Trisha brought this home from a hike:
Really, here? At what point are you hiking and thinking…..”hey let’s call mom and see what she’s up to!”. There is a ranch house across the street and plenty of people hiking, but this is where we need a pay phone????. BTW – .50 for a phone call.
On November 15, Trisha and I took an exciting and strenuous hike on Maui: The Waihe’e Crest Trail.
[click to expand map]
Most hikes in Hawaii are rewarding and exciting, and this is no exception. It’s 2.5 miles straight uphill. At the end you turn around and come back down. The uphill part is a serious cardiovascular workout. The downhill is a slip and slide adventure.
First you have to find the trailhead. As is typical for finding hikes in Hawaii, no matter how well advertised a hike may be in a book, if you miss some minor and critical detail of the description on how to get to the trail, you can miss the entire thing. This holds true with the Waihe’e Crest Trail.
Go north on Highway 340 out of Kahului until you get to the Waihe’e Elementary School and clock exactly 2.5 miles.
You will see the Mendes Ranch gates in front of you (red arrow). This is a major gate and you can’t miss it. Look to your left and you will see a small road leading up the mountain toward the boy scout camp (green arrow). Take that road. You can’t miss the parking lot, and once there, the trail is well signed.
The trail initially starts on a steep little concrete road, and you’ll feel like you’re being weeded out. You will hate the trail from the first two minutes on. It’s a very strenuous and steep climb. At the end of the concrete path the woods start. It’s very wet. I wished I had brought my poles, not so much for the way up, as for the way back down. I fell five times, my boots simply slipping out from under me. Fortunately I didn’t hurt my wrists seriously.
Looking back down over my left shoulder I often had a great view of the bay north of Maui. At the tip of the bay is Kahului, the main city on the island and its airport. In the background the massive, 10,000 foot Haleakala volcano.
In the lower section, the trail goes through woods.
Dueling cameras. Are we there yet?
Like most hikes in Hawaii, this one goes through lush jungle and impenetrable weeds. Without a trail there would be no way to get there. Since it is a ridge trail, sometimes you can look down on both sides hundreds of feet. Do not slip here, I kept telling myself.
To the left and forward are the peaks of the East Maui mountains, always shrouded in mist.
Spectacular views and dramatic ridges characterize this trail. Here is a gate through a barbed-wire fence to keep cattle, with a tight squeeze for hikers to get through.
It seems like it never ends, even though it’s only 2.5 miles one way, and then suddenly you are there. The end of the trail is almost anticlimactic. There is a picnic table, and no way to go further in any direction. A sign warns “end of trail” and looking on confirms to me that it’s wise to turn around at this point, lest we will never be seen again.
The Waihe’e Crest Trail is a great day hike on Maui that I highly recommend.
The Observatory Trail on Palomar Mountain is a wonderful quick hike to do at any time when you want to get away from the crowds and enjoy a little bit on nature – and science – without having to make big plans. Black Friday was just such a day, and Jack, Devin and I packed some peanut butter sandwiches, trail mix, water and went off to Palomar Mountain.
The trail starts at the Observatory Campground on Palomar. This may be hard to find, since it’s not on the same road as the Palomar Mountain state park. If you find yourself having to pay an entry fee of $8 at the main ranger station, you are at the wrong place. From the main road, pass Mother’s Cafe on your left and continue about two miles until you get to the campground on your right. It’s easy to miss, since the sign is on the left side of the road and the entry is right behind a bend on the right. Once in the campground, drive around the loop. Don’t park in somebody else’s camp parking space. There are hiker parking spaces in the back. Now comes the matter of the Adventure Pass, which you are likely not to have. There is a place at the entrance to the park where you can self-purchase a ticket and stuff your $5 into a slot. That’s the best way to handle this. If you don’t pay, you will have a ticket by the time you come back, but the ticket is just the $5 you owed in the first place, so it’s not too obnoxious.
The trail starts right at the parking lot and moves steadily up through oak forests and woods. Occasionally it runs right by the road, but that will not bother you, since it’s higher up and you can’t see it. It’s just strange to hear a car all of a sudden, when you are seemingly deep in the woods. The vistas to the right into the valley are wonderful.
Wait until you get to the platform built just for this few and spend a few minutes taking your pictures.
The trail climbs steadily upward, as you can see from the profile above. The trail is 2.3 miles one way, and it’s easily done in about 1 hour of hiking. Devin gave some lectures on trail maintenance, so overall we took about 1.5 hours to get to our destination, the famous Hale Observatory.
