This trip we decided to check out the Grapevine Mountain range which is a zone I haven’t spend time around in Death Valley because it’s in the North near the Scotty’s Castle section of the park. It feels like when storms hit, it also gets maintenance last since it no longer has a heavily visited roadside attraction like the Badwater area. One of the canyons I had always been interested in from its picture of smooth runnels was Goblin Canyon (3A III 5-9r 80ft). I found canyons in this zone to have a characteristic of mostly decent rock with some sections of chossy hardpack with longer approaches and relatively short technical sections. Goblin delivered both a fun medium sized canyon and a bunch of fun runnels to descend.
Of the few thousand people who live on Haida Gwaii, 1,000 live in the town of Daajing Giids near Robertson’s Island where I stayed on my visit. As I said introducing my kayaking trip here, it feels like the inner corridor of Alaska: mostly undisturbed nature with bountiful resources (at least in these ‘warm’ summer months) punctuated by small communities. As in many small communities, you more easily know your neighbors, they are more willing you help you out, people have to work together to get things done themselves and gossip abounds.
Three 1-2 hrs flights followed by a bus, ferry, friend’s car, friend’s boat and finally a friend’s ATV to help carry our bags, we finally arrived at Sadie’s mom’s place on Robertson Island near the village of Daajing Giids on the Haida Gwaii archipelago in British Colombia, Canada. It feels like the inner corridor of Alaska: ocean surrounding heavily forested misty mountains where there is little development and abundant bald eagles. Our first goal is to explore indigenous cultural sites and nature of Gwaii Haanas National Reserve in the South via eight-day ocean kayak trip guided by Green Coast Kayaking totaling 45 nautical miles.
This last week we drove out to Zion for a “Surprise, Rad Outdoor Girls Trip” for my partner Sadie. We joked about how she was like our dog Piton when he gets in the car, “No idea where they are going, but stoked for the adventure”. Things kicked off to a good start when ten minutes after we arrived at our basecamp in Virgin, her sisters unexpectedly (for her) walked through the door. I haven’t seen someone this surprised in a while where it hits multiple times. First confusion, then some realization, then back to disbelief. Very fun! After a couple days, the sisters left for home and our canyon friends showed up. Throughout the week we’ll have added two more canyon descents to our dog’s tick-list, descended four ourselves, gotten great views on a multi-pitch and had hundreds of laughs.
Excited to get back to South America and traveling instead of just vacation, Sadie and I took off to Colombia for three weeks. We spent about a week in Medellín, Minca (North Coast) and Salento (Central Coffee Region) respectively. The big thing to know is that Colombia is pretty safe now (aside from a couple specific regions) with a very active tourist industry that seems likely to keep it that way. If you follow basic traveler safety tips for any foreigner who is rich by local standards, you’ll have a fine time.
View of Tolima in the clouds with Finca La Playa in foreground
One of the things we were most excited about in Colombia was a summit attempt on a 17,000+ ft glaciated volcano in the Northern Andes: Nevado del Tolima. The ascent is pretty non-technical and guides don’t require any previous mountaineering knowledge or fitness restriction. There are multiple guide services and itinerary for this trek between 3-5 days, some with a stop over to a natural hot springs, some extending to hit the two other nearby glaciated peaks. We booked a guide for four days with SAWA Travel with 12,000 ft of gain and picked up one extra person on the itinerary for a little lower cost (still $450 pp). We wanted to use a guide to help us navigate logistics, local weather and contribute to the local economy. I think a guide is required to attempt the summit, but I’m not sure.
There is a lot of interesting story about finding this canyon, our guide, getting to San Carlos and about the area. However, if you are here just to know about the canyoneering descent, I’ll get right to that and talk about the rest later. We descended the La Chorrera – Inferior (lower) section of this canyon with many 100+ ft less-than-vertical rappels often involving (but not through) flowing water during what seemed like low-flow conditions (it hadn’t rained in a couple weeks). It was a great, non-touristy canyoneering experience guided by Manuel of Eco Guías Colombia who provided gear and wetsuits (one fit me at 6’6”!) and was exactly the authentic canyoneering experience I was looking for.
While there are over a dozen coffee tours in Salento (and dozens more elsewhere in the county) to choose from that give you the general information on how coffee is grown, harvested and produced… I wanted to specifically try “Coffee Cupping” (i.e. coffee tasting) because I’ve never liked the taste of coffee but wanted to see what ‘good coffee’ tasted like and how it varied. For this reason (and because Ocaso was close to where we were staying) we chose the “Premium Coffee Tour” from Ocaso. This was 100.000 COP ($29) per person in Jan-2024.
When you think of Colombia there are two consumable products that start with “C” that come to mind and one of them is Coffee! Anywhere there is coffee and tourists in Colombia, there are coffee farm tours. We had a great time on some cocoa tours in Costa Rica and love learning about local things while traveling so went on a couple of them. Here is what we learned:
Trying to find a small-medium canyon in Death Valley with a mixed experience group is always difficult. However, we decided to give Big Shit Canyon (3A IV 11r 190ft) a go with a very early start so we could be back at camp before sunset to cook, setup and prep for our huge NYE celebration. Every Death Valley canyon truly has its own character. This one had a very solid approach on good rock (2.4 mi, 2900 ft) with a technical ridge scramble, a lot of down climbing and very accessible, solid anchors. The only questionable part was the canyon’s name…and maybe descending from the ridge.
