Darlene and I joined Richard, Jennifer and Shannon for another awesome mountain biking weekend at Boggs Mountain (north of Calistoga, CA) as part of the Outdoor Adventure Club. Click through for the the full gallery:
And here’s a short video montage from the weekend:
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!
Click through for the full gallery:
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:
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.
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.
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 camped out on the east side of Pinnacles National Park this past Sunday to watch the Perseids meteor shower. We had some fairly dark skies as Pinnacles is in a somewhat remote location. The glow of lights from Hollister and Salinas (about 25-ish miles away) were apparent to the north but the Milky Way was still quite visible. And the crescent moon set nice and early. We spotted probably several meteors per minute. There were a few clusters of four or five.
I made a little video of some time lapse images I captured during the night:
As it was a Sunday night, getting a campsite was easy – most of the sites were vacant — not so on a Friday or Saturday night! There was lots of wildlife though… of the more natural variety. We had multiple visits from human-habituated deer, rabbits and a coyote in our campsite. (I don’t count the yellow jackets!) We went for a hike to see the nearby talus caves and saw a couple of bats but part of the caves were still closed to protect the bat colony. (Talus caves are formed by rocks and boulders falling into a narrow area to form a ceiling and block out the sky.) On Monday, we hiked the High Peaks loop and happened to run into an old coworker from FileMaker. We also saw some turkey vultures and possibly some California condors.
Pictures and video from this year’s annual Pirates of Cache Creek event with the Outdoor Adventure Club – click through for the full gallery:
These are pictures and videos from a three day backpacking trip with Stéphane and Darlene to summit Mt. Whitney (14,505 ft). Second time for me! (Here’s the first.)
We chose to camp at Outpost Camp (10,400 ft), a relatively short 3.8 miles from the Whitney Portal trailhead at 8360 ft. However, this made for a long summit day of over 14 miles round trip. We made it though and enjoyed a beautiful day and stupendous views all along the way!
Click on through for the full gallery:
Here’s some pictures from an overnight backpacking trip out of Big Sur, on the California coast, and up the Pine Ridge trail in the Ventana Wilderness. This was Darlene’s first backpacking experience and we enjoyed a lovely quiet site along the river at the Barlow Flat Camp, seven miles in from the trailhead.