Of course, we went inside, checked out the displays, and then stopped at the museum afterwards. The observatory was built starting in 1936, and first light hit the telescope in 1948. For decades, this was the largest and most famous observatory in the world. Many of the groundbreaking discoveries in astronomy during the 1950ies through the 1970ies took place here.
Devin, ever the trails man with a geography degree, got a kick out of this high-tech display at the end of the trail:
A nice little lunch at the top is just what we needed (myself and Jack):
The way down is the same as the way up, just a little faster, since there is no huffing and puffing. I had a vibrant flashback on the way down. I remembered that there were times some twenty-odd years ago when I carried Devin up and down this trail in a back-carrier when he was an infant. And here he is now, teaching me how to maintain trails:
On the way down you might stop at Mother’s Cafe. They have good coffee, pastries, smoothies and sandwiches. If you don’t see something you want on the sparse menu, just ask them, and they will likely make it for you.
…and that is the preferred way to spend the Day after Thanksgiving.
On August 3, I started out at the Crabtree trailhead in the Stanislaus National Forest and hiked into the Emigrant Wilderness.
[click on pictures to enlarge]
The Crabtree area is on the left side of the map at the start of the track. My car was the only one in a dusty trailhead lot at the end of the road. This was not the regular Crabtree trailhead, but the one marked “overflow parking.” The trail starts on the east edge of the lot and heads east before turning south toward Bell Creek.
The trail was rough and sometimes hard to follow. The electronic topo map (shown here) does not have the trail accurately represented where it is in the terrain. I think this is due to sloppiness of Garmin, rather than the trail having moved. So beware when using a GPS without also having a hardcopy map. I was comfortable having both.
In about three hours of hiking I made it to Grouse Lake where I had just enough time to pitch my tent and eat a little before dusk fell in and mosquitoes started attacking me.
The next morning I went on. My target was the California Conservation Corps Backcountry Crew camp at Cherry Creek.
The trail was remote. In early August on a weekday, I saw hardly any other hikers. There are few markers, limited only to major trail junctions. Here is a typical section of trail.
I made it to the camp by about 1:00 o’clock in the afternoon. Devin was there on Kitchen Patrol, so he was the only one in camp when I got there, and we spent a nice few hours together connecting after more than three months of him being isolated out there. Here is a picture of Devin I took within minutes of arriving.
Click here for more information about the CCC Backcountry Program and Devin’s adventures.
On Saturday we decided to climb up to Leopold Lake. There is no trail to the lake. It’s a climb straight up a rock face, crisscrossed with granite crevasses, creeks and a few waterfalls.
It took us about 45 minutes of climbing time and another 25 minutes of resting before we got there.
The fact that there is no trail is probably a blessing. When we got there, I was overwhelmed by the absolute wilderness paradise we found. Some of the peripheral small lakes around it were still covered with thick ice. There were still large snowdrifts melting on August 6th. Leopold Lake is basically on top of a mountain, surrounded on all sides by cliffs, rock slabs and no trails leading to it. The lake is clear and deep.
Once there, swimming in the cold and deep water was refreshing and exhilarating. We had just come for a look and to hang out for a couple of hours. But I immediately realized that I could spend an entire week here at Leopold, surrounded by nothing but pristine and just about untouched nature and penetrated by quiet solitude.
Looking at the map of the Emigrant Wilderness, I realize that there are dozens of such lakes in this area with no trails leading to them. It gives me comfort to know that we still have such remote and completely untouched nature in this country.
Devin is off to the California Conservation Corps Trail Crew Program. His plane for Sacramento left at noon today. Here is the last picture of Devin in civilization:
He put on his pack and headed for the security check, and then he was gone.
There is something unsettling about somebody, in 2011, going away for more than five months and getting completely off “the grid.”
Devin closed his Facebook account, turned off his cell phone service, put all his valuables in one bag, including wallet, cell phone, computer and a few extra pieces of clothing, and left the bag sitting in the middle of my living room – where it sat when we came back from the airport after dropping him off.
He will now only be writing hardcopy letters. Mail will be carried in and out by mule train.
To get there, it will take several days of hard, rough hiking. If he can communicate his exact location sufficiently ahead of time with enough accuracy and stability, I will hike in once or twice and “visit.”
He will send me letters to be emailed on his behalf to the distribution list of friends he gave me. If you want his updates, please email me at: <my first name> dot <my last name> at gmail.com and I’ll put you on the list.
I miss him already.
