Marc's Public Blog - Hiking

July 4th weekend by Pine Mountain Lake, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, and Yosemite

2011-07-04T15:00:00Z

As explained in the flight to Pine Mountain Lake, after Jennifer's knee injury that kept us home for a while, I figured we should do some hiking in the Sierras. I found the very nice Cub Inn Bed and Breakfast, owned by two pilots, and by Pine Mountain Lake, at the foot of the Sierras.

The great thing for pilots is that the very nice owners will pick you up at the airport and lend you their jeep so that you can get around and get to see a little bit more than just Pine Mountain Lake itself (which is actually a nice place, but there is more to see in the Sierras than just that).

After arriving at the Cub Inn, the owners lent us a couple of bikes so that we could go to the lake, where we chilled out a little bit:

Jennifer's knee wasn't doing well with biking uphill, so we didn't get to bike much farther and just went back to the Cub Inn. Joe nicely lent us his jeep, and we were able to go around Pine Mountain Lake and hike around some trails north of Pine Mountain. It wasn't a great trail, but it was a good warming up for the upcoming hiking.

The next morning, we drove to Hetch Hetchy for some hiking:

reservoir was overflowing to say the least...

the overflow relief was spewing big time

As far as the rangers let us go, just short of the first waterfall.

That's a slightly faster way back than the trail :)

Due to the backpackers who had died a few days prior when trying to corss the 2nd waterall while it was pouring too much over the bridge (they got swept away), the rangers were blocking all traffic in both directions and gave boat rides to those who were stranded on the other side. So, we had lunch there, and turned back.

Then, since we had a bit of time left over, we did a quick hike to a local vista point before heading home:

warm rocks are the best :)

The next day, we got up early and went to Yosemite valley and parked at the bottom of the 4 mile trail. We waited until July 5th to go to Yosemite, as we had heard that it was packed to capacity the days prior due to the July 4th crowd.
Thankfully, on the 5th, there weren't many people, so we almost had the trail to ourselves.

Merced River

Nice little 'flow' :)

Hike up Yosemite Falls

Slowly getting higher

Half Dome

And we finally got to Glacier Point

Did I mention water flow? :)

Still some snow left

It was out to get our lunch

Picnic at Glacier Point

After a good break at Glacier Point, we headed for the real peak: Sentinel Dome. A big thanks to Arturo for giving us the tip to go on up to there.

The real peak, sentinel dome

Getting to Glacier Point was only half the journey (about 6 miles and 4000ft up), then we had to go back down, but it turned out to be a bit faster :) We were lucky and got to see 3 different bears on the way down.

it walked right past us and went hunting for more food

click for video

and we're back down

On our way out, we went to the visitor center for a little while

nice vantage point of the trail we took

And that was it, our 3rd day was over and it was time to get back home. See more images for July 4th weekend by Pine Mountain Lake, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, and Yosemite

Backpacking the Grand Canyon: South Rim to Phantom Ranch, Indian Garden, and Back

2010-11-26T16:00:00Z

After a Nice flight from Palo Alto and Sunset and Sunrise viewing from the South Rim, it was time to start our hike.

The trail was slightly snowy at the top, but became good very quickly, with smooth sailing/hiking all the way to Bright Angel. The only hard part for me was going down with over 50lbs on my back (a bit hard o ny knees).

Here is a picture of what the hike looked like:

Day 1: South Kaibab Trail

After hiking the Rim trail at sunrise, we went backpacking down South Kaibab Trail to Bright Angel Camp.

This crow came hoping to get fed

Day1: Phantom Ranch and Bright Angel Camp

After a relatively easy 8 miles and 4h30, we got down to Phantom Ranch and setup camp at Bright Angel Camp. The Camp was pretty busy, but eh, you can't expect otherwise around thanksgiving.
After setting camp and saying hi to the local deer, we went to Phantom Ranch to listen to a ranger led presentation.

We got to learn about rocks :)

Night got pretty cold (freezing)

Candle Lit dinner

This shows the hike back up:

Day2: Bright Angel Camp to Indian Garden

The original plan was to hike around the canyon bottom on the second day and sleep at Indian Garden. Unfortunately, the weather forecast was for bad weather the next day (rain and snow, which wasn't great for hiking, and not great for flying out either if the plane is iced up and the runway snowed in).
So, we elected to get out early and go through Indian Garden directly back to the top.

still had my great ski hat :)

this looks the way to get up :)

we trailled and passed the mules a couple of times

Old mine shaft

Jennifer's boots were not water proof

the mules beat us there by a little bit :)

Day2: Indian Garden to South Rim

We took a break at our supposed camp site for the night, Indian Garden, since we had reached it by 11:00.

After the quick lunch at Indian Garden, we pushed for the top (4500ft climb total and 11 miles up in 6h30):

back to the top, in record time!

After getting back up by 14:45 or so, we cleaned up quickly, and got a cab to the airport to fly to Vegas before sunset. If it weren't for the cab almost taking an hour to show up (!), everything else was perfect.

Georef Map

If you wish, here is a link to a big georeferenced map of Vegas/Grand Canyon Trip. See more images for Backpacking the Grand Canyon: South Rim to Phantom Ranch, Indian Garden, and Back

Hike/Night at Angel Island and Hike to Alamere Falls at Pt Reyes

2010-06-27T15:00:00Z

Jennifer tried to get us a good camping site on Angel Island. That's a bit hard since there are only 3 really good ones with view of San Francisco and the Golden Gate, and they are taken months in advance. That said, we figured we could camp closeby and just eat/go see the sunset by the nice vista point, which we did.

We were early for the Ferry in Tiburon, so we went to the vantage point to have a look:

Short ferry ride

Angel Island is a peaceful little island to visit. You have to plan your trip carefully to match ferry times (there aren't that many ferries during the week), and find parking that isn't outragerous. Leaving from Tiburon is the best bet but the closest parking lot is $25/night, whereas a farther one at a closeby bank is just $5.

Going around the Island was pretty scenic, and doing some of the hiking on the perimeter road is actually where you'll get the best views in some places. It's a little bit sad that they refugate campsites so tightly since they have loads of space where people can actually pitch tents, but so it is.

After setting up our tent (a jackhammer to put the stakes in would have come in handy), we continued going around the Island counter clockwise towards the nice vantage point and had dinner there, and stayed for some night shots. After that, we headed back to our tent for the night.

The next day, we hiked to the top for a panoramic view, and just made it back to the 11:20 Ferry (the next one was 2H later). This allowed us to drive to Point Reyes for our next hike.

old buildings used by the army

Point Reyes was a no frills hike. Outside of some asshole driving 15mph on the entire 30mn twisty piece of hwy 1 (where are the cops to pull those idiots over when you need them), we eventually got to the parking lot at the end of the paved road, and hiked to the falls from there.

It was a nice scenic hike, one however had to be careful and avoid the poison oak on the very overgrown 0.4 mile portion of trail going to the ocean. Also, the path down to the beach is very non solid rock that you can't grip to since it breaks in your fingers. Hiking down with a backpack was a bit dicy and I can see people falling and hurting themselves there every so often.
Once down, though, the view was quite nice and a good place to have a late lunch.

climbing wasn't as dicy as getting down

All in all, it was a nice little hike. See more images for Hike/Night at Angel Island and Hike to Alamere Falls at Pt Reyes

Hiking/Backpacking in Mt Diablo, China Camp, Pt Reyes, Muir Woods, and Mt Tam

2009-07-05T15:00:00Z

It had been a while since we had gone really backpacking because Jennifer had been struggling with getting hiking boots that worked with her narrow ankle, where an incorrect fit was causing boot shift and ankle blisters leading to very painful raw skin exposed where the boot rubs, and the other option was to tighten the boot so hard with two pairs of socks, that it was causing constriction pain. Really, it was a no win situation for her. Mind you, I also have difficult feet to get boots for, but my blisters were more manageable (putting aside the small toe split and two toenails I did lose during our John Muir Trail 94 mile backpacking trip.

Anyway, Jennifer, while looking for usable snickers (having given on hiking boots), managed to find some non water proof hiking boots that seemed to be a good fit for her ankle, while I found wider toebox hiking boots myself. Neither are perfect but much better than what we had, so it was a good excuse to go try our new footwear over July 4th weekend.
Jennifer planned a half car camping, half backpacking trip for us through local state parks we had never been to, and that it would have been a shame not to see if they do indeed get closed with the budget cuts (but we sure hope not).

Here's the complete track of our trip, including the park visits and scenic flights:

Mt Diablo

We started with Mt Diablo since neither of us had ever visited it thoroughly, and it indeed has some nice views from the top as well as nice short hike areas like the sand stones by Rock City. Oh, and we also got a little visitor during lunch time, which we did have to turn away for his own good :)

hello you

feed me :)

I like this place, I think I'll stay here :)

China Camp

Jennifer thought we should go to see if there were any Chinamen left to free. Unfortunately, they had been driven off almost 100 years ago for fishing all the shrimp they could get their hands on in the San Francisco Bay, and shipping boatloads of dried shrimp to China :) (well, actually that part is mostly true).
Anyway, we saw the old camps, which had some historical value, and the state park itself was reasonably nice a quiet. Nothing super special, but still enjoyable. That might be one of the first in the list of parks to get cut though.

home sweet home :)

San Raphael Fair and Fireworks

This is where we spent the night on the way to Pt Reyes the next day. We happened to catch a county fair and some nice fireworks, so no complaints :) (actually the fireworks were better than the ones we got at home on the 4th).

