Randomness Part 3 - Special Photo Issue - Flowers Vol 1

Recently I have really taken an interest in taking pictures of the flowers that I see along the trails that I have been hiking. I am not sure why I like taking pictures of flowers now, but, oh well, it is fun to do. This Randomness post is dedicated to some of the flower pictures I have taken. Also as a side note, most of these pictures were taken while I was hiking but a few of them are from gardens in my neighborhood. I am not sure what all of the flowers are called but I guess I will learn that with time. Enjoy!

Memorial Weekend Travels - Part 2 Yosemite

So it is no mystery that one of my favorite places on this planet is Yosemite National Park and the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It was the first place I went with my parents after being born and I imagine that I will continue to go there right up until I die. My favorite part of Yosemite is the high country - places like Glacier Point and the country you drive through when you are on Tioga Pass and Sonora Pass roads. There is just something about granite that I love.

Since Memorial weekend was my birthday weekend, I decided that in addition to seeing the before mentioned concert and Sequoia National Park, I wanted to visit Yosemite as well to take some shots of the waterfalls while they had a pretty decent waterflow going. The thing about the waterfalls in Yosemite is that most of them do not run year round and some of them have very small drainage areas so they don't run that long even in the wet season. Turns out that because of an exceptionally deep snowpack this year an impressive waterfall season is occurring and it is lasting a long time.

The day started out in Fresno. I rarely enter the park from the Highway 41 entrance because to do so from the Bay Area takes you really far out of your way. It was nice to go this way this time however because it was a great change of scenery. I had forgotten about the Sugar Pine Railroad (one of the stops you can make on the way in or out of the park) - you can take an open air train ride while they explain to you the history of the railroad. This is the south entrance to the park and it brings you in near the Mariposa Grove of sequoia trees and you have to drive through the Wawona area to get to the valley.

The first stop of the day though was Glacier Point. Louis had never been up there before so I had a dual purpose in going up there - first so that Louis could enjoy the view and second to scout out the trailhead for the big Half Dome hike. I have included a picture of the trailhead to the left. I never get tired of the view from up there, it is amazing. You are 7200 ft above sea level and about 3200 ft above the valley floor - not a place to be if you are afraid of heights though that is for sure! I always forget to bring binoculars so that I can check stuff out. There is so much to take pictures of up there that you can spend lots of time drinking in the scenery. Besides you get a birds eye view of several waterfalls: Nevada, Vernal. Pywiack, Royal Arch, Yosemite, and Staircase.

Next stop was the vista point area right after the tunnel on Hwy 41 (pictured above). This is the classic postcard shot of the U-shape of the valley. From here you see big landmarks - El Capitan, Clouds Rest, Half Dome, and the hanging valley of Bridalveil Falls. You can also see a couple more waterfalls from here: Silver Strand and Ribbon.

After the vista point, the next must stop is at the base of Bridalveil Falls. During this time of year you can not get close to the base of the falls without getting wet. This waterfall is very powerful when the flow of water is high. It also has a unique water flip a the top because of the wind. The parking lot at the base of this waterfall was the most full that I had ever seen. I was lucky though, I got a spot pretty much right away. I didn't feel like being wet so I took a short walk to a couple of the bridges over Bridalveil creek that gave me views of the waterfall without the mist.

The next stops were along the side of the road of the loop that goes around the valley. From here I get good views of waterfalls and landmarks. I got shots from different views of Ribbon Falls, El Capitan, Bridalveil Falls, Sentinel Falls, Yosemite Falls, Lehamite Falls, Half Dome, Clouds Rest, Royal Arches and many more. We ended up in Curry Village so that we could have a small snack.

After we were done there we were off to hike to the base of Lower Yosemite Falls. This is a short and crowded trail but there is a reason for that, the waterfall is beautiful. Also on my list to experience is hiking up the trail to the top of this waterfall. I was going to do it a few weeks ago but my knee kept me from making it. I just may have to take a day sometime to drive up and do the hike.

