Weekend Photoblogging - Rocky Mountain High
Catching up on the Colorado photoblogging, here is our next installment.
WordGirl and I took a drive on US 24 through the front range of the Rockies to Woodland Park, which used to feature Tres Hombres, the finest blues nightclub serving Tex Mex in the lower 48. Alas, Tres went under a few years back, so we had to settle for some fine barbecue n burrito style fare at the replacement.
In the meantime, we took some fairly nice pictures of the mountains using the telephoto lens at maximum range:
After lunch, it was time to get our altitude legs by driving our teeny tiny rental clown car up Pike's Peak.
Needless to say, the world's a lot different at 14,400 feet. Trees disappear around 12,500 feet, leaving a Martian landscape dotted here and there with unmelted snow (this was late May) and ravens. The temperature at the peak was 30 degrees less than when we started up, and the wind whipped around at 40 mph +. The oxygen was 50% less than at the base, which left us with nasty altitude headaches, muscle fatigue, and nausea.
There is a rest stop at the peak where they hawk the usual dizzying array of crap, and people stop to drink coffee and eat donuts. When we got there, the only thing I wanted to do was go to the bathroom and drive back down, and not necessarily in that order.
It gets better. There is a Pike's Peak road race in which complete lunatics fly up the mountain (about 20 miles to the top), the last half of it a dirt trail with sheer drops off one side. The best time? 11 minutes.
WordGirl and I took a drive on US 24 through the front range of the Rockies to Woodland Park, which used to feature Tres Hombres, the finest blues nightclub serving Tex Mex in the lower 48. Alas, Tres went under a few years back, so we had to settle for some fine barbecue n burrito style fare at the replacement.
In the meantime, we took some fairly nice pictures of the mountains using the telephoto lens at maximum range:
After lunch, it was time to get our altitude legs by driving our teeny tiny rental clown car up Pike's Peak.
Needless to say, the world's a lot different at 14,400 feet. Trees disappear around 12,500 feet, leaving a Martian landscape dotted here and there with unmelted snow (this was late May) and ravens. The temperature at the peak was 30 degrees less than when we started up, and the wind whipped around at 40 mph +. The oxygen was 50% less than at the base, which left us with nasty altitude headaches, muscle fatigue, and nausea.
There is a rest stop at the peak where they hawk the usual dizzying array of crap, and people stop to drink coffee and eat donuts. When we got there, the only thing I wanted to do was go to the bathroom and drive back down, and not necessarily in that order.
It gets better. There is a Pike's Peak road race in which complete lunatics fly up the mountain (about 20 miles to the top), the last half of it a dirt trail with sheer drops off one side. The best time? 11 minutes.
posted by Teflon at 3:32 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
I really love it out there. I lived there for four years when my dad was stationed at Peterson. We used to camp and fish at Rampart Range often. Only did Pike's Peak once, amazingly.
Great pics.
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