Doug Landauer: bp

The Pacfic Crest Trail: Escape to the Wilderness

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 06:59:33 GMT

Ann and Myron Sutton I bought this book at Powell's in Portland, the first week of August. I read it since then. Published in the early 1970's it has an interesting perspective on the PCT and wilderness hiking. The Wilderness Act (of 1964) was only 11 years old. More later...

July Dinkey Lakes BP and Grass Valley visit

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 03:49:28 GMT

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.

Winter camping at the Pinnacles

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 06:42:09 GMT

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.

Cherry Creek Canyon

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 05:49:30 GMT

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

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

Pointers, Cherry Creek, Vogelsang

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 06:52:11 GMT

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.

Space squeeze

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 06:46:11 GMT

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.

DIY Alcohol Stoves

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 06:55:26 GMT

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.

Gwgl R3

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 06:58:07 GMT

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.

Sandhill Ecosystems

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 06:28:19 GMT

I took my nephew on a couple of short hikes today. My thought was to make it a "Lime Kilns" day ... visiting Fall Creek, UCSC entrance, and the Pogonip. (A fourth set of kilns are just north of Engelsmann Loop in Wilder Ranch State Park, but they're farther from any legal trailhead.) So, first we visited the lime kilns at Fall Creek (see any of these four links). We took one of the least-used entrances: around a mile or two farther up Felton-Empire Road than the main entrance, there's a trailhead with no parking available. But another 50 or 100 yards up, there's a turnout big enough to park in. It's just over a mile walk, down to the kilns, and we explored the "Blue Cliff" a bit, then climbed back up to the car. As we reached Santa Cruz, Ben said it'd be cool to visit that observation deck in Henry Cowell State Park, so we changed plans, put the other lime kiln sites on hold for another day, and headed up Graham Hill to the campground at Henry Cowell. That walk is another 1.2 miler, and the 360-degree views from the observation deck were as nice as I had remembered. Over near the closest Ponderosa Pine, someone had scrawled on the railing:

I can't believe
I lost my weed
Mind the weed
Of Roger Tweed
For the other side
Yee see

Oooohhhh kayyyy ... maybe that loss was a good thing? As usual, photos will be along once I have the patience to put them up somewhere.

Anyway, the sandy ecosystems up in that part of Henry Cowell park are similar to the ones around where I live. We recently got a flyer from the Zayante Sandhills Convervation Bank. (If it's legit, it does seem odd that a ".com" would have a say about what building projects are or aren't permitted. Did we become a total corporatocracy without a peep of protest?) About eleven years ago, I read a Sunset Magazine article that covered the "Sand Islands" of this part of the Santa Cruz Mountains. I've had a link to my OCR'd version of it for years, on my "Out &About" page

Half a trip report

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 07:35:53 GMT

I put up a bunch of the photos from Ben & my recent Yosemite trip. I started writing a narrative, but it's not done yet. The half-done thing is up there now.

Nice trip.

Last weekend of the summer

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 05:15:23 GMT

I got away last weekend for a three-day backpack trip with my nephew Ben (MaryBeth's son), from Tuolomne up to Vogelsang High Sierra Camp and back via Lyell canyon. Saw three bears, a fox, a jackrabbit, an owl ... and all of those were from the car! On foot, we saw birds, deer, marmots & pika. And a bunch of spermophilus beldingi (Ben's favorite squirrel). Photos'll be on the web soon.

Remodel, two bike rides, and some backpack plans

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 06:35:14 GMT

Two plus weeks on Kaua`i, and only about one afternoon actually felt like it would count as vacation (a visit to Allerton Gardens). We (Deb and I) more or less remodeled my Mom's condo in Lihue. Came out great. I'll link to some photos once I put them in a more public place. I got to do two more bike rides lately -- one on the 3rd or so, where Ben & Marty & I rode from Rincon, up U-Conn into UCSC, across the top of UCSC into Wilder, down Chinquapin and the east side of the Big Meadow, across Old Cabin, and then the long, long climb up Long Meadow. It's all covered with large gravel these days, icky to ride up. Ben and I were in crappy enough shape that we walked up. Still icky. Gorgeous day, though, and great scenery. Amazing amount of time without seeing anyone. The second ride was mostly paved -- Ben rode the road bike. We started in kinda the western edge of Scotts Valley, near where Lockwood hits Graham Hill Road. Rode a mile and a half down G.H.R's bike-lane-less narrow shoulder, to that end of Pipeline Road. Then we could take Pipeline across the park (Henry Cowell) to park HQ. Some cops were driving on that end of the road, looking for a guy with a dog. We never got the story on why. We road through Roaring Camp, out to GHR, across to Conference Road, and then up through the Conference Center area, and along the landslide singletrack that connects over to Mount Hermon Road. Then it's a reasonably gentle climb back up Lockwood to GHR. Next up: tomorrow night, we head for Tuolomne Meadows to see whether we can get a permit for the 18-mile semiloop backpack from there to Vogelsang High Sierra Camp. Wish us luck.

