Jeff Lubeck

Standing the Test of Time – The Bourne Legacy ****

The Bourne Legacy is a winner on virtually every front. With the Bourne Legacy, brothers Tony, Dan and John Gilroy demonstrate they can continue their Pulitzer prize winner father Frank’s legacy of great story telling as well.

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The Bourne Legacy is not a reboot or retread of the series adapted from the Robert Ludlum novels – all of which were adapted for the screen by Tony Gilroy (W/D of Michael Clayton). Instead, with Tony in the role of Director, The Bourne Legacy proves to be a superbly crafted extension of, and arguably an improvement on the earlier films.

Jeremy Renner (Mission Impossible, The Town, The Hurt Locker) as Aaron Cross is a trained assassin for the United States Government categorized as Outcome agent at the time Jason Bourne is last seen (escaping) in New York. The government decides that Pam Lundy’s upcoming testimony before Congress could mean the demise of the various programs. Therefore, it is decided to mothball the programs’, eliminate the agents and deny anything exists. Cross is not very agreeable to the idea of dieing.

However, Cross has a very real problem with a time-limit for solution. Enter Rachel Weisz (About a Boy, Enemy at the Gates, Runaway Jury) as Dr. Marta Shearing. Shearing is the lynch-pin to the solution and thus begins a globe crossing journey.

This installment of the Bourne film series contains significant background, a great storyline and compelling dialog that act as accompaniment to thrilling action. The supporting cast is extensive and of high quality.

Notes:

The Bourne Legacy actually scores only a 3.875 out of 4 because the Canadian Rocky Mountains (Banff area) are depicted as the remote mountains of Alaska. For all the time and money spent on the glamorous side of these pseudo travelogs the Producers could they have made the effort got this logistically and visually correct. Thank goodness the storyline did not include Seattle or I would have had to sit through looking at the streets and skyline of Vancouver as a bad substitute.

Weisz could have conducted a fair amount of preparatory work with a super-agent while staying at-home. She is married to James Bond lead Daniel Craig.

Saturday Amongst the Boulder Peaks

The Boulder’s are one of five mountain ranges that come together in what I consider my backyard and most others think of making up the Sun Valley area. Along with the Boulder’s, the Pioneer, Smoky, Sawtooth and White Cloud mountains consist of over 1.1 million acres of protected land. The Boulder’s have a plethora of peaks reaching between 10,000 and 11,714 feet in elevation. The Boulders are just north of town and for the most part sit in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA).

Ryan Peak at 11,714 feet is the tallest in the range and leads one rib of four peaks all sitting around 11,000 feet in elevation. The first three (Ryan, Kent, Perkins) in this rib are named. The fourth and farthest east peak in the rib is unnamed. Although not in our original plan for the day, Kyle and I scaled the fourth peak on Saturday. For the moment we named the peak for ourselves.

Perkins, Kent and Ryan peak as seen from Lubeck Peak.

It should be noted that Linda and I have a small rule – no more technical mountain climbing for Jeff. In short this means no routes involving classification four or above as defined by the Yosemite Decimal system (YDS) in terms of technical difficulty. This agreement came into place after two climbers died descending from the summit of Mt. Rainier on the same route I was using a few hours earlier. I have held true to the agreement for over 20+ years.

On this day, I would push the limits, but not break the rule. The last mile of the ascent gained about 2,500 vertical feet. This portion was a steep class three rock scramble. For me, the only real difficulty was that I had a load of camera gear on my back and it was sometimes tricky keeping my balance. Kyle set a great pace and both of us never felt over extended despite the high elevation, elevation gain over well over 4,000 vertical feet and temperatures (80’s F).

The Boulders and Pioneer’s in the distance (Hyndman Peak 12,062 feet) from Lubeck Peak.

The 360 degree view views at the top was terrific. I took photos while Kyle napped and got some sun.

Kyle and the Spartan’s rule the day.

For the descent we chose a more direct and somewhat trickier route. Given that the vast majority of accidents on mountains take place on the descent, Kyle and I took great care. Once back to the valley floor we were reminded how much different it was from the top. The valley is heavily forested with old growth and laced with waterfalls. The trip was a little over 11 miles in length round-trip.

A waterfall at which we stopped for a short rest on the way up and down.

The view from Google Earth.

Hollyhocks Rule

How often are the consequences of the demise of something we love or enjoy looked into and considered in retrospect? I would argue that today’s media rarely does this for us in their 24 hour cycle of feeding us out-of-context sound bytes. Our local newspaper The Idaho Mountain Express performs retrospective reporting as does the New York Times on occasion, but in general this style of narrative is becoming a lost art.

Over the last two days I took a look at the implications of something lost in 2007.

In 2007 the Castle Rock fire torched almost 50,000 acres of what I consider my backyard and playground. Due to an extraordinary effort by the U.S. Forest Service, other agencies, local residents and a lot of luck most of the 1.1 million acres of National Forest and Wilderness surrounding my home were spared. Not a single residence was lost, which seems unimaginable given the places reached by the fire.

Not spared from this fire are portions of the back side of Bald Mountain – the Crown Jewel of the region. During the last two days I ventured into two spots – Timber Gulch and the Warm Springs Trail to take inventory. The amount of timber lost to the fire is significantly less than expected. However, in many spots what was previously the residence of old-growth timber is now home to a wide variety of wild flowers.

One result is that the Hollyhock currently rules the day on certain portions of Baldy. Below are pictures from my mountain bike ride of the Warm Springs and Broadway Saddle Trails.