Hiked my first 14ers in the Elk range this weekend with Castle and Conundrum Peaks. It was a really long day (14.8 miles and almost 5000 ft of elevation gain), but I had a great time. The Elks have amazing views.
The rest of the pictures are up on Flickr.
And the GPS track:
I was planning to hike Mt. Powell up in the Gore Range this weekend, but once I got up there I had kind of a bad vibe about it, and I couldn’t find a camp site, so after driving all the way past Vail, I called it off and rushed over to Mt. Elbert. It’s not the most exciting hike, but I was pretty sure I’d get a campsite, and I hadn’t done a 14er in like 4 or 5 weeks.
It was pretty close finding a campsite. I think I got the last one in the entire area, but I DID get one, so it worked out.
The hike itself was a lot of fun. It was crowded, but could have been a lot worse. Since this was a repeat and it was crowded, I didn’t waste much time or take many pictures. Basically just some random summit pics, and this panorama:
The 9.35 mile round trip took 3:09, including 15 minutes to eat lunch and take pics at the summit. So far it’s my fastest time on a 14er, but I think I could do better if I had brought my running shoes and a smaller pack. Maybe next time…
In any case, here’s the GPS track:
I realized the other day that I’ve only made one post in the “coding” category. I don’t spend as much of my free time writing code as I used to, but I figured I still do enough that it deserves more than one post. So here’s a quick write up about the latest mini-project I’ve been working on.
I’ve been implementing a (very) simple regular expression library in Python. It doesn’t really compare to the standard library’s ‘re’ module or to Perl’s regular expressions, but I’m mainly doing it to learn the underlying algorithms, and those are similar in the more powerful implementations.
To be honest, the project is mostly a rewrite of Haskell code I wrote and forgot about a few years back. I wanted to add new features, but I didn’t want to use Haskell, so I thought I’d rewrite the whole thing in Python. I got a little ahead of myself, though, and started adding new regex syntax before all of the old features were done. The table below (from the Github project Wiki) shows the supported regex syntax in both version:
| Feature | Example | Python | Haskell |
|---|---|---|---|
| Concatenation | abc | X | X |
| Alternation | a|b | X | X |
| Grouping | (ab)* | X | X |
| Zero or one | a? | X | |
| Closure (zero or more) | a* | X | X |
| One or more | a+ | X | X |
| Numeric quantifiers | a{1,3} | X | |
| Character classes | [a-z] | X | |
| POSIX named character classes | [:alpha:] | X | |
| Negative character classes | [^a-z] |
For most people, the only remotely interesting part of the project are probably the neat finite automata graphs it can produce using GraphViz:
The Wikipedia page for finite automata does a pretty good job explaining what the graph actually means.
There’s only one part of the Haskell code I still need to rewrite: the NFA to DFA conversion routine. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’ve been putting it off because my original Haskell code is so bad. I’m tempted to say it’s the worst code I’ve ever written:
I’m actually a bit disappointed in myself for turning the compiler book’s 10 lines of psuedo-code into that mess. All I know is that when I finally get around to writing the Python version, it will be nothing like that.
The latest code is available at GitHub.
Skipped hiking and camping last weekend to avoid the 4th of July crowds. I heard I-70 was so bad they were “metering” traffic at the Eisenhower tunnel. Instead I did a bit of exploring around Westminster on my bike.
This weekend was back to the mountains, though.
Did a scramble along the east ridge of Pacific Peak, from the book Colorado Scrambles: Climbs Beyong the Beaten Path, and decided to grab “Atlantic” peak while I was there. To date, this is the most difficult scrambling route I’ve done.
Here’s a picture of the full ridge, from near Atlantic Peak. The route goes right along the top of the ridge.
And some of the terrain:
The rest of the photos are on Flickr.
The GPS track:
This weekend’s hiking trip was to 13933 ft. Mt. Hope and 13461 ft. Quail Mountain, near the town of Winfield. I was hoping to avoid crowds again, but there was a big training run for the Leadville 100 ultra-marathon going over Hope Pass, so that didn’t quite work out. Only saw two other people actually hiking Mt. Hope, though, and I had the summits to myself, which is the best part anyway.
The mountain views from the peaks in this area are some of the best in Colorado. The pictures don’t do them justice, but they’re on Flickr anyway.
This one of an old shack on Quail Mountain is my favorite of the bunch:
The GPS track:
Hiked Mt. Ouray, Chipeta Mountain, and Pt. 13472 today. It was only 11.8 miles, but with 7250 feet of elevation gain and no trail, it felt longer. Only saw two other hikers all day – a nice change from the crowds on the 14ers. I was going to do a full “trip report,” but there’s not much to add other than that.
The photos are on Flickr.
