Oh. That guy. He was gone?
Yeah, I know, right? It's not that I wouldn't have missed him. It's that if he was gone, it was like, for what? A day or two?
I've been offline myself for the past couple of days, preparing for a 14er. I was preparing to hike San Luis Peak with my outdoor adventure group. With forecast winds of 40-50 kts sustained, and gusts to 70 kts, along with early morning temps in the high teens, I cancelled. I've got the gear to survive that, but as experience has shown me, most of the members of my group would have been under-prepared. So instead we camped just west of Mount Rosa, at about 9,400', and hiked to the top yesterday. There were some pretty good winds Saturday evening and Sunday morning (lots of dust in the air), but the area where we camped was sheltered, and the temps were mild. The lowest overnight temp was 42 deg. Just low enough to appreciate the hot coffee in the morning!
On a far sadder note, I was at that camp site in 2009 and it was pristine. Well-used, but well-respected by those who used it. When I arrived there on Saturday, it was quite literally shot all to hell. There were more than 1,000 empty shotgun shells lying around, along with hundreds of casings of other calibers ranging from 9mm to 30-06 lying around. Nearly a dozen very large trees had been shot down, most of them in the last few weeks, with tons of lead (mostly lead shot) still embedded in the trunks, about 4 feet off the ground. Dozens of used targets were lying all around, as were beer bottles and various pieces of plywood against which targets had been placed.
I'll be starting a thread on this with far more detail, including many pictures, later this evening.
Back to the OP: Welcome back, M!