Herons, Tanager, Snake, Bearfoot, Austin Lounge Lizards

Tue, 30 May 2006 07:37:55 GMT

Fun weekend. Photos on the Mac, may be on the web by the end of the week. Saw a Western Tanager, a snake, three great blue herons, many excellent musicians both on stage and in jam sessions, and a whole bunch of hippies.

Strawberry Music Festival

Fri, 26 May 2006 06:50:12 GMT

Off to Camp Mather for the long musical weekend. Laura Love! I'll be happy to avoid Boulder Creek's famous "Junk 'n' Drunk Festival". And I plan to go seek out Sierra Point, one of the few spots in Yosemite Valley from which one can see four of the major Valley waterfalls (Vernal, Nevada, Illilouette, and Yosemite). And the Hetch Hetchy waterfalls (Wapama and Tueeulala). And if there's enough time, maybe walk up past Mirror (Lake/Meadow) to find one of the Goofy Falls that come off Half Dome or maybe on the Tenaya itself, this time of year.

Gap, Pass, Notch, or Saddle?

Thu, 03 Nov 2005 05:06:21 GMT

Combining two of my major geekeries (maps and word-meanings), here's a map of gap-like (pass-like) geographical features, color-coded to what name is used for the place. http://seattle.gii.net/~pfly/gnis.gap-pass-notch-saddle.jpg Near here (Santa Cruz Mountains), there are Saratoga Gap (Highway 9 at 35), Waterman Gap (Highway 9 at 236 (the one north of Boulder Creek, which was recently made vastly worse by Cal-Trans)), and Patchen Pass (aka "The Summit", the highest point of Highway 17). Interesting to see that the vast majority of "Gap"s are in the Appalachians. [ via http://gpstracklog.typepad.com/gps_tracklog/2005/11/gap_pass_notch_.html and http://tinyurl.com/dpx74 ]

Reunion Roaring River Road's End Report

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 07:14:37 GMT

Saturday, 17 September, I went to Pasadena for my 35-year high school reunion. Took some photos but haven't put them up on the web yet. The organizer had a photo of my kindergarten class! Sunday, I got to go on a mountain bike ride with my nephew Ben and his mother's partner Marty, in Wildwood Park: http://tinyurl.com/7hnbk Monday, I drove up to Kings Canyon, found my backpacking friends, and we camped overnight near Grant Grove. Then, starting on Tuesday, we did a car shuttle and then walked about 33 miles in 3 days. We drove about a half-hour from Grant Grove to the trailhead at 7400 feet or so. We started hiking into a rainstorm ... saw five little frogs at various points along the trail. We climbed over a ridge and into the sun, for a great view of the newly-snowed-upon Great Western Divide ... After that, we descended gently along the beautiful Sugarloaf Valley, where we camped on Tuesday night. More thunderstorms happened overnight, but we all stayed dry. Pattie had brought a (lightweight, plastic, REI) flask of Cazaderos tequila -- very nice. Wednesday, we dropped down to about 7100 feet, before climbing 400 feet to Roaring River Ranger Station. (Pattie said that the beauty of this station convinced her that "Ranger" would be her next career, and she would find a way to be assigned to Roaring River.) Then we climbed another 1500 feet, to above Moraine Ridge. That was hard, but the views of the headwalls of Deadman Canyon and Cloud Canyon were spectacular! Godfrey had the same sort of flask, but he had brought some 18-year-old Glen Morangie. Yum! Friday (9/22), we started at 9000 feet, climbed up to Avalanche Pass (10,000 feet), and then down, down and down some more. And then some steep downhill, and then more downhill, and then down a cliff. Pix to be linked later ... [Looking down the worst section of the Sphinx Switchbacks] . [Looking up at a few of them] http://sierra-trails.com/sphinx/sphinx10.htm Altogether, we dropped 5000 feet that day. Yow! Here are the photos from the backpacking part of the trip, including the big frog I saw while we were driving out: http://tinyurl.com/9vv8v Oh, yeah: from about an hour before we reached the starting trailhead around noon on Tuesday, we saw no other humans until Thursday afternoon, about an hour before reaching the end of the trail. The last segment of the week was a car-camping weekend at Cedar Grove in the main section of Kings Canyon. (The 20th annual for some of the folks there; it was my 9th year attending it.) Here are a few photos from that get-together, including the annual walk up to Mist Falls. On my way out, I visited the lookout at Buck Rock -- 8500 feet elevation, and only about 12 miles from Grant Grove. Fantastic views! Here's the tinyURL for that segment of the week: http://tinyurl.com/76p8w . Bonus link, in case you missed it last year: photos from my Ansel Adams trip last year, along with brief caption-style trip report. The server goes down sometimes, but seems to be up at the moment: Google: NFSJ Photos, and the first hit (today, anyway) is http://zia.pycs.net/diM-NFSJ/ I'll add URLs later, though you can probably find most of these. [Edit: I added (tiny)URLs.]

