Vacation post

Vacation was a few weeks ago but I really had to think about the climbs before posting.

Here goes..

The first stop of vacation was Arches national park and my prime target was Delicate Arch. I've always wanted to see this famous arch up close and doing it proved slightly more difficult than I thought it would be. You don't just drive up, jump out of the car and stand next to it. There is a hike involved and warnings about bringing enough water. We were ill prepared and had to go back to the gift shop and buy a nalgene bottle to be on the safe side.

It was a hot climb and a lot of it was on bizarre tilted rock at a nice incline. Really gives you a strange visual perspective against the sky. Anyhow you hustle up there and this is my shaky vid of how Delicate Arch looks up close. It's humbling to stand next to and I'm glad I got the chance.

 


Next up was Angel's Landing in Zion park. I thought about this climb for a couple of years. I read about it, imagined it, and after a lot of waiting got a chance to step up to the trail head to make a summit bid.

The first 80% of this hike is more or less on a paved trail. There is elevation gain but zero scree or anything so you can pretty much cruise right on up to point where it's "decision time". We started hiking with a 3 group party I called the Sweeds. They blew past us early and I didn't think we would see them again. Later on we caught up and the leapfrog game was on up until the chain section where a decision has to be made by all who go any further. More on that in a second but here is a look at the start of the chain section.

Well, I mentioned that I'd thought about this for a couple years so I knew all about the chains, made the decision months before this day so I hit it full force and left the Sweeds trying to decide on a game plan. I didn't think to take any more vids between here and the summit because I had my head totally into the climb. I would NOT recommend this hike for anybody with a fear of heights. There is some serious exposure on this climb. People do die out here and I can see if fear set in how people could get stuck out here. I got in the zone and made the climb. Speaking personally the climb up was the point for me. Next is the obligatory summit vid and while it is super cool up there my reason to do this one was more about putting myself into more exposure than I am used to and seeing how I would react. Here we are topside.

 

After soaking it up for a while it was time to go back down. When I was almost back to the start of the chain section I found the Sweeds. They were clinging to the side of a rock down very low and desperately hanging on to each other. The bad part is that they could not have known what was coming next and if they were rattled here the intense exposure ahead would be sure to provide them total panic very soon. I mention it because in climbs there are always things to learn about yourself. On first glance and watching earlier in the day it is unlikely I'd be passing them on the way down and knowing they were not going to summit this day. Yet there I was and there they were on the verge of pee meeting pants at any moment. You just never know how things work out...

I could post a bunch of beer pics now but suffice to say we hit many, many breweries after this point and the highlights were Ska in Durango, Dolores River Brewing in Dolores Co, and Mr Grumpy Pants Brewing in Ouray Co. Ouray was a super cool town and I'm sure we will go back. The "Million Dollar Highway" between Durango and Ouray is an outstanding drive and we just love that south west corner of the state.

Also Vegas! We decided to make a trip down to the Fremont section of Vegas this time. We have always stayed on the strip and in all our trips have never even seen Fremont. Old Vegas does not command the same hotel rates as the strip so for the same price as a normal room we were able to score a corner suite and Rush Tower. The room was phenomenal! Two big flat screens, a giant couch, king bed decked out in incredible plushness, MASSIVE soaking tub, really really nice room. The street is loud until about 2am and maybe that also makes the price nice but these corner suites are killer. I would not hesitate to stay here again again and we get a free upgrade next time so no telling was a full on baller suite is going to look like but I look forward to it. Turns out we like old Vegas. We like it a lot. It's much more party where the strip is more upscale shopping now.

We did have one nice meal on the strip at Spago. The food was crazy high quality and the ambience is only as it can be while sitting at Spago looking up at the Cesar's  sky...

All in all we had an amazing time and there are tons of things I've left out like learning about a new favorite Hawaiian dish called Loco Moco, to the world class brick oven pizza they make in the tiny town of Dolores, to discovering the Meadery in Palisades Colorado....many fun things that make up a catch as catch can road trip the way we do it.

It was hard to come down off this cloud.

GABF 2011

As I sit here with coffee and start to piece together the event from last night I find that there is only one way to describe it......awesome!

The GABF is simply awesome and I'm probably going to start thinking about tickets for next year just as soon as I'm done with this blog post. ;)

If you know me you know my favorite beer style (far and away) is a well crafted IPA. I expected to find a lot of good examples at the fest and there were several. I also expected to have my top 3 beers of the event be IPA's but I was wrong.

Best beer of the night for me was easily Firestone Walker's barrel aged Russian Imperial Stout Parabola. 

This beer is glorious. Upon tasting it you will say "Damn!" pause for a second and then say"That's good". You won't say much else for a while and others drinking it will understand why you can't add much more than 3 words to describe the amazing beer you are drinking because it has 37,000 miles of depth to explore and you only have so much time to explore them.. It's a stellar beer deserving of as much praise as I could give it and the $25 per bottle you might pay should you ever see this beer out in the wild. Killer stuff!

Second best beer of the night Avery's barrel aged sour ale Immitis.

 Maybe this is a difficult style to get into because the guys I was with both hated it but this was an easy walk away second best beer for me. It would have been #1 had we not discovered the Parabola. The RIS was simply world class beer and demanded the #1 slot. This Sour was amazing and for me it grabs the second place of the evening. Super complicated ale with green apple and cider explosiveness to lead in and a finish that grabs your attention as if it's saying "Look at me when I'm talking to you"...like the Parabola this is also a limited release that is difficult to buy. A guy was telling me you have to go to the tap room and enter into a lottery system to get a chance at it. Later on when I came back for more it was gone and one of the Pouring guys told me he didn't get a chance to taste it. I feel lucky that I did get a chance.

And 3rd place for the night an IPA...finally! ;)

Bear Republic's Cafe Racer 15

Ah yes....what's better than Racer 5? Racer 15 of course. Can you run down to your corner store and grab some unlike the limited release rare brews listed above? Nope..of course not. This is the beauty and the curse of the GABF. You get to taste awesome beers you will likely never get to taste again. I didn't grab a pic of the Racer 15 but what I can say is that it was fantastic. We had many, many, IPA's and some were rather simple, some were not quite up to snuff, most of them were good-great but this one knocked it out of the park. Very nice beer.

In case you wonder what it's like wandering into a room with more craft beer than you can possibly drink, like I started with..It's awesome! I had a freaking blast. Aside from the beer the crowd was all having fun and there are some things I didn't know about that experience will help with on future visits to the GABF. 1
1) Pretzel necklaces. Whoever came up with this idea was a genius. 
2) Crowd participation. I kept hearing people start yelling at random moments. Eventually it happened close enough to me to figure out but when somebody drops a cup you yell AHHhhhhh! at them. not just you but everybody within 80' as to let them know the world saw what they did and we are not letting it slide. All in fun and why not? There is a huge "we are all in this together" vibe and it's a load of fun. Somebody spilled beer on me, I threw beer all over some girl, I tried to get Luke to shoot a pretend gun made with his own index finger and thumb at somebody and he wouldn't do it (man that was funny). At some point we were asked to take a pic of a group of friends and I told them we would not do it unless I could also have a picture of them and apparently they agreed because here they are and I'd say if a picture is worth a thousand words I feel confident in closing this post right here.