Pt Reyes Day 1

The next day, we drove to Pt Reyes, and drove to the outside edges, which are quite a distance away and not too reasonable or interesting to hike to (although interesting to hike at).
That evening, we then backpacked to our camp site at Sky Camp with view of the ocean (kinda).

those sea lions were really good at climbing rock

but food was scarce, and the newborns were not doing well

at all :(

view from our lunch spot

many stairs down, which were fun back up

the lighthouse is way down to be below the fog/haze layer when possible

we had a few fresh oysters there

a few oyster shells :)

the trail up to our campsite

it was a fairly nice campsite

Jennifer warming up her hands with hot chocolate

Pt Reyes Day 2

The next day, we hiked from Sky Camp to the water and back some other way. By then, Jennifer wasn't feeling too well unfortunately, with stomach problems and low sleep, so I hiked a bit more in the marshlands by the sea while Jennifer took a nap in the car.

next morning was very hazy and foggy

the water in the air condensed in the trees and fell as light rain

lots of deer there too

hello

marshlands

back to our tent

Mt Tam Day 1

So, initially we were supposed to just go through Mt Tam on our way back, but we managed to get the unreserved handicap spot at the 14:00 auction for a nice camp down between hwy 1 and the ocean. It's a camp where the few spots get booked months in advance, and where the handicap spot isn't actually so good because it's car accessible, and very exposed to the wind, and boy does it get windy there. Luckily we were able to get a slightly better spot in a regular reserved camping spot where the relevant people never showed up. That said, even that spot was very windy until the sunset.
The site and views were pretty good though, even if the ocean view was actually pointing south and not west, so we did not see the sun set in the water, which is a bit of a shame, but oh well...
But before we got there, we drove up to the top of Mt Tam, which has quite nice views, and then hiked around the area until it was time to head down to our camp site. Among other places, we hiked past the West Point Inn, which is a backpacker hotel in the middle of a trail where old train tracks used to be. It looked like quite a nice place to stay at in the future.

bay bridge as seen from the top of Mt Tam

West Point Inn

the cabins you could rent next to our campsite

the unused campsite we found that was better than the handicap spot

Mt Tam Day 2

Since we slept there, the next morning we hiked up back the Matt Davis Trail to Pan Toll Ranger station after first hiking through Stinson Beach for some light breakfast. It was a nice little hike up (1500ft from sea level), a good place to have lunch and then we hiked back down the Dipsea trail back to our car.

Nice Owl

Muir Woods

Well, how about that, it had been just 10 years since my first hike ever in the US, which also happened to be in Muir Woods, so it was kind of nice to come back to it 10 years later. We actually did a kind of rushed 2.5 mile loop becuse we were running out of time, and also because the trees weren't all that different from some of the ones we had seen on the way down on the Dipsea Trail.
Yet, it was still a nice little loop.

we were very tempted to pick up a couple for dinner :)

San Francisco/Wicked

This gave us just enough time to drive to drive to San Francisco for a very quick dinner, and some last minute tickets to see Wicked (quite an enjoyable musical).

You can see all the pictures from the trip here. See more images for Hiking/Backpacking in Mt Diablo, China Camp, Pt Reyes, Muir Woods, and Mt Tam

Day Hike at Sunol Ohlone

2009-05-25T15:00:00Z

We hadn't gone hiking/backpacking in a while and one of the reasons was that Jennifer has as of yet been unable to find hiking boots that fit her (she has a narrow heel which causes the heel to move in the hiking boot, and then bad blisters and even ripped skin in a really bad place).
Until we can find maybe some heel insert for her (custom boots start around $1000 and take over 4 months to make/get), serious hiking/backpacking has been harder for her. While we haven't quite found the right boot for her, we figured we'd go do a day hike on memorial day. Jennifer checked her hike trail book, and we settled for Sunol because it was nearby (I was wary of 3 day weekend traffic).

The Sunol Ohlone park is not huge, but it had some nice hiking trails with good views of the east bay, from the Calaveras Reservoir, Mission Peak, and Mt Diablo. On the trail, we saw free range Cows, a pheasant with babies, many lizards, butterflies, chipmunks, and birds of prey.
At the top of Eagle View Trail, we had a nice view of the whole area while sitting on a shaded bench and eating a late lunch.

The pictures below are clickable and bring you to the map of where they were taken.

Cow Tipping anyone? :)

So called 'little yosemite'

Oh, and it was nice that going there and coming back was best achieved by taking the fun Calaveras road from Hwy 237 :) See more images for Day Hike at Sunol Ohlone

Northern Portion of Lost Coast Trail

2008-07-05T14:22:00Z

(note that all the pictures below are georeferenced. You can click on them to see where they were on the hike)

Things to know / GPS download of north section of the Lost Coast Trail

The report below contains details on backpacking on the northern portion of Lost Coast Trail, and worrying about portions that can be impassable at high tide (it's actually not that bad most times, details below), and also contains the only detailed GPS track with both a trail and a route you can use in your GPS, along with all the creeks and campsites that I could see, and which points of the trail can be tough to cross on a high high tide). For one, you not only want to have the tide table from the BLM rangers, but also remember to apply the time offset for Shelter Cove, and note if the high tide is a high high or a low high (depending on the moon, there could be a difference of several feet in the high tide, and that will make a difference later).
After you read the BLM info on hiking the LCT, you'll know that you need a bear container, and that fresh water is not much of a worry. There are numerous major streams to cross (i.e. they don't dry out), and many smaller ones that aren't on the map, but that I marked as waypoints in the map below (note that obviously those could potentially go dry, but again there is plenty of water on the route, so you really shouldn't run dry unless you really try to prove me wrong :) ).
While I recommend you read the portions below on how to deal with tides, and which exact points are tricky and where you could get trapped vs which portions are actually mostly safe to cross at high tide, you can get the GPX data file of the north portion of the lost cost trail used for the track shown below.

Planning, and starting from Mattole

It had been almost a year since Jennifer and I went backpacking. Eh, it took about 9 months for my toenails to regrow after the JMT trip :)
After Jennifer told me about doign the Lost Coast Trail, we studied which portion would make sense to do. We discounted the south portion (south of Shelter Cove) as we heard from a ranger the trail was somewhat overgrown and tick infested (with lyme disease as a bonus), so we concentrated on the Northern portion, which is all beach or trails by the beach.

Given that, we flew to the small Shelter Cove airport (which is actually not a piece of cake due to the prevalent overcast/fog, see my flying blog for details ), and got a ride to the trailhead at Mattole thanks to Sherren's shuttle service (she's great, she and her driver will go out of their way to match your schedule and get you where you need to, when you need to, in a van of up to 6 people). We ended up landing on July 2nd at 18:45, through a small hole in the ground fog, and she picked us up and drove us to the trailhead.
The Mattole trailhead has car camping with toilets, water, and bear proof trash (although no bear boxes, but you are required to carry a bear proof container anyway). There are plenty of campsites to be had, so it's fine to arrive even after sunset.
The next morning, we went to the trailhead and started our beach hike.

bunny was enjoying something to eat around our camp

First tide crossing point

Look for the 'LowTide Cross 1' point in the map above, and while we crossed it 2h from high tide, it felt like we had plenty of room left. This was due to the fact that while I had very inconvenient high tide times (12:45 on the first day, and 13:30 on the second day), those were fortunately low high tides, meaning that even at peak tide the water wasn't as far as it could be at other times.
My take on it was that you can likely cross this point just about any time outside of the peak of a high high tide. Quite frankly, we crossed the spot not that far from high tide and didn't even notice it was a tough spot until after we crossed it.

Cabins, Punta Gorda Lighthouse, Sea Lions

Once we crossed the first point, we passed one of the few cabins you see on the trail (they are all private, please do not tresspass, we the exception of a very broken down one that I marked on the map and that you could use if you're not afraid it's going to collapse on you ;) ).

Soft Sand, nice trail, or rocks, rocks, and more rocks...

About one third of the trail is a nice path that's easy to walk on (easy to average 3-3.5mph on it), about one third is beach hiking, where you'll get slowed down to 2mph or less depending on the sand (try to walk on the wet sand, but that also means you need to watch for the occasional sneaky wave that'll get your boots and socks wet if you don't see it in time), and the last third is various kinds of rocks from pebbles to boulders.
I first wondered if it made sense to do the hike in tevas for the stream crossings, but then realized that you can cross all the streams without ever getting your socks wet (they're not deep and/or have a tree trunk or rock cross point), and you really want to cross the boulder sections with good sturdy hiking boots.

