Frey Trail Outing

Mary, the leader of the White Rock Senior Center hiking group, called me just before 8:30am this morning to ask if it was raining here. She said someone had told her it was raining hard on Barranca Mesa. I told her it was just drizzling here. She decided the group would just walk in White Rock so I went to the Betty Ehart Senior Center to hook up with the hiking group that starts at 9:05am. There were 7 people. Bill was in such a hurry to back out that he started pulling back while George, a man in his 80's, was trying to get into the car. There was a young man along and it seemed that Mary, the Betty Ehart Senior Center hiking leader, was giving him a tour of the area. I didn't know they planned to drive through White Rock to Bandelier to show the area to him. I waited about 10 minutes for them to arrive.

Because of the sightseeing aspect of it, the group was even slower than usual. Art and I went ahead on the Frey Trail, looking back often to see how far back the group but they were so far back that we continued on without them. At the second paved road, Art turned around to catch up with the group and I went to the Frey Trailhead at Juniper Campground. The group was so slow that they were still walking in the ruins area when I got back down. I'm sure they went to where the Frey Trail levels out up above which was all the further the leader said they would go and then turned around but they must have just made it back down when I got down. I waved hello but had to make an emergency run to some bushes below the Long Trail and then caught up with them again so I could ask one of the old time hikers, Bill, another man in his 80's, about the Reflector Trail.

He kidded at first and said "It's classified!" Then he told me it was built in 1980 and mentioned that David Ramsey thought it would be a good idea. He said it might have been called the Perimeter Trail and that the reflectors are so high most likely because there was deep snow on the ground when they were placed on the trees. He said the impetus for the trail was when some skiers ended up in the Valle de los Posos and couldn't come back out. As brought out during the rim trail talk at PEEC, the idea was that a sweep of the Reflector Trail could be done if skiers were missing to see if any tracks crossed it and that would help to narrow the search.

I saw loads of blooming Apache Plume, a puccoon, a couple of Indian Paintbrush, the tiny fleabane like on the WR Rim Trail hike, a blue penstemon, and a goodly amount of wallflowers. It was a little windy going up the Frey - my umbrella kept turning inside out because I need to reattach a rib with thread. I'll do that this afternoon. It was on and off drizzling, cool, and looked like an early fall with the far off mountains dappled with mist.

I did early voting today after the hike. When I got home, I started two loads of laundry - still have to fold them, made hummous, and edamame. Lunch was breakfast's leftover strawberry smoothie along with some hummous and the edamame. I usually don't eat lunch so this will mean a late supper. I really should begin calling roofers this afternoon but may put if off until Monday. I want to do my resistance work today. Sometimes that's a pain in the butt to have that hanging over my head but I think my body would fall apart if I didn't do some weights at least twice a week. BTW, my sciatica seems to have mostly disappeared. I think that the iliotibial band stretches really helped. I do the lying one as well as the standing ones. I learned the lying one from Jolie Bookspan's Fitness Fixer blog: Lie on your back, spread your legs into a wide V with your legs at 10pm and 2pm, then cross one leg over the other and hold, and repeat on the other side.