We survived last Wednesday's Arch Extravaganza, the third of what has become an annual event. Esther, Karla and Howard were the gps techs. Their navagation skills have improved and we usually had a pretty good idea of where we were and needed to go. Jim was the group geek who spotted the arches on the computer and tried to plot a civilized route to each. We planned bushwhacking in 3 areas of the Big South Fork to see 5 arches. The good news is we found 5 arches. The bad news is we were worn out after bushwhacking the first area and left the other 2 for another occasion. We saw the 3 arches we had planned for the first area and another 2 unplanned surprises that were much nicer than the computer led us to believe. We did a pretty good job of avoiding steep terrain but blowdowns were tiresome, perhaps even more so than on prior bushwhacking adventures. I think everybody thought the scenery was magnificent and will be ready to endure the same physical abuse next year but there was quite a bit of cheering when we saw the cars at the end. See Ginger, Bill and Jim's photos.
Last Wednesday's Arch Extravaganza
We survived last Wednesday's Arch Extravaganza, the third of what has become an annual event. Esther, Karla and Howard were the gps techs. Their navagation skills have improved and we usually had a pretty good idea of where we were and needed to go. Jim was the group geek who spotted the arches on the computer and tried to plot a civilized route to each. We planned bushwhacking in 3 areas of the Big South Fork to see 5 arches. The good news is we found 5 arches. The bad news is we were worn out after bushwhacking the first area and left the other 2 for another occasion. We saw the 3 arches we had planned for the first area and another 2 unplanned surprises that were much nicer than the computer led us to believe. We did a pretty good job of avoiding steep terrain but blowdowns were tiresome, perhaps even more so than on prior bushwhacking adventures. I think everybody thought the scenery was magnificent and will be ready to endure the same physical abuse next year but there was quite a bit of cheering when we saw the cars at the end. See Ginger, Bill and Jim's photos.
