Labor Day 07': Sawtooth Glory

I think these pictures speak for themselves...

One Year in the Blink of an Eye

Everyone agrees that their first year of college flies by, and by the time they've graduated agree that college itself passes in the blink of an eye, but the first year of marriage flies by while allowing you to still slow down and savor the gift that God has given you in your wife. Kim and I have had quite the year between me finishing my senior year at Whitworth and her working in an architecture firm downtown Spokane, to moving to Moscow where she is now finishing her education and i'm now working full time at a property management/real estate company. Life is a roller coaster after college is over and being married helps give some glue and stability to the chaos that the "real world" throws at you.

It's easy to become complacent in loving your wife. While you date someone there is a constant desire to impress upon the other person your worth as a possible husband or wife in the future. How easy it is to slip away from holding yourself to the same standard once your married and can "relax" around the other person. That's why they say marriage is a commitment, it's something that must be intentionally focused on, it will not simply work itself out the same way that dating did. We owe it to our spouses to be intentional in the way we love them and make them feel special, the same way we did when we were dating and longed to live and romance them for the rest of our lives!

Here are some pictures from our first anniversary to Vancouver, British Columbia. We stayed in some gorgeous hotels for dirt cheap because we had some hotel points through Starwood preferred guest. We looked at Regent College, a non-denominational seminary on the University of British Columbia campus. Vancouver is a beautiful city that commands green hills and blue ocean water all around it. God has blessed the earth with it's presence.

Settling in to Moscow

Ok, so Kim and i have been here over a month and we still feel like we are settling in to Moscow.

Good news though, i recently was hired as a Property Manager for Team Idaho Real Estate. It's a desk job that's stretching my idea of the kind of work i would be doing after i graduate with my bachelors in Theology. The church fell through simply because they were flaky and took way to long to give me any sort of answer. So when Team Idaho offered me the salaried position, i couldn't say no. It's no ministry, but it is providing me with countless number of office skills that will someday be more handy than i realize. It's downtown Moscow on Main st. right across from all the coffee shops. It's a fun atmosphere and my boss is a stand up guy.

Kim has been working alot on her online class and somewhat looking forward to going back to school on the 20th of August. The next step in settling in is to find a church we enjoy together. We're going to check out Trinity Baptist this Sunday together, i never was much of a church shopper. O and by the way, if you haven't seen transformers, it's a must.

Loon Lake - Salmon River Mountains

There's not much to do around our apartment in Moscow when it's 90+ outside except swim. But most of the swimming holes near us in Latah County seem to be filled with more algae and duck feces than water. Why not go to an alpine lake for the weekend with perfectly crystal clear blue water at the base of 9,000' mountains?

Emily Seaman, Kim and I decided to do just that and left for Loon lake, Located in the Lick Creek Mountain subrange of the Salmon River Mountains, early Sunday morning. We drove through Riggins and turned off in beautiful McCall to head north into the wilderness. At the trailhead we rearranged our packs and distributed the weight and took off for an adventure in God's pristine backcountry.

The hike began along the Secesh river, the largest river in the area that feeds the Salmon River, and continued at a level elevation for about four miles. This part of the hike was gorgeous and the perfect temperature at 10 in the morning. We could always see the river on this section and rarely had any elevation to climb. The river was a copper color and a spawning point for chinook salmon later in the summer. We didn't see any, but had we i'm sure i would have jumped in and captured it for a dinner feast. In parts the river was 30 yards wide and in others it was only 5. This was the first real river hike I had done, though Kim had done plenty in Colorado so it didn't impress her as much as it did me. At the four mile mark we crossed the river on an old bridge built in the 1910's and had lunch along side the running water.