The last thing that I did that day before we headed back for dinner in Fresno was I got a shot of the Cascades from across the valley. I had to hop over a granite wall to get down far enough on the granite slab so that I could have an unobstructed view of the waterfall but it was all worth it and I made sure not to get too close to the edge because I know what that cliff looks like from the Cascades. Louis was not happy at all with my actions but I did get the shot I wanted and I am still in one piece (besides it wasn't that dangerous).

I know I usually rate the waterfalls I visit but I am still thinking about if I want to rate the waterfalls in Yosemite Valley or not. For now, I think I will just post the pictures and I can add the ratings later if I decide to rate them.

The Cascades
Silver Strand Falls
Bridalveil Falls
Ribbon Falls
Horsetail Falls (low flow)
Yosemite Falls
Lehamite Falls
Staircase Falls
Sentinel Falls
Royal Arch Cascade













I can't wait to go back for the Half Dome hike!

Memorial Weekend Travels - Part 1 Concert & Sequoia

So this weekend is generally my favorite weekend of the year (hmmmm I wonder why???). Last year I went to Hawaii , this year I went to a concert and two national parks.

The concert was in Whittier, CA (Southern California) on Saturday night. The band, a cover band of sorts. The concert was a tribute to The Who and the reason why I was there was because the person who put together the cover band was the drummer, Mike Portnoy, from Dream Theater (one of the bands I sort-of follow). I am not really one who could identify specific songs by The Who (except for the really obvious ones) but I was delighted to find out that I knew most of the songs that they played that evening. I must have heard the songs a lot while growing up. The theater was very small which made the show great - every seat was a great seat at that concert.

Sunday was spent driving up to Sequoia National Park and doing a bit of hiking. I haven't been to this national park since around 1996 or so. The last time I was there was on a company trip when I worked for Wintec Industries in Fremont. When that company was still small the owners, as a perk, paid for everyone to take a bus trip from the bay area down through Sequoia Natl park with a stop at the London Bridge in Arizona on the way to Las Vegas, Nevada. It was a pretty cool trip and strangely enough the person who went with me on that company trip was my cousin Carrie. That was the first time that Carrie and I had taken a trip together where it was just the two of us. She was too young to gamble (I might have been at the time too I am not sure what month we took that trip that year) so we just ended up walking and walking and walking checking out the sights. I think we both had a blast. Anyway, that was the last time I had been up in Sequoia National Park. It was crowded this time but I expected that because of the holiday weekend. I got some good shots of the sequoia trees and big rocks and hiked to a 10 rated waterfall - Tokopah Falls.

Tokopah Falls - Rating 3.75

This waterfall is set back in Tokopah Valley. The hike up to the falls is better than when you actually get to the waterfall in my opinion. Not to say the waterfall isn't nice, but the trail goes along the Marble Fork of the Kaweah river which is quite impressive. The waterfall is 1200 ft tall and it is easy to forget that because of the grand scale of the scenery.




I have to mention to my companions that hiked with me to Wolf Creek Falls - I successfully made several stream crossings over logs and did some rockhopping without even getting a toe wet! I have included a picture of one of those log bridges to the left. I did manage to see a couple of other waterfalls in Sequoia Natl Park. One of them I can't officially count because I didn't actually stop to take a picture of it. That one is called Granite Spring and it is right on the side of the Generals Highway as you drive up to the Giant Forest area of the park. The second one that I can count is unofficially named Pinewood Falls.

Pinewood Falls - Rating 3

I came around a bend in the road and was pleasantly surprised to see this little cascade. What I like about it is that it sheets 20 ft down over granite. I immediately pulled the car over and jumped out with my camera to get a couple shots.





My day in Sequoia was great. It smelled so good there, especially in ghe Giant Forest. The Giant Forest Museum was interesting. They gave a good explanation of why the area was ideal for sequoia trees to grow. It was a bit crowded in there though. The hike on the Big Trees Trail was very enjoyable as well. I have included a couple of pics of the shots I took of Round Meadow and trees on the Big Trees Trail.













Due to the fact that I saw so much in Yosemite on Monday, I will make that its own post. Stay tuned!