Ruby Reunion Roaring River Road's End

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 06:59:19 GMT

Busy week planned for next week. Been hacking Ruby code for a couple of months at work, and it's time for a break. My high school is holding a reunion (35 years!) on Saturday; I plan a backpacking trip from near Grant Grove, past Roaring River Ranger Station, Moraine Ridge, Avalanche Pass, and down and down and down and down and down to Road's End. "Road" being CA-180 in King's Canyon.

Condor trail

Sat, 13 Aug 2005 20:42:04 GMT

While researching plans for my recent backpacking trip, I came across mention of a new trail/proposal in southern/central California, called the "Condor Trail". It's intended to be about 300 miles long, and to go along much of the backbone of the mountains in the Los Padres National Forest. I haven't found much info about it on the web, just a 2001 article from UCSB's Daily Nexus, and a "Condor Trail Weblog", on the site for the Los Padres Forest Association. The UCSB article is called "New Hiking Trail Would Connect the Dots". The Condor Trail Weblog has a few postings from spring and summer of 2004, but nothing since. I ought to update my Long Trails in North America page, and add it.

Pix from Backpacking with Ben

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 06:48:20 GMT

I went backpacking with my nephew Benjamin a couple of wekeends ago (Friday 15 July through Sunday). The photos are up on my mac.com site. Ben is 10 years old, though he's a big 10. Last year, I took him on the first six or so miles of the High Sierra Trail, and we had a blast. So he'd been asking when we could schedule another backpacking trip this summer. Ben and his mother Mary had flown up from T.O., and she had to be in San Francisco for a work meeting. So I came up with the idea of having her drop Ben and me off on Skyline, and we would walk down through Long Ridge Open Space Preserve, down Ward Road into Portola State Park, and on out through Pescadero Creek County Park. It's a mostly downhill hike :-), but this time Ben's pack would be somewhat heavier.

The captions tell much of the story, but since I ran out of camera space on Saturday afternoon, there aren't captions for the pictures I didn't take. So: Saturday morning, we had headed straight out from Slate Creek Campground to do Peter's Creek Loop. We had seen a total of three people (and one raccoon) since leaving the trailhead. Peter's Creek Loop climbs a bit from camp, then has a very steep descent to the loop part. Near the high point of the trail, there are several spots with a lot of poison oak very close to the trail. Ben did quite well and I think he has a good idea of what poison oak looks like, and can recognize many of its varied forms. ("Toxicodendron diversibolum" is one of my favorite latin-style species names; it's so descriptive.) On the way back to camp, we did see a couple of adults and a couple of kids heading up there. We warned them about the poison oak, and it turned out that even the adults weren't quite sure what it looks like. So I pointed out a couple. Hope they didn't get any. Ben and I returned to camp, filtered some more water and played in the creek some more (it was a pretty hot day). Ben had just attended a house concert where groovelily had performed, and had a song of theirs in his head. Ben's a good-natured guy, and he sings a lot. Unfortunately in this case, he only had about two or three lines of this one song going. I heard that a few times before I finally started singing a few of the amusing songs that I know. His favorites ended up being Eric Bogle's "Nobody's Moggy" and the Austin Lounge Lizards' "Saguaro".
Anyway, we ended up at the Portola State Park HQ around five pm, and discovered to our delight that they had cold sodas and gatorade! We spent a fair amount of time there, rested, and called home to check in. Then we walked the remaining mile and a half to Tarwater Trail Camp. About when we got there, I remembered that I had intended to fill up our waters with tap water at the station, but it had completely slipped my mind. We did have enough for dinner, though, and the freeze-dried spaghetti meal wasn't bad at all. Sunday, we packed up and headed out; I had been thinking of taking the Pomponio Trail, since it's mostly singletrack, but we talked over the options and ended up walking back on Old Haul Road. It was cooler and a bit of marine layer had been sucked in. Old Haul is just inland from Butano Ridge, so it doesn't get much direct ocean breeze, but as we crossed each side canyon, there was a nice light cool breeze coming down it. We made pretty good time, and got out to the trailhead and saw a deer on the (paved) road. (Had not seen any deer at all in the wilderness part of the trip.) Headed over to the ranger station and store for milkshakes! Very fun trip.