On March 6 through 8, Devin and I hiked the Grand Canyon. You can see, just by the size of the packs, that Devin knows how to hike light. I have all my gear from the 1970ies. His stuff is brand-new. His pack was at least 10 pounds lighter than mine. I learned a lot of lessons from my son on this trip.
We left from the South Kaibab Trailhead a little after noon on Sunday, March 6. The South Kaibab is the steepest trail from the rim to the river in the Grand Canyon. In 7.2 miles of trail, we descended from 7,150 feet to 2,400 feet, almost a mile down. We did it in a little over four hours. Here is the track map of the first day (dark green):
The one dangerous thing about hiking in the Grand Canyon is that at first you go downhill. While it is hard on the knees and the feet and all the muscles on the legs, going downhill usually does not get you winded and exhausted. It’s just painful. So many people get into trouble, going down too far to come back up. Annually, 250 people have to get rescued out of the Grand Canyon due to extreme exhaustion. The average person getting rescued are white males between 18 and 40, in good shape, too cocky to know what they are getting themselves into.
Here is Devin after hiking downhill all day just before the tunnel leading to the hanging bridge over the Colorado River, which is visible on the left edge of the picture. We’re definitely ready for camp.
We found a camp spot at the Bright Angel Campground just a few hundred feet from the famous Phantom Ranch. Our tents were pitched, and here you see Devin heating water for dinner and checking the map. While the temperature at the rim was in the 30ies, here it was an outright balmy high 60ies, and even overnight it did not drop much lower than 50. It was very comfortable.
The next morning we broke camp and hiked halfway back up on the Bright Angel Trail. This is about a 9.5 mile trail up to the South Rim. Halfway up is Indian Garden Campground, where we spent the next night. The dark section in the map shows the hike for the day, about five miles.
The problem, of course, is that it is five miles straight up.
Here are our tents at Indian Garden. There are even covered canopies over the picnic tables. That turned out to be a savior, as we had a major storm that evening. Heavy snowfall at the rim meant driving rain at Indian Garden at 4,000 feet elevation. Fortunately, we had put our tents at a slight slope. However, we had to dig little ditches around them to keep water from flooding under the tents. The main storm hit while we were still up.
It was dark, we had eaten, cleaned up, and with the heavy weather there was nothing to do. I wore all my layers, my jacket, and the rain poncho over it, sitting at the picnic table, shivering, wet through, from the rain almost coming in sideways and spray covering everything. I wore my headlamp and I was reading on my Kindle which I had brought along just for times like this. Devin said I’d be a perfect advertisement for the Kindle: A dripping wet, freezing, huddled, dirty hiker, in complete darkness, headlamp putting a spotlight on the Kindle, wiping the rain off the device with a bandana. I sat there as long as I could stand it, reading, a lone spot of light in a cold and dark canyon.
It was a miserably long and cold night. My sleeping bag was at the cold limit. Another 10 degrees less and I would have had a serious problem. The rain fly of my tent leaked, but fortunately most of the rain was over by the time I crawled into the tent.
The next day, thank goodness it finally came, was bright and clear and very cold. Hot coffee and granola warmed us up, and we headed out for the final five miles of hike and a climb of about 3,000 feet.
Here you can see in dark green the last day’s hike, essentially straight up the wall.
The picture above shows the trail soon after we left camp. We are heading straight for the wall in the center of the picture. It does not seem possible from this angle that there is a way up. There is. At the top of the picture in the center you can see the faint rim. That’s where we’re going.
We saw quite a number of mule trains. In the Grand Canyon, unlike at other hiking locations, the trails are always relentlessly steep, either down or up, and there are always walls on one side and cliffs on the other. Sometimes there is a vertical drop of hundreds of feet right next to a three-foot wide trail.
Don’t. Look. Down.
I am amazed how the mules do it. Also, watching them climb up or step down is fascinating. For the riders, it must be a strong effort of complete trust in the animal’s experience and abilities to do what does not seem possible.
When hiking in terrain like that, it is very important to be careful about foot placement. Twisting an ankle could require a rescue at the least or cause a fatal fall at the worst.
I always wondered how the mules do it. Yes, they can see their front legs, and watching them walk the steps, it’s obvious that they are doing exactly what we are doing: they watch carefully where they place their feet. But what about the rear legs? They can’t see those. So I made a point of observing this time: It turns out that the rear leg is invariably placed EXACTLY where the front leg was. There must be some body memory in quadrupeds that makes this possible. The rear leg steps precisely where the front leg stepped every time.
