Matthew Botos

For all the computers and crashes I’ve been through, I’ve never lost anything I couldn’t bear to loose, but a few days after my MacBook’s hard drive failed, I decided I really wanted my lost photos from Colorado. A few days before, someone in my delicious network bookmarked a data recovery site, and it turned out he had already found the best deal.

So I opened a case with Aero Data Recovery and shipped them both the dead drive and a new external USB-powered drive for the recovered data. Traditionally, data recovery has cost thousands of dollars and only been affordable to businesses with very valuable data. Now companies seem to be filling their downtime with $279 flat-rate, free-estimate jobs for consumers willing to bite the bullet.

About a week after the drive arrived, I got an email that the it “exhibits symptoms of a severe head crash”. That was beyond their capabilities, but they recommended two other companies that could continue the investigation once the drive was direct shipped. The prognosis is still hopefull, though I have no idea what this next tier will cost after the free estimate - I shudder to think what it would cost to have somebody with an electron microscope transcibe the 1s and 0s that make up my photos of Rocky Mountain…

Needless to say, I was pretty bummed when my MacBook harddrive failed and I found out TimeMachine had failed to backup my unpublished photos in Aperture. Since everything involved came from Cupertino, Apple deserved at least a letter asking for a hand.

Taking a page from Consumerist, I looked up the executive responsible for applications and sent him a polite snail-mail letter detailing the situation and how the undisclosed limitation had impacted me. Since two Apple applications were at fault, I asked for a $328 refund of their combined price.

About a week later, I got a call from someone in their executive office. He was polite and tried to be sympathetic, but ultimately wouldn’t budge from the position that Apple wasn’t responsible for data loss, even if their own backup software failed to backup data from one of their own applications. I couldn’t seem to convince him that such defective software justified a refund.

He did throw me one bone: a goodwill gesture of an extra power adapter for the guilty MacBook. It certainly doesn’t redeem their failure, but it was good to see them at least make some effort to retain a disgruntled customer. If nothing else, I can hawk it on eBay to pay for the data recovery…

One of my favorite things about our national parks is getting out on the trails, away from the roads and crowds. In Western Rocky Mountain, I had set my sites on the Lulu City Trail, a 7.4 mile fairly-level round trip to an old silver mining town.

With a late afternoon start, we began hiking along the Colorado River and the surrounding forests and streams while keeping an eye out for moose in the meadows. Instead, there were a few robbins, and after crossing a few rock slide areas, a marmot appeared on a boulder above the next bend. I took a few quick photos with my regular lens before switching to my telephoto, at which point it started the rain.

The marmot took cover, as did we, ducking under a tree to throw on raincoats as the rain and thunder picked up. Being down in the valley, a lighting strike wasn’t of much concern. We did hear a bit of noise, though, and finally traced it to both water and rocks tumbling down the slopes we had just crossed beneath.

I was ready to resume hiking in the rain when Chandra pointed out that it wasn’t just heavy rain anymore, but eighth-inch balls of hail! A true testament to the shifting nature of mountain weather. After about half an hour of mixed downfall, it finally let up enough to hike again.

We continued a bit further before hitting our appointed half-way time. Consulting the photo I had taken of the trail head map revealed we were only about 2/3 of the way to Lulu City. Already a bit tired and wet, we turned around to make sure we were back before the light faded. The knowledge that we were on the return leg improved my spirits a bit, though my feet didn’t really rejoice until back at the car.

Though we didn’t make it all the way to Lulu City, it was a nice hike through the valley, and the excitement of the hail storm certainly made it memorable.

Visiting the western side of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado was a new experience. Though I had been to the park before, it was primarily the east side and Trail Ridge Road. Grand Lake is a much more mellow entry point than Estes Park, and the western side of the park seemed similarly quiet and less crowded.

It consists primarily of the Kawuneeche Valley, through which the early stages of the Colorado River flows. It was overcast our first day, making it a great place to watch and hear mountain storms developing. There is something magical yet foreboding in seeing dark clouds building over the mountains as the distant rumble of thunder rumbles across open space.