Jennifer wasn't enjoying the rocks much, tricky for her balance

High tide section #2

The second high tide restricted section is depicted as several miles, and indeed, some portions of it are tricky or not doable depending on how high the high tide is. Look for the 'LowTide Cross2a Hard Bypass' waypoint above to hike up the hill for a section that just isn't doable even during mid tide (low tide only), while the rest we were able to cross from high tide to 2h after high tide.
If you are trying to squeeze by during a rising high tide, which isn't recommended, there are a few spots where you could wait the tide out if you realize you can't proceed anymore, but there are other spots where you may get trapped and very wet at best. Not a good idea to push your luck during a rising high high tide.
'Lowtide Cross 2b' was actually the hardest spot for us 1h after high tide, you had to time a quick cross on slippery boulders between two waves. I made it without getting wet, but Jennifer got stuck on a rock and splashed by a wave before she was able to get out. Unfortunately, she had to switch to tevas to get her socks and boots dry after that, which was very inconvenient for the upcoming boulder sections.

I was able to watch and time the waves, but Jennifer wasn't confident about doing that and unfortunately got splashed there when trying to cross after me

one of the many campsites made out of driftwood (all marked in my GPS trail)

we couldn't quite figure out what this was: a fish? baby dolphin? other?

rocks, rocks, and more rocks, Jennifer is hating it with tevas

Stopping for the night at Big Creek

Because we had been slowed down due to the soft sand, boulders, and then Jennifer's problems with her wet socks/boots, and then having to hike in tevas on boulders, while we were hoping to get to Big Flat Creek (just before the second potentially impassable at high tide section), we stopped 3 miles earlier at Big Creek. It was actually quite a nice sheltered spot, which which we got a inkling of a sunset (the weather was overcast/foggy 90% of the time we were there).

Seagulls liked to hang out by estuaries, probably because they find small fresh water fish?

Day 1 totals were 13.4 miles, moving average of 2.6mph and full day average of 1.2mph only.

Day 2: more beach, more rocks, more fog/overcast, and low tide section 3

After 3 reasonably easy miles to reach Big Flat creek, we headed on towards the low tide only section, against a rising tide that was just 3h from being full. I need to repeat here that this is not a grand idea per se. It turns out that going south is actually not as bad as the worst section is right at the beginning (pictures below), but be wary during a high high tide and know that some extended sections have no escape routes until you reach the next creek crossing (and you can't hike up the steep walls looking for temporary shelter).
Luckily for us the worst part was the first hour, and as the tide rose, we were on the somewhat easier sections that were doable on our low high tide. Anything south of 'LowTide Cross3a' isn't too bad in my opinion, even during a high tide (of course, if you get swept up by the waves because of this, and you are impolite enough to only get seriously injured but not killed, you can't come back and sue me on this :) ).

I actually didn't mind them too much since I enjoy the challenge, but they did slow me down, and Jennifer too since her heels and boots were bothering her

Hello little guy :) (he was checking us out)

Black Sand Beach and back to shelter cove

And soon after leaving the low tide zone, we ended up on Black Sand Beach for the last few miles to the Shelter Cove parking lot, where we were driven by two kind souls back to the runway.
Day 2 totals were: 11.2miles, a moving average of 2.5mph and a day average with all breaks of 1.5mph.

and we celebrated by having juicy buggers at the Counter in Palo Alto after a quick flight home :)

You can find all the pictures from the Northern Portion of the Lost Coast Trail .

2007/08/10-17: John Muir Trail from Bishop Pass to Mt Whitney

2007-08-19T04:29:00Z

Foreword

Jennifer had started the John Muir Trail southbound several years back, but her group hit a freak snow storm in early september and had to back out from Palisades Lakes back down to the Golden Staircase, and out Bishop Pass (with much difficulty since this was in fresh snow). Since then, she had wanted to go back and finish the trail, which is what we did this time.
We had planned for up to ten days of hiking, hoping to finish it in 9. We actually managed to get out at the end of day 8.
I had no desire to do the lonely and long 6-8 hour two car drive to Lonepine and Bishop to have a car waiting for us at the exit while leaving the first car at the entrance, so I managed to find a plane I was able to rent for 10 days (which is a bit hard to do), and we ended up flying to Bishop (the other option being to fly to lonepine and catching a bus to Bishop, which was a bit iffy if you missed the bus).
Of course, this now meant that we had to find a ride from bishop airport to city center, one from the hotel to the trail head the next day, and then one from Lonepine back to Bishop at the end. This isn't as easy as it seems because there is virtually no public transportation there (Bishop has a dial a ride system which doesn't work on weekends), and no taxis. Luckily, we found some nice locals who offered their driving services for a fee. Getting dropped at South Lake Trailhead in Bishop was $50, and getting a ride back from Whitney Portal Trailhead, through Lonepine and to Bishop was $100, which was actually a good price considering it's a 1H+ drive.
That whole plan worked out fine, except for the fact that like an idiot, I forgot half my luggage in the trunk of my car in Palo Alto and only found out after landing in Bishop, so I had to fly back to Palo Alto to pick it up (that was thursday 9th). Luckily, I had a fast plane and did the round trip in less than 3H (vs 12H+ of driving) while Jennifer went to the ranger station and picked up our permits.

As for our backpacks, this time we had to carry a fair amount of food to last 2 people for up to 10 days. Neither Jennifer nor I had much spare fat to burn, so we couldn't go too low on the calories. I figured we had to eat at least 2500cal/day, which was still a good 1000 to 1500 calorie difficiency per day, but with each gram of carb/protein giving 4 cals, and each gram of fat giving 9 cals, it worked out to one pound of high fat foods was about 2500 cals. So, in theory we needed 20 pounds of food for 2 people over 10 days.
The food that Jennifer computed separately ended up weighing 25 pounds when you add the two packed ursacks S29, which was very darn close to what I had computed.

While we found out later that unfortunately, some bears around Rae Lakes actually beat the ursacks (one chewed through the bag and the aluminum liner apparently, while another bear walked away with the ursack to work on opening it later), I was still thankful that there were conditionally approved at the time and that we were able to shed some load and space compared to the heavier and bulkier bear canisters.
In the end, my pack (which was an ultralight 2.2lbs 60l bag) weighed a hefty 52lbs with all the food, cooking ware, water filter, clothes, and more. On top of that were several pounds with the water (up to 9lbs if I filled up my camelback and my nalgene), to which I had to add my fanny pack with another 8lbs of stuff (emergency radio, GPS, batteries, solar chargers, cables, swiss army knife, duct tape, med kit, etc...). I know I could have shedded some weight there, although I wanted to test some of the equipment and I was hoping that I'd be able to cope with a 60-65lbs load, even if my weight was around 157, and it was clearly way beyond the recommended "not more than a third of your weight" rule.
In hindsight, I could have shedded 2-3lbs without missing anything, but the rest would have been at the expense of the trip quality (no GPS, camera, etc...), or safety (no radio), so I don't have much regrets. I was almost tempted ot bring a second water filter, seeing how many moving parts and seals those things have, and little it takes for them to fail, leaving you with drinking questionable water.
Jennifer had 25-27lbs in her pack, which is obviously less, but was plenty of challenge for her uphill (she would however beat me downhill because I just wasn't nimble enough with all that stuff on my back and had to step down carefully). She was a bit disappointed for not being able to carry more, as she had been training for the last year, but my guess is that while she had plenty of cardio, she was light on core body strength and leg muscles (squats, walking lunges uphill while carrying weights, etc...). For me, since I had been doing boot camp for the last 4 years or so, I was actually doing well enough with the 65lbs uphill, and felt fine when my weight dropped to 55lbs or so.

On the GPS front, I had just bought/upgraded to a Etrex Legend HCx (I bought the legend initially because I'm pissed at Garmin for not allowing me to turn off incorrect baro altitude in pressurized planes). The Etrex did a pretty good job of recording the track, although it kept telling me that I had less than I really did, and then would record longer tracks each day (no, it's not user error :) ). I also still had the forerunner for the convenience of having altitude and distance done each day at my wrist, as well as heart rate to see if I was pushing a bit too hard when going uphill with all that weight.

Here are the results for the trip (the calories are of course all wrong, Garmin doesn't know how to compute them, but it gives a point of reference):

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/10	2.3mph	1.2mph	12.52mi	6H08	9H03	124bpm	151pbm	+4033ft/-4960ft	8622ft/11968ft	1604
08/11	2.1mph	1.2mph	10.61mi	5H06	7H31	123bpm	147pbm	+4870ft/-2710ft	7867ft/10853ft	1376
08/12	2.1mph	1.1mph	10.99mi	5H20	9H05	115bpm	145pbm	+4382ft/-3907ft	10039ft/12109ft	1363
08/13	2.2mph	1.3mph	11.86mi	5H23	9H30	116bpm	152pbm	+3800ft/-4642ft	8474ft/12135ft	1465
08/14	2.0mph	1.2mph	10.92mi	5H30	8H28	111bpm	147pbm	+4144ft/-3923ft	9478ft/120004ft	1404
08/15	2.3mph	1.4mph	14.08mi	6H02	9H38	115bpm	149pbm	+4604ft/-4377ft	10308ft/13208ft	1727
08/16	2.1mph	1.1mph	08.07mi	3H54	7H15	107bpm	144pbm	+4324ft/-2565ft	10262ft/12240ft	1039
08/17	2.1mph	1.4mph	14.10mi	5H35	9H49	115bpm	147pbm	+4453ft/-7468ft	8366ft/14514ft	1532

Total Ascent: 34,807ft (> 10,000m)
Total Descent: 34,835ft (> 10,000m)
Total Distance: 93 miles (> 150km)
Min Altitude: 7,867ft
Max Altitude: 14,514ft

you can click pictures or waypoint on the google map, switch from terrain mode to satellite or mytopo. You can also click on all the pictures below to see where they are on the map

Day 1: Bishop Pass

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/10	2.3mph	1.2mph	12.52mi	6H08	9H03	124bpm	151pbm	+4033ft/-4960ft	8622ft/11968ft	1604

We got a ride up to South Lake and arrived at the trail head around 10:00.
The funny thing is that we met my friend and coworker Arturo and ski buddy Bill at the trail head. What are the odds of that?
We were however not able to keep up with them since they were lighter weight, and Jennifer had tried to take some weight off me, which slowed her down too much (I took that extra weight back soon afterwards and we did better).