Backpacking with Ben

Mon, 18 Jul 2005 06:45:31 GMT

Just back from a 3-day trip in the neighborhood, with my 10-year-old nephew Ben. On Friday, Ben's mother Mary dropped us off where the trail crosses Skyline in Long Ridge OSP, and we walked down that trail and Ward Road, to the Slate Creek Campground in Portola State Park. Saturday, we did the Peter's Creek loop and then walked down to park HQ, resupplied a bit (cold sodas!), and went on to Tarwater trail camp. Finally, today, we walked out to the store at Pescadero Creek / Memorial Park ranger station. Very fun trip.

Backpacker Mag -- Hiker-Slang, Sea-to-Sea, Bonny Doon

Wed, 13 Jul 2005 06:47:12 GMT

Here are some notes inspired by the August 2005 issue of Backpacker magazine. There's a very amusingly-written article about hikers' slang -- "The Unofficial, Unabridged, Slick-talking, Fast-walking Hiker's Glossary". The article is unattributed, but it sure reminds me a lot of the Dictionary of MTB Slang that I edited a decade ago, and that Jim Frost has been maintaining ever since. (I'm not suggesting plagiarism -- the article is original and quite well-done. I just wonder whether the unmentioned author had read the MTB Slang page -- the styles are quite similar, IMHO.) The article is illustrated with cool, retro-cartoon style drawings that also rung a bell -- this time, a wine label bell. My wife and I are members of DEWN, the wine club for Bonny Doon Vineyards. Their early-release wines always have distinctive and interesting labels, and it turns out that some of my favorite labels (e.g., the DEWN Freisa) were indeed created by Gary Taxali, the illustrator of this month's Backpacker article. Cool. The other article that caught my interest was about the Sea-to-Sea trail, from the mouth of the St Lawrence, to the northwest corner of Washington State. I mentioned that trail and the Pacific Northwest Trail in my long trails in North America article. (Aside: check out this search.) This month's related Backpacker article highlighted Andrew Skurka, who by next month may complete the journey that makes him the first person to "hike the entire 7,700-mile Sea-to-Sea Route (C2C)". Further mention of the Range Creek Ruins will have to wait.

When is Google going to do Google Topo?

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 05:10:42 GMT

I spent last night drawing up three hikes, using the awful "Topo!" software that National Geographic sells. I had forgotten just how horrible its user interface is -- it may even rival Lotus Notes for UI blunders. Too bad most of its competitors aren't a whole lot better. I can hardly wait for Google to turn its attention in that direction. Anyway, I've been trying to plan a couple of backpacking trips for later this summer; one short one with Ben in the southern Sierra, and a longer one in the wilderness between Kings Canyon and Wishon and Courtright Reservoirs. Another North Fork, though this time it's the Kings River, rather than the San Joaquin. I've uploaded info about the two NFKR trips to Flickr, with the tag "blackcap". (For each version, there's a trip profile, the approach, and the main loop.)

Ben Lomond sandhill parkland habitat

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 03:46:15 GMT

A couple of Sundays ago, I took a guided tour into a part of Quail Hollow Ranch County Park that is normally closed, because there are a number of threatened or endangered plant species there. (This is the same sort of tour as described in this 1996 Sunset Magazine article ... it's kinda sad that it took nine years for me to actually go on one.) Pretty interesting tour; some unique plants there, including some of Ben Lomond's rare low-elevation ecological island of Ponderosa Pines. (Several of these grow on my property.) Earlier this evening, I took a walk up the ridge behind my house. And I now recognize several of the little sand-habitat plants that our guide pointed out on that tour. Lots of sticky monkey-flower plants (the ones with the orange flowers), and there are a few Lewis' monkeyflower plants (larger, with light purple flowers). Actually, there are a lot more Lewis' ones than I remember seeing up there before -- I wonder if they respond more readily to wet winters than most of the other sandhill plants do. (Handy bonus link: my other botany-related page is at the google-top for indurate peltate.)

NFSJ backpacking trip photos

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 05:43:21 GMT

I uploaded and captioned my NFSJ photos to the pycs server in New Zealand. Some few thumbnails:

Back from the NFSJ

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 07:01:17 GMT

Mostly as sent to the YosemiteHikes group earlier this evening: Google "NFSJ", and you'll see my plans. (More directly, google "north fork san joaquin, Labor day weekend".) Four of us just did this trip over Labor Day Weekend, pretty close to the "I'm feeling Lucky" plan. Just imagine: Labor Day weekend, never more than 25 or 27 "crow" miles from Yosemite Valley ... Over the five days (9/3 to 9/7), we saw two small horse-packing parties (both on Friday), and TWO other people, and maybe a total of three to five mosquitoes. I'll post a URL for the trip report and photos once I write it and they're someplace accessible.