Hiking around Paulina Lake is a wonderful way to see the caldera of Newberry National Volcanic Monument. About 75,000 years ago a massive explosion and subsequent collapse created the caldera,…
With several weekends of beautiful summer-like weather already behind us, we headed across (the often still closed at this time of year) Tioga Pass on the Thursday night before Memorial…
Last weekend, the first one with an open Tioga Pass of the season, we did a quickie overnighter to Bishop. David is recovering from a sprained ankle so instead of…
With our longer Sierra trip coming up soon, we wanted to head out last weekend and get in some hiking and sleeping at altitude. I always feel better when I get some time above 10k before hauling a heavy pack up there. Our intended trip was to head out to Laurel Lakes (just south of Mammoth), climb Laurel and Bloody Mountains, followed by camping and fishing at Laurel Lakes. Sunday would be another ~10k peak with a short hike. It sounded perfect, at least until we looked at the weather forecast.
The thing about the Eastern Sierra is that even if your original plans fall through there is always something else equally fun to do. So we headed out despite the forecast, figuring that we’d find something to do no matter what.
As we drove out on Friday night we watched the enormous storm clouds hovering over the mountains. They were beautiful as the sun set and they glowed bright pink. By the time we made it through the mountains the clouds had cleared and we pulled into a dispersed campsite outside of June Lake where we slept under the stars in the back of the truck.
(more…)
I've been so busy lately I've had to neglect calipidder.com a bit. But we were able to squeeze out to 395 to pay a visit to some of our favorite…
And now for something completely different.
Last month I traveled to Arkansas with my In-Laws to visit David’s Grandpa in Hot Springs Village. We made a week of it and got in some valuable outdoor time at Petit Jean State Park and in the Ozarks along the Buffalo National River. I wasn’t sure what to expect in Arkansas; while getting ready for the trip I sometimes felt like I was preparing for a more foreign destination than my regular work trips to Germany. However, I ended up having a great time enjoying the green forests, rocks, rivers and waterfalls of northern Arkansas.
Check out the tabs below for a sampling of some of the fun things we got to see – a departure from the typical scenery we get here in California.
The sun was up and I poked my face out of my tent, still wrapped up in my warm sleeping bag like a burrito. My water bottle was frozen. Hm, that was a first for this trip.
Our original plan was to have an easy day down to Honeymoon or Upper Pine Lake where we would have a relaxing last night on the trail before exiting and driving home on Sunday. Instead, we decided to cover the final 10 miles (2 cross-country, 8 on trail) and almost 5000 feet of descent in one day. After a successful trip with every summit on the list bagged, I certainly didn’t feel like we were cheating or bailing on our plans by exiting a day earlier than planned. Anyways, I only had one packet of Starbucks Via coffee left and we’d polished off the end of my bourbon the night before. The real world has coffee and beer. I was ready for the real world.
After packing up we took off cross-country towards French Lake. It was a really pretty little area with nice meadows and some campsites tucked away along a lightly flowing creek. At French Lake we dropped our packs for a quick snack and some photos. There are some relaxing looking beaches along the shore of this lake, but they didn’t look too tempting on this cold and windy morning. It wasn’t warming up like the previous days. There was an autumn-like chill in the air.
For the first seven years I lived in California I always flew back to Michigan to visit my family at Christmas. Each year I would inevitably face midwest snowstorms, holiday travel crowds, cancelled flights, etc. But it was always worth it to visit my family.
Last year was the first year I skipped the holiday travel – the overwhelming aggravation of it, combined with ticket prices that were 3x the previous year’s cost made me switch my family visit to summer, and it was a great decision. I sure do miss the Christmas traditions, but trading it for less annoying travel and time on the beach in the summer is a compromise I’m willing to make. So I made the same decision this year.
Since we don’t have any family out here, we found ourselves with the second year of a non-committed Christmas. And what do we do when we find a free day in our calendar? We hit the road, of course. At the last minute, we decided to spend the holiday in our favorite place in the world – in a tent in the Eastern Sierra.
Today was a planned half-day of hiking, about seven miles down down down into Kern Canyon towards the Kern Hot Spring. The Kern river is a nice place to relax and fish, so we were looking forward to our afternoon off and started off the morning at a leisurely pace. I think we were the last ones to leave Moraine Lake. The one big concern about the day was rattlesnakes. It’s not common to find rattlers up high, but the trail would take us down to about 6500 feet while passing through a rattlesnake’s paradise. Several years ago the area burned, and now the trail is lined and overgrown with shady ferns that a rattlesnake would just love to nap under.
(more…)