Obviously, I did feel the almost 65lbs on my back (with water), but I was able to carry them up to the top of Bishop Pass without any major problems. That was our first 12,000ft peak (well, close to it), and we went through it fine (the diamox probably helped a bit).

We had enough time to hike down to LeConte Canyon and log a mile or two on the John Muir trail before finding a nice camp site where we were able to have our first and only camp fire (every other night, we were higher than 10,000ft and fires were forbidden there)

Top of Bishop Pass

our only camp fire...

Day 2: Golden Staircase

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/11	2.1mph	1.2mph	10.61mi	5H06	7H31	123bpm	147pbm	+4870ft/-2710ft	7867ft/10853ft	1376

We were a bit slow to get ready in the morning due to bad synchronization and we both already had to fix our feet since we both have weird feet that don't fit in boots), but we got out eventually (10:30) and headed for the Golden Staircase. Oh, I also forget that we were greeted by two little bambies with their mom. It was nice to see them around us, they were quite cute :)
Oh, also some very small chipmunk managed to eat through an odor proof bag I had to stash under some rocks (it didn't fit in the 2 ursacks). To this day, unless the odor proof bags are a scam (it was well sealed), I'm still not sure how it found the food. It only took a couple of small bites though, so no biggie.
Note that there is nothing golden about that staircase ;) but we got up it and to a stream dumping into Palisades Lake and snatched the only nice campsite by beating the other hikers who made the mistake of taking a break in the wrong place :)

Day 3: Mather Pass

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/12	2.1mph	1.1mph	10.99mi	5H20	9H05	115bpm	145pbm	+4382ft/-3907ft	10039ft/12109ft	1363

Luckily, our hike was timed well so that we only had to worry about Mather Pass on the 3rd and not have to do it right after the Golden Staircase like some. It was one of those passes where the grading and the size of steps made it more challenging than it should have been, but since we were already starting from 11,000ft in the morning, it wasn't that bad.
Jennifer was also excited because this is when we started going beyond where she had to turn back last time: new terrain for both of us.

All that pack carrying must have been tiring :)

Day 4: Pincho Pass

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/13	2.2mph	1.3mph	11.86mi	5H23	9H30	116bpm	152pbm	+3800ft/-4642ft	8474ft/12135ft	1465

Day 4 was Pincho Pass, a mere 30 feet higher than Mather Pass, nothing to see here, move along :)
It was just one of those "go down forever" on dicy terrain. I was actually slower than when going uphill because the weight on my back made it hard to jump those big steps without sliding and falling on the loose gravel, but going down didn't take as much energy. At least, once all the way down, we were rewarded by the suspension bridge, but it also meant we'd have to climb all that back up.
This is also the first night that we entered bear country (as in more numerous and smarted/more motivated bears). Thanks to my GPS, I had a list of all bearboxes in the area. For some reason, everyone stopped/stayed at Dollar Lake and was crowded together with no bear box, and we had a huge camp site at Arrowhead lake with our own private bear box.
Incidently, it's also the night where I heard (but never saw) a bear going around our site, so we locked everything up in the bear box and the bear probably got tired and went to check all the fresh and tasty scouts at Dollar Lake :)

The biggest and nicest bridge on the JMT

Day 5: Glen Pass

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/14	2.0mph	1.2mph	10.92mi	5H30	8H28	111bpm	147pbm	+4144ft/-3923ft	9478ft/120004ft	1404

Day 5 was Glen Pass, a nice long climb up the face of the mountain, and the terrain continued on top of the ridge for a nice view.
On the other side of the peak, we got to meet the some CCC guys (California Conservation Corp) who were trying to even out some really big and jagged steps.
We again scored huge camp site with bear box that night. It was great to have the GPS and know exactly where to go.

Day 6: Forrester Pass

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/15	2.3mph	1.4mph	14.08mi	6H02	9H38	115bpm	149pbm	+4604ft/-4377ft	10308ft/13208ft	1727

Day 6 was Forrester Pass, our highest pass yet at 13,120ft. By then, things were definitely getting easier for me due to reduced weight, but poor Jennifer was still lugging the same 25lbs+water. She did a good job getting up though, and on the way, we got to see and touch our first glacier on the way (although what was left of it was fast melting). On top, we met a funny guy who pulled out a budweiser from his pack and lit up a smoke to celebrate his climb: he was doing portion of the trail to Whitney and back as a bet.
On the way down from there, we saw the cutest fluffy furry mouse ever, that thing was to die for :) and we pressed on down to the Valley of Tyndall Creek to make it to the 3rd bear box waypoint I had, and due to some good hiking speeds from poor Jennifer who was suffering from poor digestion of those Pemmican bars (those things are really tough to eat and digest), we made it to our next waypoint and another nice and big camp with bear box (Wallace Creek), although this was the first night we actually had to share the camp site with other folks, but considering that was the only night we had to do so, it really wasn't that bad.

This overgrown ant with wings was carrying that huge worm as food

Top of Forrester Pass

Oh Damn, you're so cute :)

There were lots of old twirled trees, which we fond out were twirled by wind over hundreds of years

Day 7: Guitar Lake

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/16	2.1mph	1.1mph	08.07mi	3H54	7H15	107bpm	144pbm	+4324ft/-2565ft	10262ft/12240ft	1039

After a long hike on Day 6 to make it to the next bear box and not lose 4 miles by stopping at the previous one, day 7 was a nice and easy hike to Guitar Lake where most people stop overnight before climbing Whitney the next day.
This one of the days where Garmin selling 24K topo data version 3 that just came out, showed that they are still using data that is 15 to 20 years old in point. The JMT has been rerouted in several places, and the GPS was still showing a very old and obsolete route. Bad Garmin!
We stopped at the Crabtree ranger station on the way to get some wag bags (their container was empty) and chat with the ranger there, and got to Guitar Lake quite early. Jennifer and I agreed that we should just fill up on water (we had 8-9l carrying capacity) and continue on to a dry camp 600ft higher 1.5 miles further, putting us closer to the peak for the next morning, and giving us a nice quiet spot just for us.
We still had time left over to lounge around for the first time. It was quite nice to do so for our first time :)

Guitar Lake was indeed shaped like a Guitar (see the upper right of the picture)

There were no trees to tie the ursacks to, but I found some fused rocks that I was able to use as an anchor point

Nice and quiet, and great sunset

Day 8: Mt Whitney

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent/Descent	Min/Max Elevation	Cals
08/17	2.1mph	1.4mph	14.10mi	5H35	9H49	115bpm	147pbm	+4453ft/-7468ft	8366ft/14514ft	1532

Day 8 ended up being our last day. We got up at 6, and were on the trail by 08:00. That said, by then already 10 people had passed our position. Some got up as early at 04:30 and started in the dark...
Either way, it's not like it was a race, we got up with plenty of time to spare. At the trail junction around 13,000ft, we dropped our packs and I started going up pretty fast without all that weight on my back. I had to turn around and make sure I wasn't leaving Jennifer too far behind :)
As the average heart rate per day trend showed, my body had been getting used to both the altitude and the exercise, so climbing what was left of Whitney when I only had my fanny pack and some water, was a true piece of cake.
After a lunch at the top and some pictures, Jennifer and I started heading down. My GPS made it clear that by having left the top around noon, we would make it to the exit that day, so that helped us getting down at a good pace. We were happy to reach trail camp after 3 miles of switchbacks downhill though because our 8 litres of water from the previous day were almost gone (with the dry camping and the total absence of water).
A few hours, and many many switchbacks later, we made it to the bottom and I was able to get a couple of bars on my cell phone so that our driver from Lonepine had started coming up and met us at the trailhead 18:00 to get us back to Bishop. By 20:30, we were showered with fresh clothes and enjoying Sushi in Bishop. That was quite nice :)

One of 'dem crazy trailrunners :)

The little hut at the top of Whitney

11 miles of switchbacks down

Finally, we made it to the end!

