Here's a few when Expat and I snuck into the pits at the Indy 500 pretending to be owners of a car running there.
Zion is the most beautiful, powerful, deep canyon -- I'm talking carved stone, 1000's of feet over 10's of millions of yrs -- -- of the parks I've walked in. Butt, my best, most life-changing experiences weren't in 'parks' You have to get out of th pa - k .. ___ __ Wait .. that was garbled. I'll get back to it ..
Just wanted to mention, the above picture was actually taken with my Gen 5 iPod! NOT my actual camera. It's my all time favorite photographs (that I've taken). I really want to have a quality print of it done and frame it nicely.
That's awesome Man! We were just talking last nite about a trip to the Ozarks, the girls want some marked trail hiking, I want some off trail creek fishing!
My favorite part of the outdoors. The lowlands. Yeah the view from a mountain top is sweet but there ain't nothing better than wandering and exploring down low which does have its own great views.
I sooo totally agree with this. 101%. I was never much into peak bagging. I did a few summits, but no 8k or anything close. Couple of 13'ers in Colorado. And yeah, the views are awesome from up there, but I'd much rather just sit under a peak, or across from it, and just look at it, and enjoy the critters and plants around me. Case in point. Upstream, I posted a pic of my Garuda tent near Rock Lake in the Weminuche (CO) with a peak called The Guardian in the background. Here's a copy for reference. A couple of days later, I walked over to it -- really tough full day walk, solo. I camped on its flanks for a couple of days (three nights before walking out over two days), and on day 2 there, I walked up to its base on the north face. This shot was taken at lunch, before I walked around to the right and traversed those rock shelves you see on the other side to get over to the base. Well, problem was, even though I had "mapped" out a traverse route from that spot, once I got over there I realized 1) it was a maze, and I couldn't stay on the route I wanted, and 2) some of those shelves were way gnarlier and tough to traverse than I expected. But I had committed by then, and there was no turning back. (I had to slip down one shelf, and there was no getting back up.) So, I kept going. Turned out to be THE most frightening bit of traverse/free climbing I've ever done. Could have easily died a couple of times. I seriously needed belay, or at least a few anchors. But I made it. But it was getting late by the time I got there, and I needed to get back down to camp before dark. So I didn't get more shots close up. For scale, the red line on the lower left marks a rock the size of a convenience store. You could drive an 18-wheeler down that crack without touching the sides. I could have spent weeks there, just admiring that peak and the rocks. I knew that I was walking in a place that few others had before -- this was way off trail. Even my camp was way off trail, and this was a full days hike (sans tent and most gear). I thought that some day, I'd do the traverse across all the peaks in the Grenadiers, from Guardian on the east to Vestal in the west, Storm King being the tallest (two peaks west of Guardian, on the other side of Mt Silex, which is just to the right of this image). It's a class 4 traverse route called the Gristle Grinder. (Class 4 in rock climbing means you can do it without belay and anchors, but you sure as hell wish you had them. Class 5 uses removable protection: anchors, friends, etc. Class 6 is fixed anchors -- pitons, permanently placed rings, etc. Go to that link, click on the top image, and magnify; you'll see the entire route and all the peaks involved, with Guardian on the far right, also from the north.) I never did it.