The last two trail miles were covered in snow and ice remaining from the storm of the night before and of course from ice accumulations of previous cycles of melting and freezing water. It was treacherous going. Not expecting sheer ice surfaces, we had not brought crampons. Devin and I each took one of my poles, and we plotted along carefully over the snow and ice surfaces. We asked about the mules. It turns out they get special horse shoes in the winter, with titanium spikes to allow them to walk on ice without slipping.
We arrived at the South Rim around 2:00pm in the afternoon on March 8. Every muscle hurt, and we were happy.
Next, we will hike from the North Rim to the South Rim, about three or four days in the Canyon, spanning more than 20 miles. The best time to do that is October. Time to put in for reservations now.
I have not been there, but Trisha found this online:
El Caminito del Rey (The King’s pathway) is a walkway, now fallen into disrepair, pinned along the steep walls of a narrow gorge in El Chorro, near Álora in Málaga, Spain. The name is often shortened to El Camino del Rey.
I wonder why this was built in the first place. This beautify gorge should have been left alone, and tourists should have been kept out. But this is Spain. No U.S. Forest Service.
The couple whose blog I have been following over the last month arrived today at Mt. Katahdin in Maine, completing their 6 month hike of the Appalachian Trail. Congratulations.
Check out their blog and browse around. It brings the hike right into your living room.
Haleakala, with an elevation of 10,027 feet, is the highest point on Maui. It is a volcanic cindercone with a well maintained highway that goes all the way to the top. With a road distance of 38 miles and an elevation change of 10,000 feet, the highway is one of the steepest in the world.
Trisha and I left our condo on the Kihei coast at 4:00am and arrived just before 6:00am, shortly before sunrise, at the peak. It was eerie, because the parking lot was full at that time in the morning, and there were some 200 people (on a regular weekday) huddled in the freezing wind, some of them wrapped in hotel bedspreads, towels and whatever else they could find to keep them warm. A full contingent of park rangers kept order, and one of them sang a native chant while the sun rose.
Seldom are there no clouds shrouding the peak, so the sun does not rise over the ocean, but rather over a blanket of clouds that surrounds the peak a few thousand feet lower. Here is a photograph of the sunrise on top of Haleakala.
We brought our hiking gear and provisions, so we could hike into the crater.
[you can click to enlarge these photographs]
I took this picture from the rim down into the crater, facing east. The red arrow points to our hiking destination, down the Sliding Sands Trail to Ka Lu’u o ka ‘O’o, which means “plunge of the digging stick” and I’ll talk about that later. The crater looks like a moonscape from the rim, and the distances are deceiving. The point of the arrow is 2.6 walking miles and an elevation change of 1,400 feet down. The valley further behind is some 3,000 feet down and 9 miles away. You can hike all the way down to the ocean from this point, but for us, a day hike to Ka Lu’u o ka ‘O’o was all we needed.
Here is Trisha taking a breather with our destination (red arrow) still 0.6 miles away.
Finally arrived, you can see why it’s called “plunge of the digging stick.” According to one Hawaiian myth, the volcano goddess, Pele, traveled through the islands seeking a home suitable for making good fires with her digging stick. Pele drove her digging stick into the ground here and created Ka Lu’u o ka ‘O’o. Pele then moved to the island of Hawaii, where she resides today, creating eruptions at Kilauea and Mauna Loa.
Hiking in Haleakala is a little bit like hiking in the Grand Canyon. At the canyon, you start at the elevation of 7,200 feet and hike down a mile to about 2,000 feet. That’s not so hard to do for a reasonably fit hiker. But then the return trip is brutal.
At Haleakala you start hiking at 10,000 feet, where the air is thin enough to make you dizzy and lightheaded. Then you go down effortlessly, sliding in loose sand along well maintained trails. Then there comes the time when you have to return. Within a few steps you realize that going back up is not at all the same, with the steepness of the terrain and the thin air. I would advise scheduling at least twice as long, or longer, to come back out. Depending on your fitness how how accustomed you are to hiking at altitude, it can be quite challenging.
This is the view back to where we needed to go, the red arrow pointing to the visitor center at the top. You might as well be on the moon.
Hiking in the Haleakala Crater is an unforgettable experience.
My son Devin and his girlfriend Jessie are hiking the John Muir Trial. This is a hike that starts in Yosemite, and after 24 days (if you keep plugging away at it at 10 miles a day on average) ends up at Whitney Portal. Hiking more than 200 miles through the High Sierras, crossing dozens of rivers and streams, climbing over 13,000 foot passes, and, on the last day, seeing the sunrise from the top of Mt. Whitney, at 14,454 feet the highest mountain in the continental United States, doing the John Muir trail is mostly a matter of tenacity and raw endurance. The problem is: You can’t carry enough food for a month on the trail. “Food drops” are required.
