Darlene and I went up to Lake Tahoe for a couple days of mountain biking midweek last week. We did a bit of Sawtooth Ridge near Truckee after driving up on Wednesday – these are some nice wandering trails overlooking the Truckee River and highway 89 – and chipmunks everywhere!
On Thursday we went for a full day’s ride centered around the awesome views of the Tahoe Flume Trail, overlooking Lake Tahoe. Here’s a two-minute video montage from the ride:
Tahoe Rim and Flume Trails
Richard fell sick and wasn’t able to join us so we caught the shuttle up to Tahoe Meadows (near Mt. Rose). Our route started with the Tahoe Rim Trail heading south, then catching the Red House Flume Trail running clockwise, then back up the Sunflower Hill Trail, round Marlette Lake until finally getting to enjoy the Flume Trail proper. Sweet and long 25-mile day with lots of breaks to enjoy the views and even snag a geocache along the way.
Darlene and I joined Laura, Rachel and Sanna for two nights of camping in Big Basin State Park (in the Santa Cruz mountains) earlier this week (Monday-Wednesday). The creek was nearly dry due to the drought but we enjoyed some great hikes in wonderful weather, several successful geocaching finds and an overabundance of yummy food, including shish kebabs and brats over the campfire. Thankfully there were practically no mosquitoes (nice change from our backpacking here in May) but we did have to fend off frequent forays by the numerous, brazen raccoons all around the campgrounds. One of which snagged our buns as we were getting things ready for our brat fest! The nerve!
Darlene and I joined Abhi, Komo and Anjali on a backpacking trip along part of California’s “Lost Coast”, led by Mike through the Outdoor Adventure Club. The “Lost Coast” is a remote and undeveloped stretch of coastline in northern California, north of Fort Bragg and south of Eureka. We hiked the northern section from Mattole Beach down to Black Sands Beach (near Shelter Cove) over three days, August 9th-11th. Due to the steep coastal terrain, you’re often hiking the beach – several long sections of which are impassable during high tide and so you need to plan around the tide tables.
Click on through for my gallery of pictures and videos, including some from Darlene, Abhi and Mike:
Darlene and I recently enjoyed a twelve day trip to Croatia, booked through REI Adventures. (June 27th to July 9th)
Our trip started in Zagreb and we worked our way south through Dalmatia and down to Dubrovnik, with a side excursion through Bosnia-Herzegovina. As an active, multi-sport trip, we enjoyed lots of hiking, biking, river and sea kayaking, as well as just seeing and exploring various sites along the way.
Here’s a video montage I put together covering much of our trip:
I’ve organized the pictures into four different galleries:
Darlene and I joined some of her cycling friends in a biking event around Lake Tahoe this past Sunday, June 1st: “23rd Annual America’s Most Beautiful Bike Ride“. The main route is 72 miles around the lake and a total of about 4000 ft of elevation gain.
Click for the full gallery of pictures
Here’s a short (three minute, 50 MB) video montage I put together of the whole ride around the lake:
Here are some pictures and video from a few days of cycling and camping in the Eastern Sierra in and around the Mono Lake Basin, Mammoth and June lakes, Long Valley and Rock Creek Canyon over May 24th-27th. It was Darlene’s first time seeing the area. We came over by way of highway 108 and Sonora Pass and down through Bridgeport and Lee Vining to camp out on national forest land near highway 395 and June Lake on Saturday night.
Mono Lake (click for full gallery)
Sunday we set out for a bike ride to the South Tufa area at Mono Lake via the June Lake loop. That worked out to about 38 miles. Afterward, we stopped in for groceries at Mammoth Lakes and then set out on Benton Crossing Road to find a nice spot in the rocky hills east of Crowley Lake to use as our base camp Sunday and Monday nights. That night I was up late exploring the wonderfully dark (and moonless) skies with my telescope.
Long Valley looking towards Mammoth (click for full gallery)
Monday morning we left our camp standing and drove into Tom’s Place at the base of Rock Creek Canyon to set off on our bikes to climb the 2600 ft. up to Rock Creek Lake (at 9682 ft). Alas, there was to be no Pie in the Sky today at the Rock Creek Lodge so lunch was back down at Tom’s Place.
After breaking camp on Tuesday we stopped in at Mammoth Lakes again for breakfast and a bit of shopping before heading home, this time via Yosemite and Tioga Pass/Road.
Darlene and I hiked into Big Basin State Park on Monday and stayed overnight at the Sunset trail camp near Golden Falls, Silver Cascade and Berry Creek Falls, about five and half miles from the overnight parking near the park headquarters. This trail camp (reservations required) has ten permitted sites that are nice and well-shaded but it is a bit of a walk to get to the creek for water. Unfortunately the mosquitos were pretty bad in the evening and it made it difficult to enjoy dinner but we hid out in the tent on Tuesday morning until they eased up.
I’ve been trying out a new pair of sunglasses with a built-in video/photo camera, the Pivothead Recon. The Recon (actually now called the Kudu) is one of several styles of camera glasses from Pivothead. The glasses can record video at 1080/30 or 720/60 fps as well as take still photos (up to 8 MB). They can even capture stills while you’re recording video. They have interchangeable shades, including the photo-chromatic kind (adjusts to brightness).
The camera functionality works pretty well except that they currently have some issues with their various focus modes. The continuous focus mode hunts for focus a lot, the fixed focus mode is set to a focus point that’s too close so most of the time everything is very softly focused, but I’m getting the best results with the auto-focus mode which sets a focus when you start recording and holds that for the duration of the recording.
The exposure isn’t always ideal but then it’s pretty amazing that they can cram all this functionality in a sunglasses frame (rather than having a bulky camera mounted on your helmet). Another issue though is that the little LED lights on the inside of the frame aren’t really visible while you’re wearing them so you have to pull them half off to verify that they’re on and/or recording. Given that a) you can’t start recording until a couple of seconds after you hit the power button and b) they automatically shut off when idle after 30 seconds or so, it’s easy to think you’ve started recording, when you haven’t. (This keeps happening to me.) It would be better if the little rocker switch to start/stop a video or take a photo would actually power them up, rather than having a separate power toggle button.
Trying out the Pivothead Recon Sunglasses/Camera
The glasses aren’t very adjustable for different faces. Mine tend to sit high on my nose and the camera points up a little high but this ends up working out to a good angle for mountain biking. Yes, that picture was taken using the glasses, but I titled my head down (and still heavily cropped it to frame it well). Without doing that, the center of the shot would actually be well above my head. But as I say, that has to do with individual fit and it works out fine for me while on a bike.
The Pivothead charges via USB and you can get a combination external battery pack and WiFi hub (Pivothead Air Sync) that allows you to charge it up and download your shots when you’re out in the field. It’s also useful as extra power for any USB-chargeable device.
Here’s some sample video showing some of its strengths and weaknesses. (Also, this video was shot with these glasses as well.) Both videos have of course been downsized and compressed for web presentation:
Note the challenges in dark, high contrast lighting in the trees and how quickly (or slowly) it can adjust to changing lighting. Obviously it does much better in brightly lit scenes. Also, it would be awesome to have some optical stabilization but that would be asking a lot at this point, particularly in the frame of a pair of sunglasses. Really I just hope they can fix the other focus modes and improve the start/stop method.