The GPS track:
I originally planned on hiking Mt. Shavano and Tabeguache Peak yesterday, but felt like sleeping in and reading a book instead. That lasted until about 3:00, when I decided to go camping and hike some 14ers. Being 3:00 on a Saturday limited my options, but the 14ers around Mt. Democrat seemed like a good choice, since it’s only a couple hours away and there are several great camp sites along the road to the trailhead.
I ended up camping at one of pull off sites a few miles from the “official” camp ground. I was hoping for a clear night so I could stargaze for a while, but it ended up cloudy all night. The only upside was the sunset:
Soon after that picture, it started raining, and then it rained off and on until sometime after I fell asleep. Fortunately it cleared up by morning, and the weather was perfect for hiking.
The road isn’t open to the trailhead yet, blocked by a snow drift about a half mile from the trailhead. The road looked clear past the drift, and what I could see of the trail winding up the mountainside looked clear, so I decided to leave my snowshoes and ice axe in the car.
I hit the trail right around 7, and quickly got to the biggest obstacle of the day: the stream crossing just past the trailhead. The spring snow melt is in full swing, and the rocks that usually serve as stepping stones were completely submerged. I ended up taking off my boots and wading across. Super cold, but a lot better than having wet feet all day.
After that, it didn’t take long to pass the 5 or 6 people who started before me, and by 8:15 I was standing on the summit of Mt. Democrat:
I hung out at the summit for 10 minutes or so, then headed over to Cameron. I wasn’t paying attention at the time, but the timestamps on the photos say it took about an hour to get from Democrat to Cameron’s summit. I only stayed on Cameron long enough to snap a few pictures of the surrounding 14ers. Here’s the next stop, Mt. Lincoln:
The trip over to Lincoln went really fast, and that was fortunate, because there were already clouds moving in. Here’s a look back towards Cameron and Democrat:
Getting to Bross seemed to take forever. Again, I only stayed long enough to snap a few pictures, then headed back to the car. Here’s Mt. Democrat from the summit of Mt. Bross:
I spent most of the day dreading the scree slope on the way down Bross, but to my surprise it didn’t seem so bad this time around.
I was back at the car by 11:15, back home by 2, and by 3 I was sitting on the patio with some iced tea, reading another book. Not bad for 24 hours.
The GPS track:
The full photo set is on Flickr.
It took a month, but I finally ran South Boulder and Bear Peaks in under 1:45. Got back to the car in exactly 1:45, with 2:20 stopped time.
Great timing because next weekend I’m going to start on the 14ers again, and I’m planning to do that every weekend till the end of October, so I wouldn’t have much time for these two.
Lately I’ve switched up my schedule and started biking to work. I’m enjoying the change, but I haven’t completely adjusted yet.
For the longest time my routine after work was to eat a snack, read the news, stretch/exercise, go for a 10-13 mile bike ride, and then jump in the shower. The stretches, ride, and shower would take 2-3 hours and effectively took up all of my free time. If I skipped the snack and news, I would be out of the shower by 8:30, but that never happened, and I was getting really bad with procrastinating. Most nights I wouldn’t get out of the shower until after 11. And then I still had to make dinner…
Last week I finally got fed up with having no free time, so I decided to rearrange the schedule. Now I do the stretches and exercises first thing in the morning, followed by breakfast and the ride to work.
After work I go for the “real” ride.
The direct route between home and work is only 3.5 miles, and I wanted to stay closer to 13, so I had to find a less direct route. The route above is a little over 13 miles and takes about an hour. Just what I wanted.
I’m having a bit of a hard time adjusting. The mornings aren’t bad, but it feels weird having a bunch of free time at night. It’s hard to get started on anything serious because I feel restless, like I should be going for a ride. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, though, and once I do, I have a big stack of books I want to get through.
Yesterday Rob and I rode the first section of the Colorado trail on our bikes. What was supposed to be an ordinary 5-6 hour ride turned into an 8 hour adventure. Writing out the whole story would take too long, but it suffices to say the second half of the trip was a train wreck. Regardless, we both had a lot of fun, and we know a few things not to do next time.
Today I ran South Boulder and Bear Peaks again. I love how convenient these mountains are. I can sleep in and lounge around the house for half the day, then at 3:00 say to myself, “Crap, I’m wasting a nice day,” so I go run South Boulder and Bear Peaks. Afterwards it always feels like like I’ve had an epic day in the mountains.
This time I made it up and down in 1:53, beating my previous best time by over 2 minutes. I’m starting to think 1:45 won’t be as hard as I expected. Just need to keep building my stamina for climbing.
My only complaint is that it’s getting crowded as the weather warms up. I spent a lot of time getting out of people’s way, or waiting for them to get out of mine. Next weekend I’ll start later and hopefully avoid the crowd.