A food drop contains everything they need to eat for about a week. Every breakfast, lunch and dinner is planned and rationed. Dinners are dried meals that only need water. Lunches are dried soups, some trail mix. Breakfast is granola or cereal. All a good variety of flavors. And then there are lots of “bars,” including candy, protein, PowerBars, and the like, for snacks and grazing. A food drop container fills a large 5-gallon bucket (like a paint bucket).
They dropped off the first food drop with a friend (Jesse R.) that lives on Mammoth Mountain at the ski resort. The second drop they mailed to the John Muir Trail Ranch, where they keep the stuff for you to pick up when you get there. And the third drop — I hiked in for them yesterday, August 7, which happened to be my 54th birthday.
You might ask how you coordinate a thing like that? The hikers need to plan and know exactly where they will be each day, allowing them to predict a date of arrival at a specific place on the trail. The place needs to be accessible from the “outside” meaning it should be no more than a one-day hike from a place that you can drive to. Devin planned that he would be at Bullfrog Lake (red arrow) on August 7. The Kearsarge Pass hike is about 7.5 miles from the Onion Valley Camp Ground (blue arrow), over Kearsarge Pass (green arrow), a 11,800 foot elevation to climb over. With Onion Valley at 9,200 feet, it does not sound so bad, but considering the thin air, the lack of acclimatization and the 2,600 feet elevation difference, it is a formidable hike with a 50 pound pack.
The map [click to enlarge] shows the trail in a fine dotted line. The bad news is that I lost my GPS shortly after crossing the pass, so I can’t show the usual trail route that I walked. Bummer. I have to get a new and improved one.
Here is a photograph of Bullfrog Lake from the top of the Pass (11,800 ft). It’s the blue lake in the distant center.
From where I took the photograph, it looked like I could just yell down and they’d hear me. It’s actually another two hour, three mile hike from this vantage point, and as you get lower into the valley, you don’t see the lake anymore, requiring maps and careful navigation to find it. I had trepidations and was nervous. What if they were not there? We had made arrangements of where I’d leave the stash, but I could not fathom resorting to that. Their last email confirming the date was from the JMT Ranch some nine days earlier. A lot can happen to delay you in nine days.
To my relief, when I finally arrived at Bullfrog Lake, I saw the two of them from a distance, fiddling with something on the ground. When I yelled “Devin” to announce myself, he waved and then rushed to collect something off the ground. I could not figure out what they were busy with. Here it is:
They had started making a sign “Happy Birthday” with rocks, Jessie arranging the rocks, and Devin collecting them, but I arrived a bit earlier than they expected and surprised them.
I found them healthy, happy and hungry.
Jessie was showing me how torn and dirty her shirt was. Imagine not changing your clothes for three weeks while being outdoors 24 hours a day.
Devin has his tangled and dirty hair tied back in a pony tail, which you can’t see in this picture.
They had run out of food completely. There was not a peanut left in their packs. The rendezvous was obviously critical. Besides the stash that Devin had put together for me to bring, I knew they would appreciate goodies. Even though those goodies contributed substantially to my already heavy pack, the impact on them was worth every ounce. I know what hikers crave, especially when out that long. The treats I brought:
When you are out that long without any comforts of any kind, no chair, bed, shower, soap, fresh food of any type, believe me, those simple things are treasures. And that’s how they treated them. I could tell that August 7th would be the day of the feast, with more food available than the entire rest of the trek.
We spent an hour and a half together, me resting, they eating and repacking food. I knew I had a long walk out yet to do, with the afternoon sun beating down on me as I climbed the pass. They had a long way to go yet, getting closer to Forrester Pass, a 13,000 plus foot pass they’d have to get over the next day, and then on to Whitney, the top of it all.
As we hugged good-bye, I knew it was a perfect way to spend a birthday.
I finally hiked Mt. Marcy, with 5,344 feet the highest peak in New York, and an adventure it was. I am a West Coast hiker. I am used to blue sky, heat in the day, cold at night, the need for sunscreen, high altitude trailheads and even higher peaks. And I am used to switchbacks.
The Adirondacks are a whole different beast. Mt. Marcy has a number of reasonable trails reaching it, the shortest of which starts at the Adirondack Loj (spelling intentional by its builder, Melvil Dewey, who was an advocate of “simplified spelling”) at Heart Lake. The trail is 7.2 miles long. Marcy is therefore a fairly remote hike. I can do 7.2 miles one way, no problem. But the trail up Marcy is not different from the trail up Algonquin and Ampersand. Straight up, all the time.