By the time we had done the first nature trail loop and crossed the meadow to the Holzwarth Historic Site, soft showers had moved in, sending us into the shelter of one of the historic cabins. The artifacts there are a testament to pioneer ingenuity: a footstool made of animal feet, a sewing machine retrofitted with an electric motor, and a rough-road egg carrier made of old mattress springs. The taxidermy and ice sheds proved that some things don’t change: the taxidermy tools and techniques are similar to those used today, and the ice shed employed a living green roof for insulation.

After lunch, we continued onto the Colorado River trailhead to start the hike to Lulu City.

The highest paved continuous highway in the United States, Trail Ridge Road climbs over the Rockies between Grand Lake and Estes Park. The views and driving are unparalleled; at 12,183 feet, you’re on par with many of the surrounding peaks.

We started in Grand Lake, passing through the Kawuneeche Valley before climbing above it. Stopping for a few short hikes on the way up quickly confirmed the changing altitude: thinner air, lingering snowbanks, and new critters including marmots and pikas.

After passing though the tree line, where temperatures are too low on average to sustain tree growth, the ground changed to alpine tundra. These low, hardy plants and flowers dodge the high winds just a few feet above and are insulated by snow cover in the winter. Elk and big horn sheep venture here as well, and we saw a good number of elk grazing below the road.

Driving along the ridge is an experience: a two-lane road with a long drop-off, no guardrails, and 8 foot wooden poles marking the road for spring plowing. You can enjoy the view, too, but not too much! I realized how easy I had it as a passenger on all those family vacations where my dad drove.

After a few high, short hikes and a stop in the Alpine visitor’s center, we enjoyed lunch with a view at one of the many turnouts. Descending towards Estes Park, we reentered the trees, which were greener on this side, with fewer killed by beetle infestations. Passing through glacial valleys and Beaver Meadows brought us back to civilization, and a welcome break in Estes Park.

Grand Lake, on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park, was one of my favorite stops on the Colorado trip. A small town on a mountain lake, it still has that mellow, leisurely feel. Our location didn’t hurt, either: a cabin overlooking the lake just a few blocks off the main street.

From looking over the docks out onto the lake and to the mountains, it was a short walk to the main hotel building, where a squadron of hummingbirds were feeding and flying about. The town itself boasted a very old-west feel: wooden sidewalks and overhangs passed various shops and restaurants. It was a nice change to be able to walk to dinner and stroll by the ice cream shop on the way back.

You meet some interesting people traveling, or rather, Chandra does since she’s a bit more outgoing. Coming back from Rocky Mountain one day, we pulled in next to the very colorful Bug Songs van. It turned out the guy sitting on the porch was Tom, who does his program of bug songs for kids across the country. In one of those fortunate turns of events, he had been working for a pest-control company looking to educate people on what they do, and bug songs was born.

The songs themselves are pretty entertaining - bugs sing about their lives in tunes ranging from punk rock to a little Johnny Cash. It made for a fun soundtrack driving through the radio-less mountains of Colorado.

After our stay in Steamboat Springs, Chandra and I drove back up to Rabbit Ears Pass on our way to Grand Lake and Rocky Mountain National Park. We bounced down a few dirt roads at the Dumont campground to begin our hike.

The trail was a slightly inclined, rougher dirt road that wound through high alpine meadows full of wildflowers. The dual rock spires of Rabbit Ears popped in and out of view, and in and out of the light as scattered clouds shifted above. It was a pleasant hike, and we saw more people on it than I expected, as well as getting a closer look at the Rabbit Ears.

While Time Machine handily restored my MacBook after it’s original Apple hard drive failed after two years, it missed one thing: 10 GB of Colorado photos, half of which I hadn’t published yet!

The reason is infuriatingly simple, yet was kept completely obscured:

Time Machine doesn’t back up your Aperture library while the application is running. This is due to the way Aperture utilizes a MySQL Lite database which needs to be open for reading and writing all the time.

A bit lame since these are both Apple products and they couldn’t make them word together (ditto for FileVault). Their real sin here, though, is that neither Aperture or Time Machine warns you of this. So I dutifully plugged in my machine as soon as I returned from vacation to be backed up, only to have it ignore not only the fancy Aperture database, all the regular image files! That’s pretty half baked, Steve.

My one consolation is that I had already published the first few days of photos, and the last day is still on my memory card. That brings my total loss to three days of photos and just about all of the RAW images and outtakes from the week.