March '24

Musings

What a month! We connected with friends all over the state, including another stop in Breck and a meetup with some old friends in Crestone. We skied Copper and Taos, complete with another 8" powder day. Then we headed south and broke out the climbing gear, exploring New Mexico's surprisingly plentiful and high quality climbing at crags including Last Chance Canyon, Diablo Canyon, White Rock, and Mud Mountain. We did not get abducted by aliens in Roswell. Woodford survived his first backpacking trip in the Santa Fe National Forest. And we confirmed our low stoke for Texas, although Guadalupe Mountain and Hueco Tanks didn't suck.

As we explored Guadalupe, Carlsbad Caverns, and White Sands National Parks, along with countless state and local parks, two things became clear: 1) outdoor recreation is growing while land conservation is not, and 2) our parks are underfunded and understaffed. It's great to see more people in the outdoors, but we have not kept up with protecting more land and increasing budgets appropriately to support equitable access to the outdoors. The data supports this: outdoor recreation has increased 26% in the past decade, while NPS funding has only increased 7%. The Outdoor State must come together and prioritize land conservation and funding to be able to continue to enjoy the activities we love!

For advocacy, we continued engagement with local and national groups to encourage policy makers to support climate initiatives and land conservation. We also rolled up our sleeves and joined the BLM and NM CRAG to clean up and protect land in the Diablo Canyon Recreation Area.

On education, we decided to return to more structured learning in addition to book, podcasts, and museums. We both picked up Duo Lingo to work on some remedial Spanish. Chloe started an online crash course on matrix math, linear algebra, and calculus in preparation to take an advanced econometrics and coding course. Ben began Nuclear Energy: Science, Systems, and Society, an MITx course covering fundamental nuclear physics and applications.

Four months in and we are really hitting our stride this month! We successfully boondocked the entire month, rolled with the punches when things went wrong, and balanced our time to hit all our KPIs. And at a third of the way through, both of us are starting to get, dare I say, excited, about returning fresh and recharged to full time employment.

Trip Report

We started the month with another long weekend in Breckenridge, which is where we started our trip in December. It was remarkable to see how much more comfortable we were with winter driving, parking in the snow, and handling the cold after 3 months of practice! It was a total non-issue when our grey water pump was clogged, because we'd dealt with enough issues to be confident that we can fix anything on our rig. We were able to enjoy the snow with two days of skiing at Copper and our last XC skiing day at Baker's Tank.

From there, we headed down to the San Luis Valley to climb Penitentes Canyon and visit friends in Crestone. We had the unexpected pleasure of meeting up with a long time friend who lives in Mexico but was conveniently in town! After some great home cooked meals, we continued south to Taos, which allows camping in their parking lot. We skied Sipapu with friends, and joined a ranger led ski run where we learned about fire management, the impact of climate change on wildlife, and ski resort water usage.

After hanging up the skis, we made a game time weather decisions to rearrange our NM and TX itinerary, heading down to Truth or Consequences for more rock climbing and a wonderful hot spring. From there, we drove over to BLM land outside of Carlsbad, which served as a great basecamp to summit the tallest peak in Texas, explore Carlsbad Canyons, and climb in Last Chance Canyon.

Again, we reworked our itinerary to accommodate some rain, but finally made it to Heuco Tanks, the storied bouldering area in a beautiful oasis. We got our asses kicked by some sharp rock and steep bouldering, but were glad we checked it out. From there, we headed up to Alamogordo, a surprising town right by White Sands National Park, before heading up to Santa Fe and Los Alamos to climb Diablo Canyon and White Rock. Diablo Canyon has some of the most impressive climbing we've seen, including Hellboy, a 150 ft 5.8+. White Rock was another pleasant surprise, with highly featured basalt from 5.fun to 5.11a.

We rounded out the trip with Woodford's first backpacking trip! We chose San Antonio Hot Springs, a mellow 5 miles each way. The springs were incredible, but we were unprepared for the overnight low of 20F. Nevertheless, we persevered, and got some sleep in between Woodford barking at the wind and toe numbing cold.

Of note, we didn't stay in a single developed campground! Our solar and battery provided all the power we needed, even to run the AC during the day. And while fresh water and dump stations are still harder to come by, we're starting to figure out tips and tricks to make it easier.