10.22.2007 | 2:10 pm | National Parks, Tanzania, Serengeti National Park, Ngorongoro Cons Area
Here is the first crop of photos from Tanzania. The page contains some of the wildlife images from our safari to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro. Not all of the photos are the best photographic quality. Shooting conditions in the Serengeti are challenging at best, but these are some of the better ones.
Let me just say what a tremendous time we had! For four days Linda and I, and our jeep-mates Bill and Diane (more about the rest of our group in an upcoming post), drove around the Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater watching wildlife and taking pictures from the open top of an africanized - very strong suspension, very tough - Toyota Land Cruiser. Several times we were so close to lions that we could hear the bones crunch. It was one National Geographic moment after another. We seldom went more than five or ten minutes during the day without seeing some type of wildlife. It was also seldom that we went more than five or ten minutes during the night without hearing some sort of wildlfe noise from our tent!
Our great thanks to our host and guide Kambona for the amazing safari and climb that he put on. His vast experience and knowledge were evident in every detail of the trip. His pleasant and relaxed nature (hakuna matata) made the trip comfortable and trouble free for us. If there was any detail of the trip he didn’t have covered, I didn’t notice it. If you ever contemplate traveling to Tanzania or other destinations in Africa you need to contact Kambona. Everything about his operation is top notch and first class. I’ll be explaining more about this in a future post.
Also thanks to Saimon, our driver, who waited patiently and without complaint each time I lingered to photograph animals that he undoubtedly thought to be ordinary and mundane (like zebras and giraffes).
I hope these photos give you a feel for the variety and proximity of the wildlife we encountered.
Begin humming National Geographic theme music now… (click)
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08.11.2007 | 12:06 pm | National Parks, US National Parks, Grand Teton NP, General Info
Summiting the Grand Teton (13,770 ft) August 10, 2007
Ok. I know it’s taken a while to get this posted. But of all the training hikes I’ve been on to get ready for Kilimanjaro, I want to post this experience. I have a good friend that offered to take me up the Grand Teton (13,770 ft) as a shakedown hike. So we took our families to Grand Teton National Park for a few days. We took them on the boat ride on Jenny Lake and hiked to inspiration point. We camped in Gros Ventre (grow-vaunt) campground and on Friday, August 10 left our families to play in the park while we made a summit attempt.
We left from the Lupine Meadows trailhead at 5:00 a.m. and had reached the lower saddle by 9:30 a.m. We planned to take the Owens-Spalding route, and as there are so many great and detailed descriptions of it on the Internet, I’m not going to include too many details here. Suffice it to say it’s steep, rugged, and beautiful.
Just above the lower saddle we missed the “Eye of the Needle” and ended up climbing a small pitch or two that we didn’t need to. But that just served as a good warm-up. We hit the upper saddle around noon. While this is not a seriously technical route, the magnitude of the exposures really took me by surprise. Looking down on Cascade Canyon from the upper saddle was like looking out of an airplane. As I traversed the “Belly Crawl” I found it necessary to focus directly on the rocks, not looking down. I’m not usually squeamish about heights, but this was a challenge for me, as were the couple of pitches after that. Thankfully I was with an experienced friend that not only lent technical expertise, but moral support.
At this point we got behind a group of five guys from Kaysville, Utah. They offered to let us go by, but after talking with them we decided to group up. Together we had enough rope to do the big rappel on the decent instead of having to down climb from the peak to the upper saddle.
About the time we hit the upper saddle, the wind really picked up and a series of dark clouds spitting snow granules pulsed over us for the next several hours. But we finally summited around 4:00 p.m. The view was indescribable. Thanks to the weather we enjoyed our moment briefly, quickly took our summit pictures and began the decent. As I waited my turn at the top of the 120 foot rappel the wind was blowing the snow horizontally. I can say with certainty that I’ve never been so cold in August.
The “Big Rappel” was exhilarating in every sense, which was mostly due to the negative pitch it developed after about the first third of the decent. There’s just nothing to get the blood going like dangling from a rope looking down thousands of feet over Eastern Idaho as you literally twist in the wind.
We finished the rappel around 6:00 p.m., and after planting our feet on terra firma, we began the steep but non-technical decent to the trailhead. It was dark by the time we hit the meadows, and the most difficult part of this stretch was probably trying to navigate the boulders in the dark. We did get slightly off trail a couple of times, but were quickly able to correct and continue our trudge down the mountain. Once we cleared the boulders, it was just an exercise in endurance, and we finally reached the car at 11:30 p.m.
Total for the day: 18 miles and 7,000 foot ascent and decent.
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