Lake Isabelle Ice Out & Crosier Mtn 28JUn19-29Jun19

Kala & I and the Wilkes set out from below Brainard Lk headed to Lake Isabelle just 600 ft climb over 4 miles to 10.4K ft elevation. I was intending to fish. From nearly the outset we were in snow drifts - some passed on top, some post-holing across. The ladies turned back after quite a few fields were crossed on our way to Long Lk. Tom & I forged on and ultimately got to Lake Isabelle below the Isabelle glacier in an awesome cirque in the IPWA. The "hike" was brutal through mostly deep snow-covered trail and sometimes just hiking up the snow cliffs with unknown trail locations. I fished for an hour on the 1/2 iced out lake and saw no fish and caught no fish. My shoes and socks were drenched from snowmelt but made it home safely.

Needless to say, I modified my plan to return up past Brainard to another pair of IPWA lakes, the following day. Instead we hatched a plan to hike to a more esoteric and sub-alpine hike to Crosier Mtn. The hike was a bit more aggressive at 2800 ft elevation over 4 miles given the test above but we went. The day was hot from 7K to 9.3K elevation but the destination was awesome. So too were the wildflowers on the way, including many columbine and indian paintbrush.

BOCC Update 24Jun19

Recorded in March on KEXP, aka the best radio studio sound live, BOCC dropped some new stuff, but KEXP just posted. Let me call it Goth Rap at the end - start at 19:20 if you just want new. I am so digging' this band, and especially the Phoebe-led stuff though they are so collaborative it's hard to know.

Better Oblivion Community Center @ KEXP

IoT Monitoring 23Jun19

I am participating in a study by Princeton CSci of the performance & security implications of IoT devices communicating from my network with other computers. I set up a constant monitor on my network which analyzes traffic by watching devices on my network as they communicate with computers not on my network. There's some revealing, but not completely unexpected, stuff. Here's the overview from 12 hours of operation... yep, somebody talked to nodes in Canada, Japan, France, Germany, Ireland, UK and even Czechia... though most of that is NNTP traffic, unless it's masquerading.

Roku is continually offering my viewing statistics to advertising, marketing and viewing companies. The list of them is >50. The traffic in MB is not large but the number of interactions is great and there is no encryption end-to-end on most of this traffic.

Google devices are the chattiest and constantly checking in with someone... good, bad or indifferent, they check in with US google sites and assets, not others.

My other IoT devises like thermostats, sprinkler systems, remote controls, etc. are so far benign and talking to suppliers' sites directly or AWS (where their cloud services reside). There is too much unencrypted traffic in these conversations however. I am a fan and user of products with apps allowing me to easily control systems in my house... there is strong time & place utility in these for me but we need to ensure there's also safety & security in their use.

Grape Ck Still High & Chocolate 20Jun19

Sheesh that's a long dirt road, and a long 4WD trail, to drop into the West Bear section of Grape Ck. I did that today and arrived to find the creek way off color and still high flows. Undaunted I hiked down and remembered the gorgeous remote canyon. I snapped a ton blooming wildflowers and caught a number of small browns in the only slack water spots I could find. Climbing some of the cliff walls to descend was "exciting." It was a warm day calling for Chota waders and just a small butt pack with one fly box - not that that mattered on this challenging day.

Killer Brooklyn Variants Of Forrest's Manhattan Midge 19Jun19

First let me say that my Dad's name was Forrest, it's kind of unusual, and I've read all Pat's Books, and I fish the SPlatte extensively myself; so I am drawn to the Manhattan Midge. Second let me say that these are unquestionable improvements, and I will say why in simple terms: 1) blue, 2) color match and 3) midge symmetry. As evidence I offer: 1) in my field trials - blue works despite its lack of existence in the real river aquatic fly life (SoSueMe), 2) in my field experience fish are not spooked by colors in the fly that seemingly go together and 3) the Manhattan Midge is often tied with too few turns of wire, which is not reflective of our true midge populations' body segmentation. My recipe changes are simple - tie #22 in purple (or black if you deem needed) with XS gunmetal blue wire overwrap (x7 or so) vs copper or silver - no need to be garish with these fish. Use the effective mercury head glass bead for sure but try variants which match the body parts - cobalt blue glass bead matching the wire rib or purple glass bead matching the thread. Killer Brooklyn variants of the Manhattan. I've tied other variants of the Manhattan Midge for years for our waters - it was hard not to so do once reading Pat's stuff on Glamor Madera; still, buy from Forrest as he has a cool name. Sorry for the shitty image.

Summit Weekend Fun 13Jun19 - 16Jun19

Kala and I hiked and festivaled and tested gear at the Nest this weekend. First I hoisted the sails on Mon Ami - of course I dropped a vital $90 part into the lake before finishing the head sail install on the furler - here's the fuller is naked. I'm ready to rock on the Thu night racing series now though - all I need is a fearless crew. Kala joined soon after and we hit ORB.

I received my new 5 wt Sage X rod and Hardy Ultralite CADD 4000 reel from backcountry.com, who sharply beat all other pricing when I called my account manager. Is it too much I have an account manager at an outfitter? The reel is a repeat and mates with the X well-balanced. The X feels similar to the One, like a canon; more on this after field trials. Too, I've upgraded to SA Amplitude Infinity  line in hopes of even better distance, accuracy and floatation; it's a half weight heavy to mate with the power rod. My rod is again marked with 16"/18"/20"/22" lines.

We took a new way toward Buffalo Mtn on Meadow Ck Trail... ultimately it jumps Eccles Pass though we didn't go that far this day. The hike started in nice weather but turned to hail, which is when we turned around. Meadow Ck and other feeder streams were raging from snowmelt, and the upper trail had yet uncleared deadfall. Most folks took the lower turnoff to Lilly Pad Lk but we forged up to find new spots in the Eagles Nest Wild.

Back to the car in warmer weather we headed to the Frisco BBQ Festival. We've been before and ran a similar play - try as many samples from competitors as we can handle. It's a very good festival - we liked "the guys in the green truck" best and enjoyed mango-habanero sauce. Too, we heard some keen music from New Orleans Suspects, a good funk band, but chose not to stay for the Flobots a  strong local alt band. I got a chance to field trail my small rig... humbling - I won't post that movie.

Then, happy Dad's Day... I tried my hand on the new grill, using the smoker box and a GrillEye to make baby back pork ribs with a Memphis rub; they took 4 hours at 225° with hickory chips. Temp control was a bit challenging with wind and changing outside temps but, yeah, yummy.

Summit Grill In Summit County 13Jun19

Dad's Day gift to self... I just finished installing a new Summit S470 grill @ the Nest. Maybe it's a gift to both of us though - Kala didn't like the "feature" of the old propane-based grill here which, when lighting it (which you had to do manually with a grill lighter), might blow up in your face. We finally pulled the trigger and got a new one and I hooked it to our gas line. We have real piezo lighting, a rotisserie, a side burner, a sear station, infrared cooking, a smoker box and lighted everything. It's in and it all works though Lowe's delivered it fully assembled when I asked for it unassembled (to more readily transport it to the deck off the kitchen). So, I disassembled it all and reassembled it on the deck. I also built a gas line extension to get the right stuff up through the deck to the natural gas quick-connect on the grill. So we can forget and leave the grill on accidentally, I installed a 3 hour timer in-line. Below I show the before and after for the gas line install. In other good news, VBC is now distribution, at least in Summit Co. Now we just need to figure out what tasty items to grill on Father's Day.