We sat outside briefly on Saturday afternoon but it was too hot and humid to stay long. I also spent time working on cleaning up my mess in the basement and made a good dent in the papers and correspondence I have kept over the last 40 years. Did I mention that I am a packrat and a slob? I have everything filed in folders now at least so that I can review when I have time. I also brought some of my college notes from my geology classes upstairs. I took notes in class and then rewrote them legibly, and I am looking forward to revisiting Dr. Heald's mineralogy classes and Structural Geology again soon.
It was a fun trip down memory lane reading some of the notes from family, old high school friends, and other campers I met at Skyland Camp in Crested Butte, CO the summers of 1974 and 1975. I now plan to work my way through the folders of letters from family and friends.
I started a Facebook Group for Skyland Camp a few years ago and have reconnected with a number of my friends through that collaborative effort and enjoyed sharing my pictures and memories and viewing theirs. I found my "Kangasheep Card" from 1975, when I went on 4 different backpacking trips, the longest being the only 5-day backpack in camp history. The card says that I ascended 37,726 feet in 6 weeks time, and I believe that I climbed seven different 14,000+ foot mountains. That amounts to an average of 900' vertical climb for each of the 42 days I was at camp! It was grueling, but an awesome adventure with the counselors and campers, sliding down long snow slopes in August, getting snowed on one night at our 12,000' camp sight, fording streams, eating gorp by the handfuls, mixing orange Tang with snow, and seeing some amazing sights!
So, one of our stops in Colorado with my Dad and brothers Forest and Chuck in September will be to the Crested Butte area. Most people are familiar with Crested Butte because of the spectacular skiing on the western slope of the mountain. My dad worked on a ranch in the area when he was a young man, and the camp was built on the south side of Mt. Crested Butte. The girls slept in Quonset huts and the guys slept in covered wagons with canvas tops. I haven't been back to the area since 1975, so I am eager to see what the area looks like now and ascend to the top of the mountain via the chair lift and then hike to the summit like I did in both '74 and '75. We ascended to the peak by walking back then as the ski lift wasn't open in the summertime, and it took a large portion of the day. We also took a whole day horseback ride around the base of the mountain, which was a blast! I'd like to do a half-day horseback ride here if we have time. May also have to try the zipline course at the ski area also while we are there. There are a few other ziplines across the state I hope to visit, experience, and take some pictures at for the blog, making great memories along the way!
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