You can click to enlarge the map above. The trail starts at Heart Lake, the same trailhead I used to hike Algonquin a couple of years ago. That trail is visible here in brown. The blue arrow points to the peak. You can see that the trail is about twice as long, making Mt. Marcy a remote mountain to reach from any road.
I started out by driving to Lake Placid the afternoon before. I started in Saratoga Springs where it was sunny and hot, and two hours later as I entered Lake Placid it was raining hard. It looked like an afternoon thunderstorm, but I found out later that there was a tornado warning not ten miles away to the north. All evening and into the night it rained. Unlike I did in my youth when I pitched a tent at the trailhead, this middle-age soft hiker checks into a hotel the night before. So the rain didn’t bother me, except I knew that if it didn’t let up, there was no way I could go. And I only had one day on my schedule.
When I looked out the window at 5:30am, it didn’t rain, but it was gloomy, misty and chilly out. Hoping for better weather later, I drove to the trailhead and took my first steps onto the trail at 6:30am.
The trail is usually very rocky, over high boulders, up sheer rock slabs, and it’s difficult on the feet, even with a good pair of boots.
The photograph below shows a sample section of the trail. The yellow marks are paint marks on the rock letting you know the way. It looks vertical in this picture, but don’t be alarmed. You can “walk” this. You just need to be careful. I strapped my poles to my pack and scrambled up using my arms. It’s most tricky when it’s wet, of course. And coming down.
Some kids do it in running shoes. That must really hurt by the end of the day. And it’s killing my 54-year-old knees. It takes me longer to go down a mountain than up. I can climb up like a mountain goat, but I hobble down like an invalid, supported by my poles, picking my way down, trying not to stress my knees, bend them as little as possible, always fearful of a fateful twist of the ankle or worse. But that is part of hiking when we get older, and we love doing it nonetheless, particularly looking back afterwards.
All the way up it was cold and rainy. I had to put on the rain poncho from time to time. The trail was muddy and slippery. The woods were eerily distant and forbidding.
There was a nice view of Mt. Colden from Marcy Dam. This was one of the clearer moments.
I took that picture from Marcy Dam, a section of which you can see below:
For reference, Marcy Dam is shown on the map above at the red arrow, and Mt. Colden at the green arrow.
Once, about halfway up, I came to a 4-way intersection in the trail at 3.6 miles. Left and right were labeled “ski trail only” and forward was labeled “to Tabletop Mountain”. It didn’t say Marcy, but I figured close enough. It seemed to be the right direction. When I pulled myself over mud holes and around birch trees without any clear way further I came to the conclusion that I can’t possibly be on the main trail to the highest peak in New York. I was stuck.
The map above shows my little detour (red arrow), which cost good time and energy, all in steady rain. When I got back to the intersection I had clocked at least an extra half a mile and 30 minutes of hiking, and got into some of the worst terrain of the day. Note to self – let’s not climb Tabletop via this route. Note to the reader – the Adirondacks are pretty wild, and there aren’t always signs when and where you need them.
Little did I know that I was just a few feet away from “Indian Falls” (green arrow) that I trudged by in frustration. I didn’t realize that until I researched the trail and map when I got back.
When I finally got within a half a mile of the top, the weather became outright inclement. I had read about people dying on Mt Washington in New Hampshire (6,288 feet high) during freak snowstorms in the summer and I could never understand how that can happen at such comparatively low altitude, as judged by a Californian. On Mt. Marcy I got my enlightenment. Even though I wore every stitch of clothing I had brought (my T-shirt, my long-sleeve hiking shirt and my windbreaker, I was whipped by an icy storm. Frozen raindrops pelted me sideways from the west. I had to face away from the wind so my hood didn’t get blown off and I could see. And through this I was picking my way up sheer rock slabs, slippery from the water, steep and sometimes without any good footholds.
When I got to the peak around noon, there was nobody at the top, so I used the timer with the camera on a rock to take this picture of me. I was sheltered from the wind a bit by the slab of rock (the peak) behind me.
I might mention that just as the camera had snapped this picture, the wind actually blew the camera off the rock. As I saw it bounce I was afraid that it would never work again, but I guess I was lucky.
The view from Mt. Marcy is supposed to be spectacular. I saw only white mist not too far out. I took this picture to illustrate my point and to test whether my camera was still functioning after the fall.
