By mircea:
By andrei:
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
Geeks in the Canyon
Next morning we got up and had a little surprise. 2 of us were missing because of "her" having to undertake surgery. Appendicitis sucks.
The remaining 5 of us started our hike at about 9 am. Mircea and I were warned that we should not stop every 2 seconds to take pictures. The plan was to take a break at every 30 minutes.
Ohhh and btw Mircea and I were packing 3kg of photo gear and a couple liters of water.
This piece of information will be relevant pretty soon.
We've chosen the Bright Angel Trail which is labeled strenuous. The distance from the rim to the bottom of the canyon is 4400 feet and the road is 19 miles long. Most of the people that go down and back up do this in 2 days. We descended 3000 feet and climbed back up in 6-7 hours :D.
The scenery is beautiful and until you get there you can't realise the scale of the canyon. It's huge. I mean it ...it's huge.
The funny part about having google t-shirts is that a lot of people talk to you. They ask you if you're really working at google, they tell you that they love google and stuff like that.
In the next photo you can see a falcon. They were flying in circles above us. Sadly for them none of us fainted so they could feast on us :).
"Googlers invade the canyon" seems like a good title for the next pic.
A small .....chipmunk ?:D
After 1-2 hours of descent we decided it was time to stop and head back up otherwise we would have lost the helicopter ride.
I think that we descended 3000 feet or smth and there were 1400 feet left until we reached
the bottom of the canyon.
The ascent was trickier than we expected. Let's be honest ...we're geeks. The only exercise we get is when we go to the minikitchens searching for phood.
Mircea had a really tough time in this ascent and at some point we started carrying his backup swaping it beetween us. Kudos go to Andrei for taking good care of Mircea and helping him complete the hike.
Marius carrying 2 backpacks :D. GG mars.
A quick pit stop.
When we began the descent the sun was shinning, it was hot and extremely dry. At some point
we were fortunate enough to get some cloud coverage but this turned out to be a double edged blade. When we were almost near the top (perhaps half an hour away) it started raining "cats and dogs". We were soaking wet. But as this wasn't enough the rain got a little more ...solid and pieces of ice started falling from the sky. Pretty cool. You should have seen the five of us and 2 fellow hikers trying to take cover behind a small rock. Kinda' pointless. Some of us were lucky enough to have a t-shirt or smth with them and we've changed out of our wet clothes.
Finally we reached the top ... some of us later than others but ...we've all made it.
As we looked down into the canyon we realised that it was a good idea not to go any further. Rain and lighting make a bad combo in the wild :D.
This is me playing with a software tool that creates panoramas.
Mars & me.(courtesy of Andrei)
Mircea & me (courtesy of Andrei)
This was a little chipmunk eating a twix that it stole from us. Damn thief.(courtesy of andrei)
Me(courtesy of Mircea)
The gang. By mircea.
Next: helicopter ride and trip back home.
The remaining 5 of us started our hike at about 9 am. Mircea and I were warned that we should not stop every 2 seconds to take pictures. The plan was to take a break at every 30 minutes.
Ohhh and btw Mircea and I were packing 3kg of photo gear and a couple liters of water.
This piece of information will be relevant pretty soon.
We've chosen the Bright Angel Trail which is labeled strenuous. The distance from the rim to the bottom of the canyon is 4400 feet and the road is 19 miles long. Most of the people that go down and back up do this in 2 days. We descended 3000 feet and climbed back up in 6-7 hours :D.
The scenery is beautiful and until you get there you can't realise the scale of the canyon. It's huge. I mean it ...it's huge.
The funny part about having google t-shirts is that a lot of people talk to you. They ask you if you're really working at google, they tell you that they love google and stuff like that.
In the next photo you can see a falcon. They were flying in circles above us. Sadly for them none of us fainted so they could feast on us :).
"Googlers invade the canyon" seems like a good title for the next pic.
A small .....chipmunk ?:D
After 1-2 hours of descent we decided it was time to stop and head back up otherwise we would have lost the helicopter ride.
I think that we descended 3000 feet or smth and there were 1400 feet left until we reached
the bottom of the canyon.
The ascent was trickier than we expected. Let's be honest ...we're geeks. The only exercise we get is when we go to the minikitchens searching for phood.
Mircea had a really tough time in this ascent and at some point we started carrying his backup swaping it beetween us. Kudos go to Andrei for taking good care of Mircea and helping him complete the hike.
Marius carrying 2 backpacks :D. GG mars.
A quick pit stop.
When we began the descent the sun was shinning, it was hot and extremely dry. At some point
we were fortunate enough to get some cloud coverage but this turned out to be a double edged blade. When we were almost near the top (perhaps half an hour away) it started raining "cats and dogs". We were soaking wet. But as this wasn't enough the rain got a little more ...solid and pieces of ice started falling from the sky. Pretty cool. You should have seen the five of us and 2 fellow hikers trying to take cover behind a small rock. Kinda' pointless. Some of us were lucky enough to have a t-shirt or smth with them and we've changed out of our wet clothes.
Finally we reached the top ... some of us later than others but ...we've all made it.
As we looked down into the canyon we realised that it was a good idea not to go any further. Rain and lighting make a bad combo in the wild :D.
This is me playing with a software tool that creates panoramas.
Mars & me.(courtesy of Andrei)
Mircea & me (courtesy of Andrei)
This was a little chipmunk eating a twix that it stole from us. Damn thief.(courtesy of andrei)
Me(courtesy of Mircea)
The gang. By mircea.
Next: helicopter ride and trip back home.
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