Backcountry blogging with four bars

I've spend much of today scouting out cell phone reception in various parts of the Pikes Peak region. It's all part of the planning for an upcoming re-creation of Zeb Pike's unsuccessful attempt to climb Pikes Peak. This time, we hope we'll have some success. We plan on taking three days, and I want to write a story each day. Fortunately, I can just beam the stories down to the city via a broadband modem -- but only if I have a signal. Rather than leave it to chance, I went out to make sure.

And I was impressed with what I found. The south ridge of Mount Rosa, a place known as Pike's Patio, because it is just in front of the cave where he spent the night, gets four full bars of coverage. The summit gets three bars. As soon as you drop out of sight of the city, reception disappears, but near Barr Camp it comes back. Reception on the Pikes Peak Summit is fairly good.

So... we have enough coverage to pull off this story. Now I just have to hope it will be warm enough in two weeks for my fingers to actually type!

Oh, BTW, the photo above is the south ridge of Pikes Peak, where we hope to finish the hike on November 28.