Summit a lesser-traveled 13,000-foot peak, then catch some summer alpine fishing at Timber Lake on this 13.4-mile out-and-back.
Forget the 14er crowds. Mount Ida, one of the least-visited peaks in Rocky Mountain National Park, falls just shy of 13,000 feet and offers a real chance to experience backcountry seclusion. What this overnight trip lacks in extra altitude it makes up for in sheer strenuousness and stunning scenery.
Take the Timber Creek Trail southeast. Follow the well-maintained, dirt path for 9 miles, climbing more than 2,000 feet, to the Rockslide Campsite near Timber Lake. Be sure to pack light and warm. Summer temperatures can drop below freezing at night.
If you remember to bring your fishing pole, wake up early to catch (and release) some trout before scrambling up the saddle. Aside from the unprecedented workout you'll get along the way, massive views await at the summit. The Continental Divide stretches beneath your feet. Never Summers sit to the west. Gorge Lakes lie in the valley below. Grand Lake and Big Meadows are visible to the southwest.
Retrace your steps down the mountain, through the saddle, and back onto the Timber Creek Trail. Make sure to save energy when you bag this peak. Otherwise your quads might hurt more from the long descent back than from the climb up!
Parking lot is across the street from the Colorado River Trailhead. Take the Timber Creek Trail south through an aspen grove. Enjoy this short, flat section because it is the only one you'll have on the entire trip.
Marked by a group of small boulders, the first lookout on the Timber Lake Trail doesn't offer much in terms of scenery. You can only see forest and more forest through a tiny clearing, but this spot does give you a chance to catch your breath.
First small bridge. Timber Creek runs alongside the trail (thus the name) and decreases in size and speed as you get closer to Timber Lake.
Second small bridge over Timber Creek.
In case you started late on a Friday, this is the first backcountry campsite on the trail.
Bear left at the Y-junction. Long Meadows Trail veers off to the right.
Third small bridge over Timber Creek.
Jackstraw Campsite is the second available backcountry campground on the trail. It is more crowded than Rockslide, which is further ahead near Timber Lake.
Fourth bridge over Timber Creek. If you bushwhack a few feet off trail, you'll notice why the upcoming campsite is called Rockslide. A waterfall cascades down slippery rocks, looking a lot like a rock slide.
Rockslide Campsite: Don't forget your backcountry permit because you likely will encounter a ranger who'll ask to see it. Also, bring a bear box or hang a bear bag here. Wildlife abound.
Timber Lake (11,200 ft.): The water is too cold to swim in no matter how much of a sweat you worked up. Bear left and follow the trail along the east side of the lake. Scramble up the rocky route to the saddle southeast of the lake.
The Saddle. Southeast of Timber Lake, you have scrambled and likely clawed your way to this 11,500-foot ridge. An unnamed peak is directly to your right. Look southeast to view Julian Lake and Nakai Peak (12,216 ft.) behind it. Mount Ida is to your left--and still a good, long climb away.
False summit. Just when you think the scrambling and climbing is over, there is yet another crest to climb. Continue east, gaining 300 more feet, before reaching the true summit of Mount Ida.
The Mount Ida (12,880 feet): You are now standing on top of the Continental Divide. To the east, Gorge Lakes lie in the valley beneath you. Mount Julian and Terra Tomah Mountain form an eastbound ridge to your right. If you look south, you can see all the way to Grand Lake--and the destruction the bark beetle has caused on the west side of the park.
Hike cross-country to explore this secluded chain of hanging lakes on this challenging point-to-point in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Tour two mountain lakes en route to Emerald Lake, a picturesque tarn with stunning views of Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain, on this popular hike in Rocky Mountain National Park.
This 12.4-mile out-and-back sweeps under a giant evergreen forest to a blossoming burn zone, then ends at an alpine lake perfect for stargazing.
Wander through lush forests and high-alpine meadows to a pair of secluded mountain lakes nestled at the foot of the Mummy Range.
Waterfalls, alpine lakes, and mind-blowing scenery. It's all included on this 9.1-mile out-and-back hike in Rocky Mountain National Park.
The must-see list for this 5.7-mile dayhike to Glacier Gorge is long: raging waterfalls, alpine lakes, and a skyline of humbling mountain views.


Showing 2 posts from March 2017.
A backyard horse owner named Jane boards a few horses during the winter. Jane's facility has box stalls and an indoor arena, making it desirable during the snowy winter months where Jane lives. Jane doesn't view her activities as a business. She views herself as earning some extra money and helping friends.


At Compta Emerging Business (CEB Solutions) we are passionate about how technology can make a difference in an organization's business.