Conclusion

It was nice to finish the hike, I know Jennifer was ecstatic to have finished the trail she started and despite some problems digesting the food we had, and feet issues (same for me, my two little toes got pretty badly mushed due to my feet being too wide, even for wide boots), we did pretty well on the trail.
She lost a couple of pounds, I lost 4 to 5 (although I'm regaining them quickly :) ), and we were happy to make it back to civilization with lots of pictures and the experience of this long trip.
For the rest, you can look at all the pictures of this hike from the John Muir Trail from Bishop to Mt Whitney

2007/07/04-06: Devil Postpile/Red Maedows to Tuolume Maedows

2007-07-07T11:55:00Z

Foreword

This hike over July 4th was our last training hike before our planned 10 day hike of the end of the John Muir Trail(to Whitney Portal)
I was able to get my backpack down to 35 to 43lbs depending on how much water I was carrying, and 7lbs for the fanny pack, while Jennifer's backpack was down to 20-25lbs depending on the water. Those were reasonable weights considering that they included a bulky bear vault 400 and an ursack with aluminum liner (we'll need those two to carry enough food for 10 days on our next hike)

Like the previous hikes, I brought the Garmin Vista Cx and the Forerunner 305 as a way to get a real recorded track (see previous comments about the Vista Cx recording crap trails in many cases).
After doing some power math, I decided that my previous solar panel was woefully inadequate, and that the lack of battery to store the solar panel energy for later use, was disqualifying. Instead I brought my flexible solar panels from my ScotteVest and the accompanying lithium ion battery back. But because I'm a moron, I forgot to bring the USB power adapter connector I made, and I had to build one out of a couple of tie wraps and a battery USB charger I had happened to bring (thanks to Jennifer for reminding me that tie wraps were also electrical wires :) )

Unfortunately, some random failure (never figured out what), actually caused my forerunner to go dead after the first night, hence a second day track that isn't as good since it was only recorded on the Vista Cx (fortunately, we mostly were within good reach of GPS signals that second day, so the track isn't too bad). The third day, I was able to run the Forerunner after it miraculously came back to life and I was able to give it enough charge with 4 AAAs to run the 3rd day.

Here are the trip results (I gave the calorie information from the forerunner, but it's way off, I've already told Garmin that they need to rework their algorithm. It's likely off by at least a factor of 2, and their tech support said they only take speed into account, not even heart rate, altitude, or ascents. How lame...)

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Total Ascent	Max Elevation	Cals
Day 1	2.1mph	1.5mph	16.2mi	7H43	11H06	116bpm	145pbm	3757	10053	2064
Day 2	2.3mph	1.4mph	14.6mi	6H21	10H30	?	?	3037	11057	?
Day 3	2.6mph	2.0mph	9.4mi	3H40	4H50	101bpm	126bpm	533	9065	1114

Day 1

Anyway, for the trip, we flew the previous evening to Mammoth, which took a little less than 2H instead of maybe 6H of driving (you can see the other pictures of the flight )

We got up pretty early the next morning to get the first 07:00 shuttle to Tuolumne Maedows from the far base of Mammoth Mountain (adventure center) and we were at the Devils Postpile just before 08:00. Unfortunately, due to me being a moron, I left my camera in the shuttle and had to run after it for a bit more than a mile. Even without the backpack, running at 7500ft was a good way to get in shape :). Luckily, I did get my camera back and we started on the trail around 09:00.
Since we were there, we first went to check out the Devil Postpile national monument, and it is indeed pretty impressive. Seeing the almost perfect hexagonal shapes on top is pretty nice

After that nice beginning was time to head out for our actual hike to Tuolumne Maedows, and cover the 14+ miles and 3000ft elevation gain ahead of us. While we lost a bit of time due to a clogged water filter problem, and a late departure with my camera issue, we did decent time. We were originally hoping to make it to Thousand Island Lake on the first night, but that was just a bit out of reach. We did however reach Garnett Lake, which was still a good distance (finding a campsite was also a bit hard due to most lakes having lots of rules about where you can't camp).
The starry sky by the water at Garnett Lake was quite nice.

Thankfully we didn't have any problems with the rangers because we didn't have our actual permit with us. After calling 3 times and getting briefings over the phone and 3 people who confirmed our permit would be in the overnight pick up mailbox, it wasn't there we we got there that evening, and we just didn't have the time to wait the next morning for them to open and find out what happened to our permit: we'd have been more than 2 hours behind schedule and would never have made it to anywhere close to Garnett lake. This is kind of sad considering we played by the rules and did everything we could to be legal. At least we had our reservation confirmation with us.

Don't camp here, keep walking...

Oh, there comes my transport team, please carry my bag ;)

That's virtually the only snow left we were able to touch on the trail. It had fast melted

Garnett Lake, our destination for night 1

The red path is portion of what we did on the first day (blue is day 2)

Day 2

Day 2 was also a good hike. We covered a good amount of terrain. The Highlight of the day was crossing Donahue Pass a bit above 11,000ft. Jennifer had a bit of a hard time part of the day likely due to dehydration and a bit of altitude sickness. I had mild symptoms (light headache) but was ok otherwise. I was hydrating a lot though, so that probably helped.
It was nice to see people on the trail (mostly going the other way), including the insane people who do the whole PCT (Pacific Coast Trail, or 4-5 months of walking 3000 miles).
Once we were past the pass, it was a long and nice downhill to Lyell fork, which we pretty much followed the entire way to Tuolumne Maedows.
We did however stop exactly at our planned stop for the night, along Lyell just down a quite steep 600ft vertical descent a mere 30mn before sunset. That was however probably pushing a bit more than necessary as Jennifer was having some boot/blister issues, and was also fatigued, which is not the best combination when you're fast descending pretty rugged terrain with loose gravel and big steps soon before sunset. We got lucky though and made it down to the forest down to where the water joins the trail again just in time to set camp before sunset. This also gave us a campsite with fewer mosquitoes than the foot bridge area higher up where we could also have camped.
Admittedly, we were a bit close to the water, but we just didn't have the time to go any further and Jennifer was too exhausted to go any further anyway. Regardless, we kept a clean camp site, so it shouldn't matter either way.

Their camp site was not even lose to being legal, but finding the legal ones wasn't easy either

Thousand Island Lake

A long gradual climb to Donahue pass

And here's the other side, finally...

luckily we did this piece going down to the river, it was nice that way :)

Day 3

Day 3 was smooth sailing. While Jennifer unfortunately had issues with blistered skin going raw right on her ankle, making walking quite painful, moleskin and super glue took care of that. We did some pretty good time still, with 2.6mph moving time and 2.0mph average speed.
By 14:00, we had reached Tuolumne Maedows.

The problem at that point was getting back to Mammoth, and after about 1H of asking, we got lucky and had a nice couple who drove us east on 120 back to 395/Lee Vining.

From there we got a cab back to Mammoth. I opted not to fly back out that day due to some very ugly looking clouds over the Sierras, which made it potentially dicy to fly home, and the fact that by the time the weather improved, I was feeling tired, so we just spend the night at the nice Shilo Inn in Mammoth.
The flight back home the next morning was uneventful.

Conclusion

We learned a few things on this hike. My feet faired much better with sock liners, foot powder, and proper tightening. Jennifer's boots were so so though and she opted to get new ones.
While we covered some good distances at altitude with the weight we were carrying, we also found out that now that I lost some additional weight, I actually do need to eat my daily share of calories, or I get hungry (something that wasn't the case before). We also figured that taking diamox would probably be a good idea for our next trip since we'll be climbing higher and longer. No need to add altitude sickness to the list of challenges if it can be mostly avoided.

For the rest, you can look at all the pictures of this hike from Devil's Postpile to Tuolumne Maedows , and you can also download a garmin gps track along with route and waypoints (or the Google Earth kml version )

2007/05/26-28: Hiking Henry Coe State Park

2007-05-29T14:59:00Z

This time, the point was to do a hike closeby and something that would be a good exercise/practise run for our upcoming 10 day hike on the Jon Muir trail. Jennifer remarked that the Henry Coe was rated a difficulty 8 out of 10 and therefore would be a good trail to try take. I agreed.
On top of that, I also ended up with a backpack/fanny pack combination of about 50 lbs, which there again was more weight than necessary, but was meant to be practise for John Muir where we'll have to lug around around 15lbs of food.

We had a little bit of a late start on Saturday, and it was interesting finding the new but badly marked entrance on hwy 152. It's actually here .