Anime and Other Topics

So what do you do when you have messed your knee up so that you can't go hiking like you planned? You turn your attention to your other interests that's what :-)

I never thought I would be the type of person who would get bummed out if I couldn't exercise. Well, I have been depressed this last week because my training schedule is all messed up. It was all topped off by the fact that I wasn't able to go to Yosemite today for my test hike up the Yosemite Falls trail. WHAT A BUMMER!! The waterfalls are supposed to be running really high right now. It is all for the best though I guess. I don't want to risk a serious injury so close to the Half Dome hike. The doctor seemed to think that nothing serious was wrong with the knee - just prescribed some physical therapy and told me to keep icing and taking advil. My trainer told me to rest it also. So here I am, listening to the experts. Good thing I have a lot of stuff to keep me distracted.

Today has been dedicated to ripping CD's and watching movies/anime! So far I have seen the Da Vinci Code, a few episodes of one of my favorite Anime series - Fruits Basket, and Disney's Beauty and the Beast.

For those of you who may not know what anime is, I have included a link from wikipedia below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anime

This is a really good explanation of what anime is all about. I have been collecting anime DVD's for quite awhile to varying degrees of dedication. The last time I updated my inventory spreadsheet (which was about a year ago I guess) I had enough anime to sit down and watch it straight 24/7 for 46 days. I think also that at that point I had watched 60% of my total inventory. Yes, yes you guys can tease me all you want about the spreadsheet. I won't deny that I am nerdy when it comes to spreadsheets and weird calculations - random facts are cool!

I have always liked all different types of animation. I was a big Disney fan when I was younger (I still like Disney stuff, but I am around a lot of Disney haters so I have to keep it really toned down). My favorite animated Disney movies are Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid. My first introduction to Anime was with a series called Star Blazers. I used to rush home from school so I wouldn't miss it. I would get so engrossed in the story that I would get very upset when something bad would happen (besides I had a huge crush on one of the main characters!). I was hooked. The other series that I really liked was Robotech. I didn't really get back in to anime until I started dating Louis. After watching some of the classics like Record of Lodoss War, Oh My Goddess, and Nija Scroll I was hooked again in a big way. I tend to favor stories in which I can lose myself (that is true of anime, movies, and books). Some of my favorite anime titles are as follows (list in random order):

Fushigi Yugi - beautiful artwork, travel to another world, cool martial arts, a lot of likeable characters
Crest of the Stars/Banner of the Stars - cool storyline, good lovestory
Tenchi Muyo - likeable characters and some really funny storylines
Oh My Goddess - Really beautiful artwork, great lovestory
Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust - this is perhaps the best artwork of any anime series I have seen so far. I tried to get a cel from this anime to add to my cel collection but they are very hard to get. I also like this one because I have a thing for vampires :-)
Boys Over Flowers - great soap opera and a good ending that is so rare with anime series
Fruits Basket - this is just a sweet story that makes me feel good to watch

There are more but I will go on about them at another time I am sure!

May Wanderings Thus Far

So far this May I have not done much waterfall chasing (that will be changing next weekend though! Yosemite part one, here I come.). I have been thus far working on a training schedule for my upcoming attempt at hiking to the top of Half Dome. As part of that training schedule, I hiked to the top of Mission Peak in Fremont, CA last weekend and I almost hiked to the top of Mt Diablo near Concord, CA yesterday.

Sunday 5/7/06 - Mission Peak


I lived in Fremont for most of my life but never got around to hiking to the top of Mission Peak until now, when I live accross the bay from it. I guess I always took it for granted that it was there. It fell in to that category of being too close to home so I never took advantage of what it had to offer. Well, I finally did it... I hiked the thing. I am not one to do solo hiking really but I woke up Sunday morning expecting to go on my first solo expedition. Louis completely surprised me and said that he was going with me.

We got off to a late start because I was having a hard time waking up. We were at the trailhead at 9:30 which means that it was already pretty warm. It trips me out now to go to Fremont. I lived there for 20 or so years and it is so different and so the same from what I remember. It was a lovely day. Nice and sunny. I knew that it was going to get really warm though. The trail up Mission Peak that I chose was a wide fire road with pretty much no tree coverage. It was being traveled that day like it was a freeway. I don't think I have seen quite so many people on a trail... Since my goal was the top and I am in better shape than Louis is at the moment, I went on ahead at my own pace. An hour and forty minutes, around 2k feet, and three miles later I was at the top. I have to say that it didn't really look anything like I was expecting it to, although I couldn't really tell you what I was expecting. The view was great from up there, that was expected. I wish it had been a bit clearer. The hike down was hard on the knees due to the fact that the fire road was covered with loose gravel - very slippery. It was a good hike though, I burned through 1400 calories and had plenty of water to spare. I also wasn't sore at all from the excursion.