After our PB&J heaven, we entered the final stretch of the hike to Loon lake. We hiked away from the Secesh river and up along Loon Creek for a mile and a half. It couldn't be considered strenuous simply for how short it was, but we climbed a considerable amount of elevation in a mile or so. This part of the hike was through a beautiful sparse forest that kept the sun off us for the most part. About a half mile before the lake we crossed loon meadow which was fantastically beautiful on the eyes for how green everything was. We met up with loon lake at its outlet of Loon creek and were stunned by how clear the water was. No murky algae here. Although we saw plenty of tadpoles, frogs, minnows, and water snakes to remind us that this was still a rugged lake. After our first step into the water we were overjoyed by how warm it was. But first we found our campsite and unpacked our tent. Then we put on our bathing suits and hit the lake running. The amazing thing was we walked a quarter of the way across the lake and the water never got above our chests. It was a shallow lake and that was the reason for why it was so warm. The clay and seaweed mixture farther out gave us the willies at points but it sure was the most refreshing event of the day.

Afterwards we gathered wood so we wouldn't have to do it in the dark and hiked around the east shore of the lake to reach a famous B-23 Bomber crash site. It was a bushwacking adventure but the plane itself was very large. The wings had been snapped off when the plane crash landed during WWII but the fuselage was still in tact. It was quite the site to see after our hike. We made dinner and had an evening fire and called it quits for the night.

The next morning we cooked some oatmeal and packed our gear up. The hike out was a mile shorter than the hike in. We left loon lake and traveled in and out of meadows and over creeks on the west side of the Secesh river, stopping for cliff bars and water at the various bridges along the way. It was through a burned region of the forest from the 1994 burn which gave us beautiful views through the twig like trees. 2 hours later we had arrived back at the trailhead and completed our loop in the backcountry. Till next time...

Geiger Lakes - Cabinet Mountains

Kimberly and I took our first backpacking trip together into the cabinet mountains located just east of the the Idaho-Montana border. We woke up at 5am and had good ol' McDonalds on the way through sandpoint and arrived at the trailhead about 5 hours later, 10 am, a little longer drive than we expected. But lo and behold the weather was perfect and the temperature a mid 60 to mid 70 swell. We finished arranging our packs and headed out into the wilderness.

From the very beginning of the trailhead we had many warnings of grizzly and black bear sightings, nothing short of giving me a natural high filled with the excitement of seeing a bear in the wild. Though i hope to never see one unless i'm on a ridge and they're on a field 2,000 feet below me. But still the other hiker we saw that said he spotted a large black bear earlier was enough to remind us that we were not in good ol' spokompton anymore, but in God's country. We crossed the bridge and began our ascent to Lower Geiger lake. A steady climb over an hour and a half provided a wonderful lake surrounded by glacier covered peaks and a large ever present waterfall resounding God's voice at the end of the lake. We pulled up and had our PB&J sandwiches with some nuts and meatstick.

After lunch we hiked out from the Lower lake and headed towards the Upper Geiger Lake. Not much longer than an hour of a hike from our lunch spot we waded down through the muddy southern outlet of Upper Geiger lake to the shoreline for a gorgeous view of rock and lake. Had this lake not been so muddy on the banks we would have camped here. So we captured some photos and headed to the pass along the Cabinet Divide above the Upper Geiger lake. It was windy as all get out sketchy on the icefields. Yet the views back towards upper geiger lake were astounding and the other side was quite the drop.

At this 4 mile mark on top of the pass, we headed back down to Lower Geiger Lake where we made our campsite for the night around 4pm. Kim filtered the water that we so needed and i started the fire. After eating and walking around the rocky banks of the lake, we recoiled back into our tent before 9pm.

The next morning we woke with a large deer in our campsite that was not skiddish with us. We had breakfast and tried to hike to the waterfall on the lake but couldn't do to the insanely thick brush that would whip us in the face. So we headed back to our car to end our first backpacking trip together. We drove from the trailhead to meet Kim's family in Glacier and had a wonderful time with them. Who knows where we'll go next...