But before I start, here are the stats for the 3 days:

Day	Moving Speed	Avg Speed	Distance	Moving Time	Total Time	Total Ascent	Total Descent	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR
Day 1	2.5mph?	1.6mph	13mi	?	7H46	?	?	?	?
Day 2 Lake Loop	2.7mph	?	3.45mi	1H15	1H28	+777ft	-773ft	97bpm	126bpm
Day 2	2.2mph	1.5mph	9.05mi	4H06	6H13	+3683ft	-3697ft	99bpm	130bpm
Day 3	2.3mph	1.7mph	7.25mi	3H06	4H53	+2271ft	-2731ft	104bpm	145bpm

(sorry the first day is missing data due to the forerunner 305 deleting its first day's worth of stats when it ran out of internal plot memory)

The planned hike (not actually matching reality quite due to the Topo! maps not being up to date compared to actual trails) is shown on this picture and this is the actual hike as shown on mapsource (incidently, the mapsource maps were even more inaccurate than the Topo! ones).
While I'm at it, you can get the GPS track here and the Google Earth track (kml) used to make these pictures (make sure to select size original for full res pictures))

Technology

I brought my Garmin Etrex Vista Cx at my Forerunner 305 to get a better track recording (since Garmin didn't see fit to put a Sirf III chip in the Vista Cx unfortunately).
On top of that, the 3 day hike overflowed the Forerunner buffer and I lost the first day's worth by the time the 3rd day was over :( (so the resulting track I have has bad quality points for the 1st day as those come from the crappy Vista Cx's reception. Update: Garmin just came out with a Vista HCx with apparently has a GPS receiver at least as good as Sirf3, which could make this problem mostly go away).
On the toy section, I brought a solar panel generating 6V USB power (yes, USB is supposed to be 5V, but they overvolt it to charge cell phones like the nokias that require at least 6V). It came in handy right away as my forerunner turned out to have dead batteries when I started the hike (apparently, it got turned on after I charged it)
Later during the hike, I used the solar panels to recharge the forerunner as I went along, and the Vista Cx ran the entire 3 days on a set of AA NiMh 2200mAh batteries.
The last tech piece was a multiband radio that we would only have used for emergencies, and that thankfully stayed mostly unused

Day 1

Anyway, we were on the trail by 12:45 and I made the mistake of thinking that about 2l of water would be enough to carry until we hit the next water point. The only thing is that the next water point ended up being much further than expected. We really should have carried 3l each, if not close to 4 (all the creeks except the one 1m down the trail from where we started), were effectively dry).

Actually, if it weren't for a remnant of creek which we were barely able to pump water from (after a scum pond that looked so bad that it was unclear we could get usable water out of it), we could have been in trouble I think. Moral of the story for Henry Coe outside of the winter: bring plenty of water (3-4l per person for a day hike with a full pack).
In hindsight there was one watering hole a bit off the trail that we should definitely have filled up at (picture below)

Anyway, after a long walk (13 miles, a bit more than planned due to us not taking the main roads), we got to Mississippi Lake soon before sunset and setup camp by the lake.
It was a bit windy that night, but we otherwise were able to get a decent amount of sleep. The bad part is the blisters I got on my first day, especially on both pinky toes which scored double blisters (one on each side of the toe). That's what I get for my feet being too wide: they don't even fit in a wide boot.

Here's 50lbs worth of gear :) (10lbs in the fanny pack)

This was the only (already quite low) water point we found on the way. We should have walked off the trail and filled there

this was the only water we found by the trail, and only thanks to intel from another hiker

Day 2

Since we had more time to hike a somewhat shorter distance on Day 2, we figured we'd first hike around Mississippi lake. We didn't quite realize that it was actually a 3.5 mile hike around the lake, but eh, we were there, and hiking without our packs wasn't too bad. We also found a nice alternate camp site with a picnic table.
Day 2 was going to be a somewhat shorter hike but we missed a turn somewhere due to trying to climb a hill a little too hard, and ignoring a path that actually would have ended up taking us a slightly shorter route.
After that, the next shortcut we could have taken, just didn't exist, and looking at the topo map, the 0.1 mile shortcut would likely not have been able to exist.
We just took the longer route around and eventually ended up at Coit Lake in time to find a nice camp site (sheltered from the wind, and with water access). For Day 2, we ended up carrying way more water than needed, but better safe than sorry this time (we actually passed by a house at Pacheco Camp for park rangers and volunteers with running water, a fridge, and even a shower outside!)
The second night meant more blisters to heal, but we had a great night at that site.

Day 3

Day 3 was supposed to be an easy short day, but it was actually a gruesome hike in the baking sun. In order to not needlessly carry even more weight, I left with only 2.5l of water instead of a total possible of 4.5l (as 2.5l had been more than enough for the previous day). It turned out not to be a very wise decision, as the short hike too much more water and energy than I had planned for.
We went up some pretty steep climbs and descents that were even steeper (and quite dicy to walk in pebbles and dirt), Jennifer started to overheat (heat exhaustion), and we had to stop to let her body cool off a bit, as we were already hydrating pretty well. I ended up picking another 5-6lbs from Jennifer's pack which in addition to the extra water I had, brought my pack up to 60lbs I think.
I was still doing reasonably well with the weight, but I was worrying that I'd run out of water before getting to the end.
Turns out we got back to Dowdy Ranch with enough water left (a bit more than 1l combined between us), but considering the hard walking and weather, I was still nervous about it until it was clear that we'd make it, and 1l isn't just that much to have left for that terrain and weather.
The last picture shows the elevation gain/loss. It's not that much until you see how steep some of those descents were, and on gravel no less... (check out around mile 4 to see what I mean)

We're almost there!!!

And on the way back we saw some wildlife on the road, including a mountain lion (probably not a bobcat)

Conclusion

The hike went reasonably well considering. The GPS and maps did help, we got lucky with water on the first day, and saw very few ticks considering (we were told they were very abundant).
The park was not the most scenic place ever, but it was decent, and made for a good exercise/proving grounds that was close by
The good part is also how google earth had 3D info for the park, and does a good job showing the trail in the mountains. If it weren't for the bad blisters which I hope to avoid with sock liners next time, it would almost have been a perfect trip
To end, you can look at all the pictures of the hike at Henry Coe Park
Oh yeah, and if you go during the summer, assume that the only water you'll see are the lakes (which is close to being accurate), so carry up to 3-4l of water per day to be safe. Running out there does suck...

Monterey Day 3: Point Lobos Hiking

2006-11-27T13:25:00Z

Day 3 was poised for rain, but we hopefully still had some time before that
started, so we decided to try one of our two planned hiked, and walk around Point Lobos, and see China Cove, Bird Island, and others ( download GPS track )

The hike itself is more of a walk: the terrain is really very easy, and we only covered a few miles and stayed 3 hours or so, but that was enough to see the main views. It is indeed a very nice coastline
Rain came down soon after we made it back to the car, so we were ok (I was tracking the storm with near realtime satellite nexrad data from weather underground on my cellphone, and we knew it was about to fall on our heads and got back to the car just before it started raining. Yeah for technology! :)

The other pictures from the Point Lobos Hiking are here

Monterey Day 1: Moss Landing Kayaking

2006-11-25T12:42:00Z

Jen and I went for a 3 day weekend around Monterey after Thanksgiving.
The first day was spent Kayaking around Moss Landing, and seeing the numerous birds and sea life that hangs out around there (Pelicans, Sea Otters, Seals, Sea Lions, and more).
While it doesn't really count as hiking, it still felt like close enough considering that the idea was still to enjoy wildlife while self powering your way through it :)

That was actually quite nice, especially when we saw a sea otter carrying a baby on her belly. We went up to the end of the estuary, then had a nice picnic at a landing spot, and headed back.
The "interesting" part of the trip was when the rudder controls that broke, and when one of the passengers who happened to be carrying tools, and zip ties among other things, was able to put them to use to fix the kayak and allow for the trip to continue :)

The other pictures from the Kayaking in Moss Landing Slough with its wildlife are here

Sequoia / Kings Canyon Hike on High Sierra Trail

2006-07-04T14:25:00Z

If you just wanted the Pictures of the Hike in Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park , you can follow the link.

Before the Hike

July 4th weekend was time for a new hike, but this time at much higher elevation, taking High Sierra Trail starting around 7800 feet in Sequoia Park, and going to Kings Canyon.
Unfortunately, I got sick with a cold right before the hike, and I hadn't quite recovered by the time we headed out. I was doing well enough by friday to do the flight from Palo Alto to Visalia (I figured it was easier and faster to fly there on a friday night than be stuck in traffic with everyone else, but turns out traffic was reasonably light, and picking up a rental car in Visalia after 18:00 was not a piece of cake).
Anyway, we got to three rivers on friday evening without problems, but on the next morning, only arrived at Lodgepole to pick up our wilderness passes around 11:30 (long ride up, and late start). By then, the sole ranger giving out wilderness permits was gone for lunch (great!), we had to wait in a long slow line despite having a reservation, and only started at the trail head in Crescent Meadow at 13:00 (we were kind of pissed about losing about 45mn just to pick up a permit, 45mn that we could have really used at the end of the day)

Radios

Before leaving, I also asked some rangers what frequencies they were on, and what frequency was appropriate for use if we needed to call them for help. Very disappointingly so, they answered that they don't give out the frequencies, and that it's illegal for us to use them (I corrected him that it was not illegal when calling for help, which he eventually acknowledged). I tried 3 different rangers, but eventually I had one tell me that he would rather that I call an overhead plane, which would call a control tower, which would call the national park over the phone, which would relay to dispatch, which would call a ranger over a radio, rather than me talking to the ranger on the radio directly. That's very stupid if you ask me...
Anyway, along the way, I put my ham radio on scan, and picked up enough frequencies that I was confident I could call someone for help, or relay such a call, if needed. Between that, and an FRS radio which could be used as a quick way to scan just those channels, or to communicate between Jen and I (FRS to Ham) if/when we had to split up.
Now, is it worth the weight? Well, while the trail was well travelled, we only ever saw one ranger during the 3 days, so if you had to wait 5-6H for someone to walk back to the main camp, call for help, and then wait for the ranger to come back, it could be dark before you saw any. Luckily, we didn't have to call anyone, but I think it was a good additional safety to bring.

