Blue Lakes Pass

I hiked Blue Lakes Pass in Ouray Colorado with a couple of friends recently. It was already a cool morning when we started and I have heard you gain lose 3 1/2° per 1000 feet of elevation gained. We started at approximately 11,000 feet.

After following the jeeping road to Yankee Boy Basin we traversed a few snowfields before getting to the trail-head for Mount Sneffles. The trail was well worn so we didn't need crampons, but we could have used an ice axe for precaution.

The last few hundred meters where the hardest up to the saddle which is at about 13,000 feet. It was very windy on top, so we took a few photos and headed back down deciding to slide down the snowy slopes instead of hiking.

All in all it was a great, relatively short hike, but a very fun experience.

You can also access the pass from East Dallas Road (County Road 7). This is a longer more ambitious hike, and would require longer drive time from Ouray, but is definitely worth it it the summer time.

http://www.ouraytrails.org/trails02.html#bluelakes

Dexter Creek Waterfall

I'm always in search of an adventure, especially when it comes to photography. I rarely take photos at the classic tourist spots, which anyone with a camera phone can get. So when I came to the top of this waterfall while following a creek downstream, I decided to rappel down the side of the cliff, in order to get to the bottom and take these pictures.

I came back the following evening with my gear, anchored to a tree on top, and rap'd down. I was surprised to see an amazing amount of trash which had accumulated in the pool at the bottom of the falls, considering I was in the middle of nowhere Colorado. I guess it had all washed down from miles upstream.

I spent a while cleaning the litter out of the pool before composing my shot. When all was said and done I had only taken about twenty photos but I really tried to make each one significantly different (shooting with black and white in mind, vertical, horizontal, wide angle, close in, etc.).

After packing up all of my gear I had to "Batman" (hand over hand) up the forty to fifty foot wall since I was by myself. End result: ten great photos and a fun story to tell. Something Ventured, something gained.

The Ouray Adventure!

As some of you may have heard, I recently moved to Ouray, Colorado because I took a job at the Hot Springs Inn. Ouray is a small town of approximately one thousand people at 7,800' in the San Juan mountains 75 miles north of Durango in Southwest Colorado. The main attractions here are the sulfur free hot springs, hundreds of miles of off-road trails, and the incredible beauty of the three surrounding 13,000' peaks.

How I ended up here is a fun story. The short version is: as I said, I was offered a job working as the Night Manager of the Hot Springs Inn. So I loaded up everything minus my surfboards and my velodrome bicycle in the back of Zelda (my '96 Jeep Grand Cherokee), including Zorro (my '09 Kawasaki KLR 650) who I bought a motorcycle carrier for that fits into my receiver hitch.

It was a 900 mile drive to Ouray from San Diego, through Arizona, with a stop the first night in Joshua Tree and the second night in Mesa Verde National Park. The End.

The long story is a twisty turny one but mainly revolves around a concept called 'Lifestyle Design' that my good friend Jeffrey Williams introduced my to in the Fall of 2013. Basically it is what it sounds like, designing your lifestyle to fit the way you want to live. However doing it takes a great deal of introspection and figuring out what you want to get out of life and how to get it, not to mention the years it takes to even get remotely close to achieving 'nirvana' (I jest, kind of). I unknowingly started the process in 2010 when, dissatisfied with the way my life was going in San Diego, I did the only logical thing I could think of, pack up everything I own and move to New Zealand indefinitely. Starting to see a pattern?

This is where I will leave you until my next entry where I will pick up where the story beings, December 1st 2010, The Day That Didn't Exist (for me).

Lifestyle Design - An Example

I am Dustin Whitson, creator of Rooftop Ventures.

I am the night manager of a motel in Ouray, Colorado. I live rent free, have no utilities bills, and commute eleven stairs to work.

I live at 7,800 ft elevation and can hop in my Jeep and after 45 minutes of off-roading up Camp Bird Road to Yankee Boy Basin arrive at 12,000 feet (there are over 100 miles of jeeping trails in Ouray County, it's been dubbed the Jeeping Capital of America http://ouraycolorado.com/ouray-activities/Jeeping.php).

I am a photographer, and Ouray is in the middle of the Uncompahgre National Forest where there is no shortage of wildlife, landscape, and stars to photograph.

I can walk seven minutes to the gym, or jump on either my mountain bike or road bike and ride from my door step.

There are over 80 hiking trails, most of which I can walk to the trail heads from home (http://ouraycolorado.com/ouray-activities/Hiking.php).

I can go bouldering by myself or grab a buddy and climb any of over 200+ bolted routes in the area (mountainproject.com).

I can not tell anyone where I'm going and explore abandoned mine shafts.

I can cruise on my motorcycle one of the top ten highways to ride in America (The Million Dollar Highway).

The official population of Ouray is around 1,000.

While I did not know that Ouray had all of these things to offer (and more) before accepting a job here, my arrival was the accumulation of years of a principal called lifestyle design, which lead me to intentionally seek to incorporate all of the above into my life. In later posts I'll describe the evolution of my lifestyle design process.

Lifestyle design is first and foremost about you designing your life. Therefore you need to know, not only what you want, but who you are. I spent years in San Diego trying to fit into the mold of fast-paced, big city life, but that's not me. Five years ago, if you told me that I would live any more than ten miles from the beach I would have told you that you were crazy, but I discovered who I was and watched what I wanted change.

Consider what is important to you and ways to do it more efficiently. How do you spend your time? How do you want to spend your time? Who do you want to surround yourself with? What are your biggest expenses? What are you biggest frustrations? I'll make you a promise. Ask yourself these questions and I guarantee . . . it will be depressing. Primarily because you'll be faced with a multitude of changes you want to make but don't know where to start. It is a lot easier to just accept the hand you've been dealt. However, life is too short to not live how you want to and it's a lot more possible than you think for you to live your dream life. If you take a couple of months to work on specific areas of your life, in a few years time you will have made incredible progress.

Why Rooftop Ventures?

From an early age I was encouraged to seek wisdom and knowledge from older, more experienced people. As I accumulated knowledge on various topics my desire to impart upon others what I had been privileged to learn grew stronger and stronger. I created Rooftop Ventures after hearing the saying "Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the rooftops." 

Over the years I have taught people surfing, snowboarding, rock climbing, backpacking, camping, long distance hiking, jeeping, photography, business management, performance management, social media marketing, lifestyle design, and perception design.

I have struggled to find a creative outlet where I could consolidate all of these areas of my life into one place as a means of conveying information to others. Do I blog, vlog, post on social media, start a consulting business, become a life coach? Nothing sparked inspiration or seemed to feel just right until recently.

Some people may think it's my autobiography, or simply philosophy. Others designate it as lifestyle design. I call it Rooftop Ventures, and it is my way of passing on the important things that have changed my life in attempt to enhance the life experiences of others. Something Ventured, something gained.