Pyramid Ball Lakes - Selkirk Mountains

This past weekend I took a three day backpacking trip into the Selkirk Mountains (the range between Priest Lake and Bonners Ferry just north of Sandpoint) with my good friend Jim Czirr, Nate Cropper, and Craig Nelson. With the beginning of summer around the bend, the outdoor tastebuds in us enthusiasts for God's creation begin to salivate with anticipation for the coming months in the outdoors. The beginning of June is an early time to get out into the mountains with all the snow still remaining; however the past few weeks of heat have managed to melt most of the mountains snow to allow easy access to this trailhead and the system of lakes and peaks in the area.

We drove in the first night and camped at the trailhead while the sun went down. Craig told crazy marine stories and share with us a hollywood story line him and his buds came up with.

Saturday we woke with God's alarm clock, AKA the 4:30 sunrise. Once the sun's up in the wilderness, there aint no more sleeping one can do in a tent. We cooked oatmeal over a camp stove and got ready for the long hike ahead of us. At about 8am we left the camp site and ventured up the beginning of the trail to Pyramid lake (picture above). Half of this section was snow free and the rest was covered in deep snow drifts that one of us every now and then non-chalantly fell into up to our knees. An hour later of trekking and trying to find the trail in the snow we arrived at the east end of Pyramid lake. It was partially frozen but gorgeous in the sunlight.

From here we took off on the second leg to Ball lake, the southern alpine lake in this area. The snow was so deep that it was impossible for us to find the trail after Pyramid lake. We knew which direction Ball lake was so we started out towards it but realized after about a half an hour we were hiking too far in the wrong direction, we had passed it. We were hiking along the face of a ridge and were constantly falling into holes under the snow drifts. However the view down the Trout Creek valley from here was definitely breathtaking. After realizing we were going too far south we traversed straight up the ridgeside that we were on. Jim led the way and created a ladder of steps in the snow that we each climbed at about a 60 degree angle up the ridge. We were exhausted at the top of the ridge and rested for a while before continuing on the ridge towards Ball lake. After traversing the ridge above Pyramid lake we sloped down into the bowl that is Ball lake. We pulled up and had lunch in this frozen lake. I guess the word "Frozen" means nothing to Jim because he definitely went for a naked man swim in the only unfrozen part of the lake and then ran around like a 8 year old in Toys R' Us on the frozen icetop. At this point we were beginning to feel the sun's effects on our skin. We had plenty of sunscreen on but it can only do so much when your at 6500' and the sun is attacking you from the sky and reflecting off of the snow itself. It was pretty much a convection oven in which every part of our skin that was showing was becoming cooked!

After spending lunch on the frozen lake, we hiked out of the bowl and leg three toward pyramid peak, 7380'. The snow was tiring our legs out from all the sinking that was happening and the wasted energy that is associated with it. We made it to the top of the ridge that runs from Ball lake to Pyramid peak and began sliding down on our rear ends on some parts of the ridge and traversing other parts. We made it to the base of Pyramid peak at about 1:30 and began the straight hike up the mountain. I don't advise hiking straight up a snow covered mountain above 6000'. Needless to say after recovering from bedrest and my appendectomy, i needed a little push from the guys to get to the top. But o' the wonderful 360 degree view from the top of Pyramid peak. We crashed here for about 45 minutes before beginning the final leg down to our campsite at Pyramid lake. We ski'd down Pyramid peak on our boots and made the quick hike out back to the eastern edge of Pyramid lake where we set up camp and made a fire. We were dog tired, Craig went to bed at 8:30 and the rest of us were out soon enough. We couldn't have found a better camp site and crashed for the night. The next morning we arose with the sun once again and bushwacked our way back to the trailhead with the help of my GPS, a wonderful little tool. Who needs a trail when you have a GPS, heh. We made it to the car around 9:00am and conquered the Pyramid-Ball alpine lake area. Real men are forged in times like this. God has created a wonderful wilderness area just north of Sandpoint that all should take time to explore and see! To God be the glory now and forever!

Blog?

Well i've been talked into creating my own blog and found it my be a good idea to keep in touch with all those who leave after college as well as family who wonder what on earth I am up to these days. TADAAA! Here it is!