Yay for hiking!

Yay for me, another hike so far thats a hike a week!!! This being my second consecutive hike week out of two total hikes in the last six months.. well.. thats not really that impressive to all you fit people. I'm totally pooped and glad I had Adam around to talk with, the dog is really warming up to him which is quite different from when they first met up, I believe Adam and Sam the dog had to be on other sides of large rooms initially - Sams a little shy.

Today was Mt. Baldy, which isn't really a Mt. at all and more of a big foothill leading to a few peaks overlooking Eagle River, Anchorage, and the Matanuska Susitna valley. The cache I went after was called Baldy Eagle and the trek to it wore Adam, Sam, and I out. My legs aren't going to feel very good tomorrow and I plan on stretching tonight, right after I drink the rest of my beer and pass out crying on the couch.

Go hiking people!

Ouch.. Why.. ?

Last night was fun, Skyefoil and I did some us stuff and headed out for ice cream. It should have stayed that innocent, but we rarely let a good thing last for too long. We needed to take the dog for a walk and I knew the perfect place! I had recently tried to find a geocache in the parking lot of a trail head called South Fork in Eagle River, AK. I only had a minimal amount of information about this cache, ended up not finding it, and later found out that it was a puzzle/multi cache listed improperly. Boo..

I knew there were to very real caches in that area however, just up the trail a bit and it seemed like a good place to take the dog off leash and let him find some fuzzies to chase and get some exercise with his people. So I drove us to the trail head and we embarked on a quick walk that ended up taking several hours. The initial cache out of two was 0.7 miles away as the bird flies, straight without taking elevation into effect, so the real linear distance is 4100 feet instead of 3800 once you add elevation in. The next cache along the route was an extra 450 feet away, no big deal, right? It was slow going, we cursed a lot, the ground gave way a lot and made it hard to hike up leisurely, thankfully I had just loaded topographic information into my GPS and knew when the ground would level out, which personally kept me going. We met up with a group of 16 or so teenagers who found a quick route down, snow veins in the hillside had not melted away yet so the teens rolled down head over heel until they were nearly at the bottom of the trail, mad props for being efficient.

0.7 miles turned into 0.5 miles very slowly, we rejoiced when 0.2 miles were left and the ground levelled out dramatically, and we eventually found ourselves between two small peaks (link to topographic map). The hike from this point on was simple and straightforward. We reached a high enough elevation to get some sunshine for a little while, until the sun moved behind one of the peaks, and the dog ran all over the place chasing ground squirrels in the area. We found a lot of new and very intense ground dwelling animal holes. The wind almost blew Skyefoil away and was getting pretty chilly to me, wearing just a button up shirt instead of a coat, so we had to bunker down every so often and let the wind die down a bit. This simple walk was turning into enough mini-adventures to keep me pretty damned happy. I love the elements!

We found the caches (Momma Bear, Cache In The Notch) took some photos and headed home, totally exhausted. The dog curled up in his chair and snored away while we ate our simple dinner. Today I am totally wiped out, and am very thankful for caffeine.

To all you locals, Lets go Geocaching!

The kick butt weekend that kicked my butt

Well, Skyefoil and I went down to Homer Alaska this weekend to check out the sights during Memorial Day. We were fortunate that Sunday was very sunny indeed and totally showed off how pretty the view is.

We figured we would see more than a typical tourist in Homer if we did some geocaching, which took us all over the place and we found some fun hides, and we met other geocachers as well. A total of 14 caches found, 2 not found. One of the 2 we couldn't find appeared to be in around 15 or so feet of water, 45 feet from shore :(

I will post pictures and links to good food and such in "The kick butt weekend that kicked my butt, part II"

Terra Weekendo!!

This weekend was pretty cool for not doing anything too exciting. Most of my time was spent outdoors which was great, I'm really beginning to get into the Summer mode with a lot more momentum than last Summer. Girlfriend is finally feeling better after a month of being sick and this weekend had the gumption to go walk the dog with me on Saturday... which I flipped into an excuse to maintain one of my geocaches... of course. Girlfriend got to view the beaver pond near our house and went with me to my cache and helped go through the contents and reposition the cache into a bit easier location. The dog on the other hand was on a mission to figure out whats making that wonderful smell and ended up finding and standing on one of the beaver huts.

We found some porcelain electrical line insulators all over the place, including a chain of them still stuck together and unbroken just scattered about the wooded area. Part of geocaching is to clean up the world a bit as you run into discarded material, so we slowly dragged the heavy insulators out of the woods and back to the car for disposaling/ebaying/antiques roadshowing. See the gallery here.

I noticed there was a lot of trees flagged for in the surrounding area. Typically new construction projects use EA's (Environmental Analysys) or EIR's (Environmental Impact Reports) to show they studied the surrounding area. Tree flagging is typically a sign that an EA or EIR is being done or has been done on the surrounding area. Trees are flagged for some of the following reasons:

• Boundary of an area to be demolished
• Tree of interest (Archaeological and historic value)
• Waymarks to other areas and trees

Since these markings are purely commercial in nature and typically on public land, feel free to take and dispose of these flags as you run into them. Typically it will slow down environmental reports needed to demolish the area which may be a cause for concern when the developer attempts to obtain a permit to do construction in the area.

Sunday Girlfriend and I took her little sister from Big Brothers Big Sisters to go on what we called a treasure hunt. She helped us find two caches, one girlfriend found by poking at with a stick and the other little sister found all by herself. We signed the logs with her name and she was happy she got to keep some loose change somebody put in on of the caches.

Well Herro There!

Time to pop the cherry on this blog. Hi, I'm whardier.. or hardwire.. or Shane.. depending on how you know me. I only have one social security number for all three identities, let me know if you are interested in it, selling yours, or possibly willing to trade. I am joking of course..

Since I am 10G/Mo restricted on my DSL I can no longer easily host my shizzy on a home server, and since I had a gmail account I instantly obtained a blogger account I can abuse. Yay for me!

I in Alaska now, originally from northern Colorado. My little house in a little commuter town stands tall in its neighborhood allowing me to actively spy.. err be a good protective neighbor.. for many of the houses in the surrounding area. I have a girlfriend who goes by Skyefoil, a dog who is simply named sam, and our 5 cats (in no particular order) - Mia, Emma, Mushroom, Merle, and Putz.

Feel free to come up and visit. We have a spare bedroom that we loan out to strangers occasionally.