Tag: hiking

Mission Peak at Night

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Last week Darlene and I had intended to climb Mission Peak for the full “harvest moon” but other things got in the way two days in a row, but we did eventually get a chance to hike up. The hike is a three-mile, 2000 ft. ascent and provides long views of the bay and surrounding communities all the way to the top.

Unfortunately, the air wasn’t too clear this week – smog and likely smoke from the dozen wildfires around the state: so a very deep red sunset and moonrise.

 

Given that there’s a 10 pm curfew and the moon was already rising too late, we had to head back down before the moon could get high enough to light up our way.  So it was a headlamp hike rather than a moonlight hike.

Big Basin Camping

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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:

  

Backpacking the Lost Coast

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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:

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Twelve Days of Croatia

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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:

Days 1 -4:  Zagreb, Plitvice Lakes National Park, Zrmanja and Krupa Rivers, and Novigrad

  

Days 5-7:  Paklenica National Park, Vrgada Island, Skradin, Krka National Park, and Trogir

  

Days 8-9:  Split, Trebižat River, Mostar, and Ston

  

Days 9-12:  Dubrovnik, Zaton and the Elafiti Islands

  

 

Overnight in Big Basin

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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.

Click through for the full gallery:

 

Found this fuzzy yellow guy wandering through our camp in the morning:

 

Costa Rica – Coast to Coast

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I just returned from a fun and challenging little adventure (arranged through BikeHike.com) where a group of eight of us made our way across Costa Rica from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean entirely under our own human power… and a fair amount of gravity assist!

We started in Quepos, on the western coast, and we proceeded to bike, hike, raft and kayak our way entirely across the country until we reached the eastern coast and the Caribbean.  We mostly camped at sites along the way and a support vehicle carried our gear but we otherwise made our way from one coast to the other.  Along the way, we encountered (or sometimes befriended) caiman, monkeys, sloths, toucans, turkey vultures, frogs, bats, snakes and some biting fish, as well as numerous insects including various spiders, ants, butterflies and a particularly aggrieved, giant grasshopper.

Click on through for my gallery of photos and videos from the trip:

   

Norwegian Road Trip

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After our week in Scotland, we were off to see a bit of Norway! (September 19th-30th, 2013)   Our first day was just an air travel day from Edinburgh through Heathrow and on to Oslo, with some extra time lost having to return to the airport to pick up our delayed baggage.  But the next day we would travel from Oslo to Bergen on one of the “Norway in a Nutshell” tours with Jane, Janie, Darlene’s sister Shel and her extended family before picking up a rental car to explore more of Norway on our own.

I’ve organized these pictures and videos into five separate galleries:

Days 1-2: “Norway in a Nutshell” Tour

Days 3-4: Aurlandsfjord

Days 5-7: Jostedalsbreen and Sognefjord

Days 8-9: Geirangerfjord and Trollstigen

Day 10: Oslo