After this grandiose view from the peak toward the east, and since there was little shelter from the wind and no shelter from the rain, I took just enough time for a couple of granola bars and an apple, before I started the long trek back.
And very long it was indeed. The sky broke open in the afternoon, and there was even some sunshine. Hikers later told me that the view from the top also opened up. The way down always seems much longer than the way up. With the goal, the conquest of the peak behind me, I just want to get back.
I arrived at the trailhead about 12 hours after leaving, thoroughly sore, wet, hungry, exhausted and eminently satisfied. Another goal achieved. Another mountain conquered. Another great day in the Adirondacks! Can’t wait to go back.
Today I hiked to the top of Ampersand Mountain in the Adirondacks. The mountain is “only” 3,352 feet high. In the San Bernardinos, I park my car at elevations of over 5,000 feet, so this does not sound like much. But in New York, these mountains are formidable.
The hike took 4.5 hours, about half up and half down. The problem with hikes in the Adirondacks is that they go straight up. The trails don’t run in switchbacks like they do out west. So the steps are steep and long, and sometimes climbing over slippery boulders and hanging on to tree branches to pull myself up was inevitable.
The weather was bad all day. It drizzled on the way up, and it full-on rained on the way down. The trail, which followed a creek for the most part, was already muddy and slippery before the rain. Now it was outright treacherous. Visions of slipping and breaking an ankle or leg kept me anxious and nervous, and I was ever careful placing my boots. Regardless, I slipped a few times without adverse consequences other than muddy hands and clothes. It was a mudfest when I got to the bottom.
Here is a picture of me at the top, which a fellow hiker took with my cell phone (I forgot my main camera in the car). He didn’t hold steady so it’s blurry – but better than nothing. I am still fairly dry here – the rain has not yet started:
The background behind me, looking south, is the main area of the High Peaks in the Adirondacks. Due to the weather, the view was not so exciting. Also, due to the weather, I didn’t take a lot of photographs. This is the only one, taken toward the northwest.
It is interesting to see how the entire peak is bare rock. I was surprised and delighted. Otherwise I would not have had a great view. However, reading up on it, I found out that the peak used to be wooded. During a nineteenth century survey, Verplank Colvin had the trees removed to facilitate the survey from this critical vantage point. Erosion set in, and now all that remains is the bare rock.
”]”]
As always, I took GPS readings and the above chart shows how New York trail makers don’t believe in switchbacks. Straight up, straight up.
Overall a great dayhike in the Adirondacks. The distance from the trailhead to the peak is 2.3 miles. About 1.5 miles of that is reasonably flat and wooded terrain, not stressful in any way. The last half mile or so is absolutely treacherous, going both up and down. I would have enjoyed it more in good weather, but with that many more Adirondack peaks beckoning, I think I will probably not find the time to return.
Ever since visiting Borrego Springs last year, and hiking up Palm Canyon the year before with my friend Mike, I have been haunted by the urge to climb Indianhead, the massive, jagged mountain to the north of Palm Canyon.
On January 3rd Devin and I did this exploratory hike to find the starting point of the climb and learn what it will take.
We started at the Anza Borrego State Park camp ground. The entry fee for day use is $8. Once parked, we hiked up a reasonably developed trail for 1.5 miles. There is a picture perfect oasis with a group of massive palm trees, a perfect spot for a water and snack break and a little breather in the shade. Getting to this point involved hiking almost all the way in the hot sun. There are some crowds here, with children frolicking and clambering about. But this changed as soon as we left the oasis and went further.
For the next one or two tenths of a mile we had to scramble over and under some massive boulders. Eventually we got through them and picked up speed a bit, but never very long. We had to crawl through thickets, climb over slippery rocks (since the soles of our boots remained wet all the time). This is definitely not hiking anymore, since it simply can’t be done without the use of hands and rudimentary rock climbing skills.
We made it up to a point where we could see the ridge to ascend to the peak. From the trailhead at 600 feet elevation, this spot is at about 1800. The peak is at 3600, so the worst of the climb is still ahead, with no water and sun exposure all the way up.
I didn’t realize how close we were to the meeting of the north and south forks and the waterfalls rumored to be there, until I looked at a map after we had returned. We were worried about daylight when we turned around, but we could easily have gone on for another twenty minutes to that point.
