from snowing to sunny. The pack-in is complete and the base-camp is setup. Pack-in took longer than we expected. As many of you who are in the Rocky Mountain Region know, we have had an extraordinary wet spring. The last two weeks it felt like Monsoon season in the San Juan’s. The days would always be cloudy and threatening from morning. The weather would degrade quickly and by noon it would be either raining or snowing. This meant 1 load Tuesday, 1 load Wednesday and 2 loads on Thursday.
We originally were going to pack-in on Saturday the second of June. This was postponed by the delayed pack-in of the forest services crew up Yale then postponed by weather till we got our first of four loads in Monday the fourth of June. The last load went up long after our base camp tent on Thursday. The camp was all set up by Friday afternoon. The process went well and there were no other major mishaps let a mule (Rory) got sick. The many little things that went on I will not bore you with.
While the weather was rough there were many things that went well. The Leadville rodeo grounds allowed Glen to house his mules in their corrals. This allowed him to stay in town. We had the pleasure of going to a mule packing training with Glen a couple of weeks previous. This helped prepare us for the pack-in.

Pre-season thoughts and pictures

It's Monday, Memorial day and I'm here in Leadville Colorado at Provin Grounds coffee shop. This will be my base of internet operations away from the mountain. For those of you who don't know Leadville Colorado, it is at the elevation of 10,152 feet (almost 2 miles). It is the highest incorperated town in the United states and the second highest municipality (well at least according to wikipedia and a couple other sites). It is a mere 2 hours south west of Denver on I70 and then to RT91, then RT24.

Leadville is known for being a historic mining town/superfund site. It is home of the wild race the 'Leadville 100'. Leadville is a place many go to train, for aclimitization. It is also known nationally for it's Boom days event in Augest. Yes, it is a tourist destination.

You may be wondering why I'm talking about Leadville. Well, I'm writing about Leadville because it is at the base of MT Massive; the place where I will be spending my summer.

MT Massive (elevation 14,421 feet) is the second highest peak in Colorado; only to MT Elbert (14,440 feet). It's name comes from it's shape. MT Massive is a long mountain with five individual peaks over 14,000 feet. It is one of CFI's (Colorado Fourteeners Initiative) longest running projects. This summer's goal is to finish the trail up "Main Massive" or the east side of Massive. Previous to the work on the Main Massive, CFI built the trail up the back (west side) or Half Moon trail.

As I look outside the window of the cafe. I can see the snowy peak protruding into the dark clouds. Massive is covered in snow on this late day in May. Come the 30th when we pack in, we will do some shoveling to allow the mule team to pass safely through.

I will be posting throughout the summer as more happens. Look forward to photos and more narratives.


Some links:

Mapping:
http://stable.toolserver.org/geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Mount_Massive&params=39_11_14.87_N_106_28_32.52_W_type:mountain_region:US

Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Massive

CFI:
http://14ers.org/peaks_Sawatch_Massive.php