Our mission is to help our customers improving their business performance and operational efficiency with innovative solutions for Smart Cities and Industry.
Combining the deep knowledge of our specialists about the sectors we address and the usage of technology, we endow the Environment, Energy, Agriculture, Logistics and Sea sectors with greater intelligence and agility.
Compta Emerging Business integrates a dedicated team with over 25 years of development experience in those areas, ensuring that customer requirements are met in accordance with expectations. We own four dedicated R&D centers, several awards, an international team of partners and we count on the experience gathered in hundreds of projects implemented.
Compta was born in 1972 providing Data-processing services for the emerging IT sector.
Quickly evolved towards the Mainframe and Systems domains for the Enterprise, Public Sector and Telecoms.
After the first years become a reference "System Integrator" in the national IT market.
Expansion to Telecom and Communication Systems sectors.
Re-organization with "Compta Group" creation in 1987 plus the creation of dedicated companies for each specific business area.
"Compta Group" gets Public listed in the stock exchange market. Today, public listed in EURONEXT/Lisbon.
Compta becomes the leading System Integrator in country.
Partnering with the leading worlwide vendors in ICT Industry.
More than 120 certified engineers in ICT Systems.
"Compta Emerging Business" (CEB) is created: dedicated to software products for Smart Cities and Industry.
First years of activicty focused in R&D and pilot projects implementation.
Delivery of the first Energy Efficiency and Waste Management solutions for Municipalities and Industry by the end of this period.
Continuous delivery of solutions for Smart Cities and Industry in the areas of Waste Collection, Environment, Cargo Logistics and Energy.
"Green Project Award" for best IT solution for Urban Waste Collection.
Achievement of the NP EN ISO 14001 certification.
Opening of two R&D centers in Lisbon and Oporto.
New products for Digital Citizenship, Green Spaces and Agriculture.
CEB software solutions serving in 23 Cities.
First agreements with TELECOM Operators for CEB Products "white labeling".
Two more R&D Centers are open in Évora and Abrantes.
CEB software products become available in 27 countries via partnership agreements with local system integrators.
More than 40 Cities using CEB software solutions in several domains.
Dynamic and out-of-box thinker to provide value to our Customers and Shareholders while enriching our internal knowledge.
Collaborative mind-set, working together with customers and partners, aiming to supersede our client expectations.
Quality in our products and services delivery to be the brand through which our Customers and Shareholders recognize us.
Stay ahead of competition and positively overcome the challenges in benefit of our Clients and Partners.
Compta Emerging Business is a company certified according to the standards – NP 4457 – Management System for Research, Development and Innovation, NP EN ISO 14001, Environmental Certification, and NP EN ISO 9001, quality assurance model in the design/development, production, installation and after-sales service, in the scope of supply of integrated products and solutions of Telecommunications and Information Technologies.
This external recognition by the official certification entities guarantees our customers a consistent quality and continuous control in all the activities developed in our processes, in order to satisfy their needs and expectations. Compta Emerging Business offers its customers in terms of service capacity a comprehensive coverage of the national territory providing a wide range of services, specially tailored to ensure the uptime of applications and technological infrastructures.


text:
There Are a Ton of Yoga Benefits for Men. So Why Am I the Only Guy in Class?
By Clint Carter
"Looking good, ladies!" says my yoga instructor, in her sweet, sing-songy voice. "And you too, gentle-man," she adds, giving me a nod.
I'm being singled out for my testicles. Not that I mind, but it makes me suddenly aware—and not for the first time—that I'm the only dude in the yoga studio. The instructor has to break her script just to accommodate me.
At the moment, I'm bent 90 degrees at the waist, balanced on my left leg with my right poking out behind me like an unreliable airplane rudder. I look up to give my instructor a courtesy smile—thanks for seeing me!—and my rudder betrays me by curling into a scorpion tail. Suddenly I'm off balance, bouncing sideways. I swerve from one edge of the mat to the other, throwing off the entire zen-thing that's going on in the class. And then my leg stomps down just in time to save me from a crash landing—just a regular day at the yoga studio.
Despite the rising popularity of yoga, the workout's still largely dominated by women. In a survey of 1,830 people, one in five females reported going to a yoga class in the past year. For men, that number is just over one in twenty.
The reason, in part, is that men feel out of place. We're burdened with ideas about masculinity that forbid vulnerable body positions like happy baby. Imagine Don Corleone or Dirty Harry doing that shit.
But then there's this: Men aren't comfortable being bad at something. And at first, most of us feel bad at yoga. "I can't touch my feet over my head," says Mike Aidala, a holistic coach and yoga advocate. "But I know a lot of women who can."
