| his everlasting
disgust. We wandered around a budding subdivision until spotting a road heading
towards the mountain. Shortly we discovered we were on the wrong road, the
right one being across a wash. A little overland driving (we ask God not to
punish us for being ORVers) brought us to the road and we headed into the
mountains. The road deteriorated quickly and finally reached an impassable pitch. After stopping and looking around we only had three of five vehicles. Three guesses as to one of the missing ones. We sent Larry back down the road to rescue them. Darryl had hit a rock and wiped out his steering. Jack had gotten hung up on a rock and decided to flick It in. Darryl, on the other hand, decided that since the mountain had gotten him, he would get it. Showing admirable courage, if not sense. After walking the road a number of miles we headed up a ridge and soon reached the summit ridge. And - lo and behold - off to the west, not 500 feet below us, was the end of a road, one which we had turned off. Scratch another range from list possibilities, much to the relief of Andy Smatko and Bill Schuler, amongst others. We made an easy descent to the cars, including a slight detour led by Paul, as the leaders were leading from behind. In order to make sure Paul could find his way back to the pavement, we sent Bob Herlihy (In Fred's VW) back out first. However, he took a wrong route in one place and Paul passed him. So when we got back to the other cars - no Paul. Larry and I went back up the road to check the possible mistake points. Nothing. We did have a nice sunset though. An hour later we returned and found that Paul had gotten lost in the subdivision, not the backcountry. Is that good or bad? We had agreed to meet at Christmas Tree Pass to camp that night. When we arrived about 10, we expected to find a campfire going and at least Bob with a cold aluminum can in his hand. It was dead quiet. True to our reputation we went quietly to bed. Believe it - I wouldn't put you on. At a reasonable starting time - in contrast to most leaders' starting times - we were off to the top of Spirit. Shortly we settled into the normal Vitz-Haven loose-herding technique of climbing, which finds the leaders following. It was another beautiful - if too warm - day and the views were superb. Everyone made the summit with no trouble where lunch was consumed amidst a barrage of Linden Puns too horrible to recount. Besides, I forgot them. We were to descend by the third class ridge route, but at the one difficult pitch most of the party elected to go down the other way. The two groups returned to the cars without incident where John congratulated us on our Minor accomplishment. The trip was officially over, but we were staying over to do New York on Monday, while others were heading up to Potosi. Mercifully, John was heading home, leaving us with the following words of wisdom, "Be sure to keep your Vitz about you." |
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| NEWS | ||||
New Management Committee: The following were elected to the DPS ruling hierarchy this year: Jerry Haven, Paul Lipsohn, Howard Stephens, Les Stockton, Ed Treacy. Bylaw Revisions: All the bylaw revisions were approved except the following: |
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