Tag: camping

Exploring Southcentral Alaska

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This is a collection of images from a three week trip to the southcentral portion of Alaska.  The first six days were booked with Alaska Wildland Adventures to explore the Kenai Pennisula and involved a series of separate guided day excursions while staying at a couple of lodges. (This flexibility was helpful since a different outfitter cancelled a week-long group trip at the last minute.) The middle ten days were arranged through REI Adventures and handled by Alaska Alpine Adventures. This guided group trip passed through Prince William Sound, visited McCarthy/Kennicott, traveled the Denali Highway, and included three days visiting Denali National Park. The final three days (and a couple of intermediate days) were on my own.

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Backpacking Up Pine Creek/Italy Pass

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Labor Day Weekend with Mike, Jeanie, Troy… and Chloe!  We camped out in the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine with the intention of getting a trail permit to climb Mt. Langley (near Mt. Whitney) but given how quickly all the trailheads filled up that weekend, we were lucky to have any entry within a few hours drive.  So, Pine Creek it was.  This is the pass just north of Mt. Tom, near Bishop, CA.  We were out for two nights and did a bit of peak climbing/scrambling on the middle day and snagged some awesome views. After coming back out of the backcountry, we enjoyed a hot dip at Mammoth Hot Springs before heading home back over the Sierra Nevada.

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Backpacking into Desolation Wilderness

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Melissa came out from Minnesota to join me and some friends (Jeanie, Mike, Llana, Nora and Chloe!) on a weekend-long backpacking trip into the Desolation Wilderness (near Lake Tahoe).  We worked our way from Loon Lake to Buck Island Lake, Rockbound Lake, and eventually Rubicon Reservoir.

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Adventure in Queensland – Australia!

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This is a collection of images from a trip in November 2001 organized through REI Adventures.  They call it their “Reef and Rain Forest” multisport trip.  Fifteen days of whitewater rafting, backpacking, camping, biking, sea kayaking, snorkeling, scuba diving, and uh… eating!  It was wonderful!  (No worries, mate!)

Whitewater Rafting on the Tully River

Backpacking in the Rainforest of Wooroonooran National Park

Biking in the Atherton Tablelands

Snorkeling and Diving on the Great Barrier Reef

Sea Kayaking Among the Barnard Islands

Farewell Dinner

Exploring Cairns and Vicinity

Backpacking in Zion National Park

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Narrows1

This was a backpacking trip in July with Hoan, Huy, Corey, and Jason into the Kolob Canyons in the northeastern part of the park.

I arrived a few days earlier and so I wandered up the Zion Narrows for a few hours. This incredibly deep and narrow canyon runs for many miles and the river itself is the trail.  You spend most of your time wading the river to follow the Narrows through. It’s very much fun. It’s also very difficult to photograph — so I want to go back and try again.

You can arrange to backpack from one end to another and stay overnight at one of several designated spots midway through.  I’d love to come back here and backpack the whole length of it someday.

Some views from a couple miles upstream into the Zion Narrows:

Narrows2

Narrows3

These are the grasslands several miles to the northeast of Zion Canyon proper:

Zion-Grassland

One of the many towering walls in Zion Canyon:

Zion-Central

Lunch stop in Bear Trap Canyon in the Kolob Canyon area. No bears encountered but this canyon probably could trap one.  It ends abruptly in a tight space with a nearly free-falling creek:

Kolob

Falls

To the Summit of Mt. Whitney

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Kamay invited me to join her with Patty and Billy on a backpacking trip to summit Mt. Whitney.  And here it is, from Mt. Whitney looking down into Owens Valley and the town of Lone Pine from 14,495 feet:

That’s the highest point in the lower forty-eight states, thank you very much!
Hey, plus six feet to my eye-level…

 

And that’s a marmot, of course!