GPS / Garmin MapSource / National Geographic Topo

I took my two GPSes, the Etrex Vista CX, which is good for displaying a moving map, distance and time to next waypoint, as well as average speed, altitude gain/loss, etc. Unfortunately, it's otherwise total crap for recording, or trends over the day, as its reception is just way too bad even in light forests, which is inexcusable for a $350 hiking GPS (not counting map prices).
Now, the kicker is that I also have a wrist Garmin Forerunner 305, and while it's only supposed to be a running GPS, it has much better reception, and no stupid firmware that creates 300-400 tracks over a few days because it makes a brand new track each time it loses reception for a few seconds (Garmin, that was very stupid of you to do that, please fix it already).
Thanks to that forerunner, I have a nice and complete track of the whole hike, as well as reliable stats like distance, average speed, time spent (I didn't stop the clock during breaks), and heart rate stats, as well as a calories burned number, which I'm not sure I can trust that much (or if I do, that was 30,000 calories over 3 days). Now, the small problem is that the Forerunner runs out of intternal batteries after about a day and a half, and is hard to recharge, so I bought a USB charger that runs out of AAA batteries, and generates USB power than I can connect to the Forerunner at night (unfortunately, Garmin made a stupid big a heavy docking station for the otherwise small and light watch).
Garmin's Topo maps were pretty bad for Big Bassin Redwoods, missing most trails, but they were better for Sequoia Park. I however looked at National Geographic Topo Maps to see how they were better than Garmin's. While it took a little while to get the software working (I had to update to the latest unreleased version to talk to my GPS, because for some reason the software was incapable of exporting waypoints and routes in Garmin Mapsource format, forcing me to upload the data to my GPS, and then re-download it to Mapsource).
I guess the Topo software really isn't meant for GPS users that have Mapsource or something similar with their own topo maps, but I found a couple of uses for it anyway. First, its topo maps are clearly better than what Garmin provides, but also they contain full elevation info, so you can select a bunch of waypoints on the map, and upload waypoints with elevation in your GPS (know how high the hill you're climbing is, before you get there). Then, you basically take a crayon and draw a route over the topo map. The topo software is then able to create a route with elevation for each point, and can output a nice elevation profile.
To see what I mean, have a look at the map I was able to prepare beforehand:

Is that too much tech? Does it potentially remove from the pleasure of hiking? Well, to each his own, but when I'm tired or the sun is setting, I like to know how high I still have to climb or go. On the first day, we only pushed as far as we did because I had precise data on where we were going and how long it'd take us to get that at fast pace. I also value being able to put a waypoint on the last water source, as you'll never know when it'll come handy (that first night, I was quite happy to be able to come back to it, as you'll read below)

The Hike

Why don't I start with the end? Here's what we actually did

This also shows you how the pre-printed maps make it much clearer how much effort you have left (check Kaweah Gap on the second day, and how it looks close, but really wasn't).

Mt Whitney? Mmmh, no, I'll pass, thanks :)

Day 1

As mentioned above, we unfortunately got a late start during the first day, both Jen and I were suffering from cold symptoms still, which isn't good for peak performance, and of course, the air at 7000 feet and above is thinner. All in all, not a good combination. Her pack was about 25lbs and mine, along with my belt pouch, was around 43lbs due to the extra weight from the bear container (and that was without any bears in the container itself :) ).
By looking at my GPS watch, I was quickly able to tell that our pace was pretty slow (less than 1.5mph, compared to a usual 2.5mph), and that we'd have to worry about reaching our destination by nightfall, so we tried to hasten the pace. We did ok, until a horrendous 600ft steep climb to reach Bearpaw Meadow when we were both exhausted, and in my case starting to feel sick again. I really really struggled through it, and was thankful for a pouch of carbohydrate paste that perked me a up a little bit (I was likely low on sugar too because I couldn't really eat much of anything).
Unfortunately, our slow pace up BearPaw really changed my original ETA, and I was now wondering whether we'd be able to make it back down to our revised checkpoint of LonePine Creek. It was really close, but after reviewing map and GPS data, we decided to make a got for it (not super-wise, but we managed in the end). We made it to BearPaw at a revised 20:00, which was less than 1H from total darkness, and 17mn from sunset. Unfortunately, due to a trail missing between the map and reality, and my GPS not doing a good job telling us which trail we were on before walking for a certain distance, we lost further time (10-15mn) before heading down the hill to LonePine Creek.
Long story short, it was a photo finish: we almost ran down the hill, and finished with flashlights, crossed the bridge and then realized we were screwed for two reasons: the water which we thought would be there, was totally unreachable (very deep, and unhikeable), and we had no idea where the campsite was, with light pretty much being gone. We started hiking back up on the other side of the bridge, and luckily, when I was about to drop my pack, and go for emergency measures, Jen found the actual campsite at 21:00, a few minutes from total darkness with little moonlight.

At that point, we were left with the small problem of water. I first continued ahead in hope for a small creek that wouldn't be on the map, but no such luck, so I eventually backtracked towards bearpaw, where I remembered crossing some small creek while running down. 45mn later, around 21:45, I had water (it took a long time because the water pump seal was failing and it was pumping very little), and Jen had started a fire. The water pump problem kind of worried me though, because that was our only source of pure water, we had no backup for it, and it looked like it was pumping worse throughout the day (hard to tell for sure as I mostly pumped in the dark so as not to be eaten by insects attracted by the light and the water).
The other worrisome part was that I realized that I was still sick when after all that effort (and apparently 10,000 calories burned according to my watch), I was barely able to force myself to eat half a burger. To make matters worse, I was not able to fall asleep, didn't have any sleeping pills (bad, bad me), and slept probably less than 2H combined that night

Day 2: Up

While I was up bright an early that day, having not slept much anyway, Jen wasn't as she was thankfully able to sleep a bit more than me.
However, in return, we only left camp around 09:30 (without tearing it down), and left with a day pack towards Hamilton Lake. While the climb wasn't very harduous, and we were much more lightly loaded, maybe the added altitude (now above 8000 feet), and my guess is especially the lack of sleep and shared sickness made us quite slow. My forerunner GPS showed that we averaged less than 1mph on the way up for 2.5 miles.
By the time we got to Hamilton Lakes, we had crossed a one stream with our stream crossing shoes (our hiking boots were nicely totally water proof, but only allowed us to cross water up to hankle level, for knee level, we had to put open shoes, dry up, and switch to hiking boots again). Unfortunately, going with open feet when we had just put new bandaids and moleskin on our feet (well, mostline for my blisters). This wasn't ideal, so when we finally got to Hamilton Lakes and saw the next river crossing that I hadn't planned for due to mis-reading the map, we looked around and decided it was pretty enough, and that the further target goal of Kaweah Gap was still way high, and likely out of reach for the day if we didn't want to be racing for it, with little energy and a good chance if coming back in the dark, which just wasn't a good idea at all.
This is also where the pre-printed map with elevation gain came in very handy for making a decision: we had barely done one third of the way up, and it was already 13:00. The Garmin map just isn't as useful there, and the NG Topo! map with route and elevation profile came in much handy there

not that useful

good

The good news is that instead of suffering uphill for several more hours, we got to rest in front of the beautiful lake with 6 waterfalls, and we at least got to fulfill our goal of touching snow :) (although come to think of it we should have built a snowman, a fitting thing to do in July :)
Yes, it's sad that we didn't get to the top and got to see on the other side of the Great Western divide, and I know we could have done it on a normal day, but I was just getting sicker and was happy to get back to camp and crash that night

Day2 Back/Day 3

After a nice break at Hamilton Lakes, we headed back and moved the camp back from LonePine back up to BearPaw Meadow since we had extra time on our hands. LonePine just wasn't that good, as it had no local water, and we were too low on water when Jen got pretty severely dehydrated since she wasn't drinking as regularly as I was.
We had a nice and uneventful night at BearPaw, where I was able to get some well needed sleep.

The 3rd day was uneventful, we just hiked back from BearPaw to Crescent Meadow at a pace that seemed good enough for us, but was really slow (we were actually slower on the way down with 1.4mph average, than the way up on the first day with 1.6mph average, and got passed by someone with a broken ankle, hopping on ski poles :) ).
By then, despite the low energy and fairly slow speed, I started feeling better since at least I was eating at least a third or half of the calories I was burning, instead of close to nothing :) (I lost 3-4 pounds during that trip, which is always good :) )

Trip Home

Jen nicely offered me a man on deathrow's last meal in Visalia since I was not going to be able to eat much food after my surgery two days later, and that was yummy :)
Then, just to make things more fun, when we got back to the airport and after dropping off the rental keys in the lockbox, the plane I rented failed preflight and we got stranded in the airport. More on that here .

Stats

Here's what my Forerunner recorded. All the numbers look ok, and the calorie burned numbers might be a bit high, but from some reading I've done ( this page is interesting ), it sounds like I could actually burn more than 500 calories an hour with my weight and load, so the numbers might not be that far off.