There are many perfect camping spots for overnight stays along this stretch of creek, with nice flat sandy pads, water with pools, and solitude. Some other hikers will come by, but not many, since it takes some serious resolve to make it past the various boulder and canyon obstacles. Here we are at one of those great camping spots:
The round trip was about five miles and we were out for almost four hours. As you can see from the map, I tracked both the way up and down, and we took an alternate loop on the way back, and I am glad we did, since we saw some wonderful ocotillo with lush green leaves, greener than I had ever seen ocotillo before.
On the way back I also saw a nice little spot of new palm seedlings, all about six to twelve inches tall. I imagined what this little group would look like in subsequent years, so I decided on the spot to make it a tradition and come back every year over New Years and take a picture from the exact spot to document their growth. Here is the first one:
The new seedlings are in the center of the picture. To make sure I’d remember where I was, I recorded a way point on my GPS so I would be sure to find it again.
The hike was more challenging than I expected it to be, since I considered it a Sunday afternoon exploratory hike. I definitely know now how to climb Indianhead: I have to carry an overnight pack up to the 2.6 mile point at the junction of the two forks and start the day hike early in the morning the next day to the peak and back. And it must be done in the winter. The sun will be brutal.
This mountain’s correct name is actaully Woodson Mountain, after a homesteader that lived at its base over a hundred years ago. Woodson is one of the premier rock climbing spots in San Diego County. It is the rocky peak behind Poway with the many antennas, visible from just about any part of the county on a clear day, and dominating the North County skyline. With it being so much in our face all the time, it is hard for me to believe that the last time I hiked Woodson was in 1993.
I went on New Year’s Day and I got a late start, around noon. I picked one of the longer routes up, starting at the boat ramp on Lake Poway, where there is plenty of parking and much ongoing recreational activity, from fishing to pleasure boating to picnicking. The trail to Woodson from there is a little hard to find.
You need to know to go on Lake Poway loop trail, follow it counterclockwise around the lake and then pick up the Mt. Woodson trail when you see the signs. You can see by the little detour down by the lake that I picked up in the wrong direction, going west, before I figured out I needed to stay along the lake.
From the boat ramp to the peak it is about 4 miles. The descriptions of the trail all say 2.9 miles, but it takes 1.1 miles to walk around the lake before you get to the start of the actual trail. The elevation change is 1800 feet, and it’s straigt up. There are not many flat sections. After you are halfway up you are in a completely different universe. Yes, you see roads, freeways, estates and city all around, but on the mountain you are in wilderness, rough wilderness that is. It was hard for me to fathom that I only drove 10 minutes from my front door to the trailhead, and after 20 minutes of hiking I was out there in nature. As always, I promised myself to do this much more often.
The hike took two hours up and two hours down, which included plenty of time to stop, look around, take a few pictures and, yes, take a breather. This hike is exercise, make no mistake about it.
The trail is very well maintained. It’s not a particularly rocky or hard trail, but it’s steep and steady.
Looking down from the top I saw last week’s hike to the south – Iron Mountain.
Looking west, there is home, the blue arrow annotating where our house is.
Of course, looking southwest, there is downtown San Diego in the distance, about 35 miles away.
On the peak, there is the famous rock sliver (annotated). I wanted to climb onto it, but there was nobody to take my picture, so I let the urge pass.
This was an excellent way to spend New Year’s Day.
On the day after Christmas, Trisha and I decided to hike Iron Mountain, outside San Diego. This is a great little hike and I didn’t know it was here, like, I suspect, so many other great little hikes. Who has this kind of terrain and real trails that provide real workouts 20 minutes from their front door? We do. I decided I needed to go out more often.
The trail starts at the intersection of Poway Road and Highway 67. There were a lot of cars parked by the road, so there is no chance of missing it. First, it gently ascends in a straight path for about 1.45 miles or half the distance. At the kink in the trail in the upper right corner of the map, it starts climbing steadily and steeply at times. It is actually a fairly rough trail.
This is a great family hike, although I would not take kids smaller than eight years old or so, as they are bound to give you trouble and complain. So will anyone else who is not accustomed to real hiking, so beware if you’re planning on dragging your sister-in-law from Oklahoma up the mountain. Wear hiking shoes. Sneakers will work, but you’re in danger of getting twisted ankles and you will definitely be sore afterwards. Some of the trail is pretty rough. All in all, it took us 50-somethings an hour and 20 minutes to the top, and that includes stops for breathers and just taking in the views. I am sure a jogger can do it in 45 minutes. Make sure you bring a jacket or sweatshirt. The wind blows cold along the ridge and at the top, no matter what it seems like on the trailhead.
The view from the top is all worth it. Here is Trisha, the Happy Hiker.