If touching your feet over your head is your measure of success, then yeah—yoga's going to suck for you. You'll be one of the 19 in 20 men who don't go. But bend-ability isn't the right yardstick, says Aidala. "Guys should be doing yoga specifically for the internal practice," he says. "The benefit comes when you're focused on how you feel and your ability to relate to that feeling every time you come to your mat."
What often sells yoga for men is learning that those delicate poses activate stabilizer muscles that are typically ignored in the gym. And guys like learning that NFL teams are increasingly using it for injury prevention, Tom Brady included. But the real reason to do yoga, says Aidala, is mental. And that can be a struggle for men. It's hard to quantify mental gains, and many of us have been habituated to use competition as our fuel for self-improvement.
When I'm riding bike laps in the park, for instance, I tend to focus my energy on somebody up ahead, who I can overtake. And after I curl a 45-pound dumbbell in the gym (okay, 25 pounds), I scan the room to see what everybody around me is lifting.
With yoga, once you stop worrying about other people's poses, there's nobody to compete with. "You can't see how someone else feels," says Aidala. "If you're doing it right, there's nothing to compare yourself to."
And yes, there are good reasons to get it right. The mental benefits of yoga are almost impossibly far reaching—especially for men.
In one review of 13 academic studies, published in the journal Mindfulness, researchers looked at how yoga could impact young, impulsive people who'd landed in the criminal justice system. Not surprisingly, 99 percent of the offenders were men, and the review found that after completing a yoga program, they emerged feeling more optimistic and less stressed. Of the eight studies that measured emotional control, five found significant improvements. That means yoga could literally help people avoid becoming repeat offenders, and it can help us all avoid emotional and impulsive behavior.
Similarly, people with generalized anxiety disorder see improvements in depression, sleep, and quality of life when they add yoga to traditional therapy. And in a study of people who were on burnout-related sick leave from work, yoga proved more effective that traditional therapy.
Some of the effect could come from the way going inward physically rewires your brain. In a study from Germany, people who agreed to do one weekly yoga session—just one!—lowered their blood pressure and developed a greater density of neurons in their hippocampus, a region associated with creating new memories, after 10 weeks.
Studies have shown that yoga can improve your body image, and a study of older adults proved it be as good as strength training for improving functional fitness. And if you like sex, you'll love yoga: In a study from India, men who underwent four months of yoga reported having better sexual satisfaction.
But if you can't get over feeling like every workout is a competition, then you won't have access to yoga's strongest benefits. And man, that's a bummer.
"One of my personal life missions is to be the guy who's lifting 400 pounds over my head in the gym, but then afterward, I'm lying in the corner doing a savasana," says Aidala. Savasana is a totally still, flat-on-your-back position commonly called "corpse pose." It's usually done at the end of yoga class to slow down breathing and heart rate, and it's the best opportunity to totally silence the brain. On a good day, you might let go of all the thoughts in your head. Your ego vanishes, and for a brief moment, you can experience the simplest state of being.
In some regards, savasana is the most important moment in yoga, says Aidala. "You do the poses for the benefit of tiring out the body, so it's easier for you to do a savasana at the end of class."
As a trainer and wellness coach, Aidala aims to merge the internal with the external—to show that the polar opposites are in fact two ends of one powerful battery. "You have these guys who view masculinity as this one paradigm of just being strong and jacked," he says. "So I use my own physicality to say, 'Hey, the reason I can lift this weight over my head isn't because I'm bigger than you—which I'm not. It's because of the mental focus and clarity that I've gained from having an internal practice.'"
This is the counterintuitive thing about yoga: By focusing inward, you can increase your outward power. Yes, you need to ditch traditional ideas about how men are supposed to move. And you need to stop being so competitive—especially with yourself. There's no yogi equivalent of a PR or max lift. It's a practice in the truest sense of the word. "No one can be bad at it," says Aidala. "As long as you can breathe, you can do yoga."
Better Mind 25 / 10 / 20
What is a Coenzyme and Why Do They Matter
Better Body 15 / 01 / 21
How to Lower Cortisol Levels
#asysTEAM 15 / 06 / 20
#SuperDad - A Program for New Fathers
Lyndon Cormack
Co-Founder, Herschel Supply Co. | @lyndon
Bjorn Iooss
Photographer | @bjornlooss
Carlo Mondavi
A fourth-generation vintner carrying on the Mondavi legacy.
Events 15 / 04 / 20
Volume 002. ASYSTEM at Home - LIVE Digital Events

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl