Town Days in Leadville

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Monday, November 20, 2006

Drew called today and I took notes. Please forgive that they are not as personal as he would write himself. They are in Leadville, Colorado until Wednesday and Drew has cell phone service until then. They will leave for the airport on Thanksgiving Day. He is a little nervous because it will be the biggest thing they have attempted so far and will be in a foreign country. He said he knows they are in good hands though. The instructors told them to eat as much as possible while they are waiting to go to Ecuador because they will loose weight in the altitude. It will be a one day flight and they will return on December 14. They will do different things while there. Several 3 day treks. Get acclimated to the altitude doing little things. They will climb a few peaks, then they will have a three day window for the big one. They will never sleep on a mountain. Each time they will leave base camp at 11:00 PM and be off the mountain by Noon. They are still kind of getting over the canyons. They just got back yesterday and all he did was shower and sleep.

He said he enjoyed the slot canyons in Utah the most of anything so far. In many ways, the canyons felt like the Grand Canyon. Normally they cover 11 miles a day with fifty pound packs. When they could, they operated from a base camp, and were able to carry lighter day-packs in the canyons. One of the instructors knew a lot of Butch and Sundance stories and they enjoyed hearing them. Other times they told stories about their favorite foods. This became known as "food porn". They also have "music porn", "radio porn", etc. At one point they saw some guys on ATVs that turned out to be descendants of Butch or Sundance and they were looking for treasure. The last couple days the slot canyons were only a foot wide or so and you had to "chimney" yourself through. One hike down a canyon was 7 miles long and varied from 4 to 10 feet wide but the walls were straight up and over 100 feet tall all the way down the canyon. They have done a lot of rappelling. He said it was a lot of fun.

The camera is in bad shape. It still takes great pictures but it is full of sand and the shutter won't close. One of the guys in the group is a photographer and has the same model camera. He has been teaching Drew.

He is in good spirits and health. Really toned up, he says.

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