GIGO: words unreadable aloud

Tuesday 29 July 2008

July Dinkey Lakes BP and Grass Valley visit

Backpacking trip (Dinkey Lakes) was great; approximate map: http://is.gd/OsO . Through Madera and up to Prather, the car thermometer was reading 111 degrees! Cooler at the 8200-foot trailhead. Serious mosquitoes bothered the susceptible at the lower lakes. We did a couple miles of cross-country up to beautiful Fingerbowl Lake. Ben and Annalise scrambled up to the top of the Third Sister! We got an impressive hour-and-a-half heavy (for the Sierra) thunderstorm, but our tarp and groundcloth kept us dry. Hiked out through another hour-and-a-half of heavy rain, lightning, and thunder, this time with hail for added drama!

The next weekend, I didn't go to Mammoth -- went instead to our group's offsite at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Shouldn't have. Got nasty food poisoning.

This past weekend, drove up to Grass Valley for Cliff's 80th, and we got some great Doughty family photos taken at the Empire Mine State Park. I hope to have figured out a photo place to put some of them up on the web, some time soon.
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Thursday 31 January 2008

Winter camping at the Pinnacles

So, there's the tradition of an annual winter trip. In the past, I hear, it's mostly been a ski trip. Something different this year — Disneyland, or camping at the Pinnacles. No contest for me, despite the possibility of weather. Seems that somewhere under ten percent of the trippers chose to go camping with me, the other several thousand are going to Disneyland.

I plan to take some pictures.

Current forecast is for a spate of dry weather for a change! Keeping my fingers crossed.
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Monday 27 August 2007

Cherry Creek Canyon

It was a great trip. Here's the Cherry Creek Canyon Trip Report.

We're all ready to do a similar one, next year.

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Friday 17 August 2007

Pointers, Cherry Creek, Vogelsang

The Cherry Creek trip was great.

I just discovered that I had never put my GIGO entry about last year's Vogelsang trip into the GIGO TOC (Table Of Contents). So I just did so, and here's some links:

the half-written Vogelsang trip report. Alas, that's likely to be as written as it gets.
the express version, 84 captioned thumbnails that link to slightly higher-res pix
I've kept a very infrequently updated weblog at blogspot for some time. It lives here, and I made an entry today about the bobcat I saw in Cupertino three weeks ago.

Pix from Cherry Creek due pretty soon.
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Tuesday 31 July 2007

Space squeeze

Low posting rate lately is due to (1) my Radio Userland space is down to 2% available (of the ridiculously tiny 40 MB), and (2) prep for a backpacking trip this coming weekend. As part of the prep, I've been walking four or so miles every time I manage to get out. E.g., Ed Levin park right near work in Milpitas (saw 50 or so wild turkeys), Rancho San Antonio in Cupertino (saw and photographed a bobcat).

I'm guessing that my next post here will be my last, a pointer to some other place.
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Saturday 30 June 2007

DIY Alcohol Stoves

Since about seven years ago, my favored backpacking stoves have been the two pepsi can stoves that I made. Since I'm planning a trip for later this summer, I figured it was about time to try some of the newer designs found at or linked from the http://zenstoves.net/ site.

So today I built two Hybrid SideBurner Jet Alcohol Stoves (using the Simplified Zen Alcohol Sideburner design), and one "penny stove" as designed by Mark Jurey.

I guess I'm not getting the hang of priming them quite yet. The pepsi ones spoil you because they're sorta self-priming and the shape is quite wind-resistant during priming. By contrast, these new ones both seem to need a primer pan. But once they got going, they sure were pretty! And I think I'm going to like the simple side-burning ones best, because they don't require a pot stand.

I'll do some more testing over the next month, before deciding on a winner.
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Friday 27 April 2007

Gwgl R3

Been playing around with Google Earth a bit lately. I know, I'm a little late to that party -- but it did take them a while to get it ported to the Mac.

Anyway, I've managed to fly through the routes of most of the more memorable backpacking trips I've taken and some day hikes I've done. It's uncanny how much the GwglR3 view can look like the real terrain, sometimes. But it's not an "uncanny valley" -- it's just really cool.

1980 trip with Sheldon, Jeremiah, and the crippled Girl Scouts -- sort of a Rae Lakes Loop, but from the east -- Onion Valley, Kearsarge Pass, Charlotte Lake, Gardner Peak, Gardner Basin, Sixty Lakes Basin, Rae Lakes, Glen Pass
1994 hike to Grizzly Lake in the Trinity Alps (see http://tinyurl.com/yuhrq7 )
Part of my 1999 PCT Solo Week http://got.net/~landauer/bp/990928-YoseHigh.html
Most of the Y2K Emigrant Wilderness trek across Yosemite http://got.net/~landauer/bp/000729-EmW_Yosemite.html
The first day or two of the High Sierra Trail, from near Moro Rock, up to the Hamilton Lakes.
The hike from Koke`e down along the Nu`alolo trail, to a viewpoint about 2000' above the Nu`alolo Kai, then along the cliffs to the Awa`awapuhi trail, and another amazing viewspot. Do also check out the Kalalau Valley viewpoint, it looks quite a lot like the postcards.
The incredible NFSJ trip (I'll have to restage the trip report, I think Phil P.'s pycs Radio server finally gave up the ghost.)
and the more recent trip along the route that parallels the main part of Kings Canyon, but just south of it (past the Sugarloaf, Roaring River Ranger Station, Moraine Ridge, Avalanche Pass, and on down to Bubbs Creek). One of the awesome views from that trip is from near the Ranger Station, looking up this pair of canyons -- Deadman Canyon and Cloud Canyon -- and the GwglR3 view does not disappoint.

Now that GwglR3 has a hiking trails layer, it looks like it's also an awesome tool for planning trips, and/or for vicariously following along on trips you never intend to take. Everest, anyone?

I can hardly wait for Google Mars to be converted to the same format.
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