Day	Avg Speed	Distance	Total Time	Avg Heart Rate	Max HR	Calories Burnt
Day 1	1.6mph	12.34mi	7H56	123bpm	170bpm	10632 cals
Day 2 Up	0.8mph	2.57mi	3H22	117bpm	147bpm	3214 cals
Day 2 Back	1.2mph	3.92mi	3H17	121bpm	151bpm	4396 cals
Day 3	1.4mph	10.94mi	7H36	112bpm	143bpm	9151 cals

What I learned

You don't hike as far at altitude and when you are sick, or on the 3rd day (duh!) :)
Relying on a single water pump/purifier is a bad idea
Backups come in handy, especially for fire
Extra food is better than not enough
Know where you are, how far you think you can go, and how far you have to go (a GPS with waypoints and ETA calculation comes in very handy there)
Communication (radios) can be very handy, especially if you have to split up
Do you have everything you think you need in your medkit? (sleeping pills too?)
I confirmed that the Etrex Vista Cx would be a great GPS if it only had a couple of firmware fixes (don't make 400 5 dot tracks for christ's sake), and a GPS receiver that's at least as good as the one in the much smaller Forerunner 305. The fact that I need to bother with the forerunner to record the tracks and accurate waypoints is sad.
Last, but not least, you have to be ready to turn back if you're not going to make it.
The hat with net over my face against moskitoes was a lifesaver :)

All the Pictures

I combined Jen's pictures with mine, and mixed'em up chronologically thanks to EXIF time (and prior time synchronization between the cameras) with jhead -n * (that's where unix comes in handy)
Anyway, here are the Pictures of the Hike in Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park

2006/05/27-29: Skyline to the Sea Hike

2006-05-30T13:50:00Z

After the practise Mission Peak Hike, Jen and I used the memorial day 3 day weekend to do the Skyline to the Sea hike.
Basically, it goes from close the intersection of Skyline and Hwy 9 , to Waddell Creek Beach on Hwy 1

After having done a "small" hike around Big Basin Redwoods to the sea without any weight, I remember that we had done about 21 miles in 9 hours, and while I was sore the next day, it wasn't too bad.
I figured doing a 3 day 30+ mile trip wouldn't be too bad, except for the 40lbs+ of weight with gear. This yielded an average hiking speed of about 4kph (2.5mph), with a bit more than 10 miles/day.

In order to supplement the map we had (which wasn't stellar), and add a little fun and recording factor, I took my two garmin GPSes. The Etrex Vista Cx, which is supposedly the hiking one unfortunately had fairly mediocre trail maps, but at least gave some indication of where we were, and was nice for computing time and distance to destination estimates. Incidently, the Etrex ended up having pretty bad reception in the forest, which would be understandable if it were not for my wrist forerunner 305 GPS recording the entire days without problems (except for the 3rd day where its internal batteries died, hence the whole on the map below since I had to rely on the Etrex and it lost reception for 45mn!!!)

Anyway, due to a late start (my getting up late, bad traffic on hwy 17 as it was a beach day, and time to shuttle the cars), we only started the hike around 15:00, but by keeping good pace, we made it from the Castle Rock start at Skyline to the Waterman Gap Camp around 19:45, with 45mn of daylight/twilight remaining.

A few pictures from the first day are below (and here is a link to the rest of the hiking pictures from the 3 day hike of Skyline to the Sea through Big Basin Redwoods )

Sunday, we started the second day a bit earlier, 10:30-ish, and had plenty of time to almost reach the Sunset Trail Camp (if we really had to, we could have, but it was full anyway, so no reason for rushing). Instead, we found a nice non-charted camp site (well, now I have a GPS waypoint :) )

Living in the rough :)
With a tent, inflatable pads, sleeping bags, dry food, gas heater, all you need is water. Since carrying water is heavy, the best solution is a water filter with water pump and purifier to get more water. Dinners that way can actually be quite tasty :)

On the 3rd day, we were already a good way down sunset trail, and went to Golden Falls, Silver Falls and Berry Creek Falls.

Then, I recognized a familiar sign pointing to McCrary Ridge Trail, which is where Bob and I did a fairly strainuous finish for our hike. But considering it was going the wrong way, and that it sucked without an extra 40lbs on our backs, we stayed on course for the Ocean :)

Almost here, I can taste it :)

Yeah, success! :)
It was a nice, albeit very windy day at the beach. We just weren't exactly wearing the right clothes for it :)

After that, was a reasonably fun drive back to Castle Rock to pick up the other car (Bonni Doon, Hwy 9, Skyline), and some rest at home our respective tired legs.

Again, here's a link to the rest of the hiking pictures from the 3 day hike of Skyline to the Sea through Big Basin Redwoods )

Hiking Mission Peak

2006-05-21T13:07:00Z

Since Jen and I are going hiking next weekend, we went on a practise hike Saturday to test the equipment and my hiking shoes.
It was a 2200foot climb over 3 miles (Mission Peak in Fremont), and it took 1H20 on the way up and 1H on the way down. I did ok going up with 40lbs on my body, it was almost harder going down as the road was a bit slippery with the extra weight.
As the day was reasonably windy, there were a few people handgliding, it was fun to watch. It was also weird to see the whole bay as I usually see it from a plane when I'm coming back over Sunol pass.
(credit goes to Jen for some of the pictures)

Bought 2 GPSes

2006-03-09T14:28:00Z

While I was sick, I used some of the time to learn to use the two GPS I had just bought.
The first one was a hand held GPS, primarily designed for hiking, but which can also be used for biking and other outdoor activities (moving color maps, with altimeter and electronic compass as a backup for GPS data).
The nice thing is that it also supports auto routing, provided you can buy the expensive maps, or get them somehow. It kind of bothered me to pay for those things again since I had already paid for a set for my car.
In the end, I was able to get some older maps to test the functionality, and see if I would really want it on a day to day basis with up to date maps. So far, it looks like even if it wouldn't be your best bet for a car GPS, compared to what's on the market, but it could act as one if you had nothing else (so it's kind of nice as a multi-purpose tool).
While it's nice on the road, or to mark a jump spot in the middle of a snowed in forest so that you can head back to it next time down, it's also nice to graph your course after the fact on a big map on your computer (or even import to Google Earth for some even nicer output)

The other is a Garmin Forerunner 301. It's basically a running/sports GPS with built in heart rate monitor. It's nice for a few reasons:

you can graph whatever course you ran after the fact (nice when you're off track)
no more do you need to ask "how far did I run/bike anyway"?
what was my running pace over point X, and overall?
how am I doing on this lap compared to last one?
how are my running pace and heart rate affected by my running up or down this path (although GPS derived altitude can be off by 10-50 feet easily)

While it does look like an ugly wart, and its GPS reception isn't stellar, nor is its pairing with its heart rate monitor, it's still quite nice. I am however planning on getting the nicer forerunner 305 when it comes out

I however need to state that Mapsource and in general Garmin windows software is totally pathetic. If you do anything it doesn't like, it will crash and never restart until you remove all the software and all the maps, and reinstall them all, which could take about an hour.
Also, it will install some maps on disk, some it will refuse to do so and keep asking for the CD (you need to hack that, but if you mess up, you reinstall everything), and if it gets any read error, it removes the map tile from what's available forever, and there again you need to reinstall everything.
Way to go Garmin!
This gave me a good opportunity to setup vmware (making all that windows crap work under linux) and snapshots so that I can make copies of all of windows and garmin software while it works, and revert to a working snapshot when it blows up instead of reinstalling everything.

Anyway, when all this crap works, you get nice stuff like this graph from my running at the google 5K today, showing heart rate and speed over time

or this for kirkwood:

Day Hike of Big Basin Redwoods

2003-08-20T15:00:00Z

My friend Bob offered to take me on a hike, which I hadn't really done before, so I accepted.
Bob took me to the Big Basin Redwoods, and from HQ, we did the Sunset loop to the 3 falls, and when we were heading back, I noticed a sign that said "Skyline to the Sea Trail, 6 miles".
I asked Bob if he were ok with walking to the Ocean, since we had done the loop somewhat quickly, and we proceeded. It was a nice walk with a nice target of getting to the Ocean.

On the way back, for some reason we got posessed with taking the McCrary Ridge Trail (not sure why anymore), and he 1700 foot elevation climb at the end of the day got Bob a bit tired. We were also running a bit low on sugar and water, so tby the time we made it to the top, the sun was about to set.
We got a few nice pictures of the sunset there, but that's obviously bad news since we were still a good hour away from HQ where the car was parked. Luckily, I was able to call the rangers on my cell phone out of one flaky bar, and they came to pick us up.
Yeah, it's a bit lame to finish the day like that, but we planned this a bit badly, and Bob ran low on sugar, so we had to alter our plans a bit. In the end, we still turned a 3-4H loop hike into a 9H and 21 mile hike.

You can look at the rest of the pictures of Big Basin Redwoods

First Visit of Yosemite

2000-06-17T15:00:00Z

Ok, this doesn't really count as a hike since I drove around with my mom, but eh, it's Yosemite, so that's an excuse for putting this here anyway :)

You can look at the rest of the pictures of Yosemite

Muir Woods

1999-04-03T16:00:00Z

Not many exciting pictures, only a couple of hours or so, but that was my first hike :)

You can look at the rest of the pictures of Muir Woods