A Mountain of Photos

Friday Night

The solar group (minus Keara) and I walked to downtown Bozeman for pizza.  There was an ordeal with the check because there were a lot of us and some people didn’t bring cash...it was a mess.  Some good came out of it though, because Eric and I got to make all kinds of jokes about this article:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/52324

The rest of the solars went to see a movie but I came back here and traded music with Robbie, Chris, and Austin.  Bedtime was early because of...

Mountain Climbing on Saturday!  

Just a warning, I took a lot of pictures.  We split up into a few cars and made our way to Middle Cottonwood Canyon.

On the way to the trailhead.

We had to cross the creek (multiple creeks?) dozens of times.  The water was frigid, too, being snowmelt and all.  I wore my boots so I could just stomp through, but most people wore tennis shoes and got to rock-hop.  Or have wet feet.

We had a snack break in this meadow.

And then...it got snowy.

And it only got snowier.

Finally we were wading through calf-deep snow and decided to call it quits because no one was anticipating snow, at least until we got closer to the summit.  One of the professors found a rocky outcropping and it was decided that we should have lunch there and then turn back.  I'm pretty sure he meant the rocks in the foreground of the picture...

But we kind of got overly ambitious....

And chose a picnic spot much higher than that.

Nick's up there in the corner...I'm not titling the camera or anything, by the way.  It was quite a vertical experience.  The picture below is looking down at Rob and Austin

Then the fun part!  We had to get back down.

Rather than climb down all the rocks we climbed up we found a rock-less part of the hill.  Unfortunately, this meant that there was absolutely no footing and we pretty much ended up sliding on our butts the entire way down.  Nick is about to pave the way in the photo above, I'm kind of sad I didn't catch that.  I did get the aftermath (we all ended up sliding down the path that Nick blazed and all ended up dogpiled at the base of this tree) below.

Actually, I lied.  Austin (below) fared much better than the rest of us.

So after being cold and snowy and wet we made our way back to Roskie...nice scenery...

This momma duck hated our guts.

Speaking of guts and gross things, I got lovely bloody blisters.  You probably shouldn't check this out if you're squeamish.

Everyone split and cleaned up for a while, and then later I hung around with some people and watched Ocean’s 11 in Jenna’s room.

Sunday

Before the day even started it was designated as a lazy day.  A group of us woke up, got donuts from the Donut Man next to Roskie - best donuts ever - and had breakfast at the duck pond.  Later I walked to the Gallatin Valley Mall to get a camera cord but instead got a memory card adapter because no one in the universe has a cord that will fit my camera.  The walk was nice - about a mile and a half, wonderful weather.

Later I got Nick to add some air to my bike's tires, and from there it progressed to looking at the gears...brakes...kickstand...you know how bike nerds are.  I should have known that a tune-up was inevitable.  It’s like that 'If you Give a Mouse a Cookie' book.

Riding through Roskie.

Oh yeah, and the parking lot has been turned into Camperland.

Fixin'

I now have neighbors, which is sad.  It’s also really hilarious because they’re all middle aged women here for some leadership retreat.  They’re so loud!  I thought that the stereotype was that you got quieter as you got older?

Today

I had a pretty standard day: go to lab at 9, SUB at noon, come back here around five.  After work I lounged around in the sunshine, because the weather is fantastic!