Saturday 5/13/06 - Mt Diablo

So now I have done a solo hike. It is oddly liberating, but not a habit I want to start. I have already gotten a lot of scolding from various people for going out there by myself and I am sure I haven't heard the last of it. The goal for the day was the peak of Mt Diablo standing roughly around 3,800 feet. I didn't make it but I did manage to pull off a hike that was a little over 12 miles total with around 2,500 ft of elevation gain. My GPS receiver said that my total ascent in feet was around 6,000 feet... I am not sure if I believe that but it does take in to account all of the ups and downs that the trail has so maybe I really did go up that much.

I started out from the Mitchell Canyon gate of Mt Diablo State park. Again this trail is pretty much a fire road. That was just fine by me as there was quite a bit of mountain bike traffic and some hikers as well. It made me feel much better that there were people about and I wasn't hiking out in the boonies by myself. Cue the horror movie music... The picture to the left is from the top of Mitchell Canyon. The first two miles of the hike were pretty flat along a very pretty creek. Just like I was told, there were a lot of bird watchers along the first part of the trail. After two miles though the trail started a pretty steep climb. By mile three I was ready to turn around. I might be over training a bit right now and Friday night I had done my local training loop of 4 miles which was fine but I did it less than 12 hours before I started this hike. I was TIRED by mile three and it sucked that the trail just kept going up. I am not sure what exaclty kept me going. This sort of odd need to keep going up until I couldn't go up any more I guess. I am not sure I like that feeling. It is almost like an addiction or something. I experienced the same thing doing Mission Peak too only that hike was half as long as this one was going to be. The next two miles were spent going up and up. People on this trail were much nicer than the people on the Mission Peak trail. When you said hi, people actually returned the salutation. I even stopped to chit chat with a woman who decided to get back in to mountain biking. Boy did she pick the wrong trail to go down! I didn't envy her trek back to the parking lot, which for her was up the way she came down.

The bad thing, or the good, depending on your perspective, with hiking Mt Diablo, is that there is a road that goes to the top of it. That means that you can really cheat to get to the top. Mitchell Canyon trail basically ends up at a campground that is most of the way to the summit of the mountain. From there you can catch the Juniper trail to get to the top. My mistake is that I missed the proper section of the Juniper trail. I ended up going the way that went down and then met up with the Summit trail. It sounds like it would be the proper way to go but what it really does is take you a mile out of your way all the while loosing precious elevation that you have already gained just to dump you at the summit trail which is 1.6 miles long that goes back up. The proper Juniper trail would have just taken me up toward the summit directly. I was getting really ticked off that I was losing elevation so when I did get to the summit trail I turned around. I was really only supposed to do a 12 mile hike according to my training schedule and I was already at 6 miles with all of that left to get back to the car.

The good thing that came out of it was that I met two really nice people along that trail. They had parked at the campground and I guess were on the way to the summit but took a couple of wrong turns. They had a hard time finding the section of the Juniper trail that went up too. While we were walking they entertained me with their own Half Dome stories (one included a hiker that they had been leapfrogging with who decided he was hot and took a dip in the river sans clothing not really caring who was around). We said farewell when we returned to the campground and I started my descent down Mitchell Canyon. It was very slow going as I had somehow tweeked my knee. I had 3 miles of steep downhill followed by two more miles to get to my car - it was going to be a long walk. I made it in one piece though. Boy was it hot when I got down to my car. I was thankful for my air conditioning. The drive home took about an hour and a half that was not kind on my knee. It was quite painful having to drive a manual transmission car through bumper to bumper bridge traffic while my knee was aching. Thank goodness I included Alieve and Advil in my daypack. I burned 5,500 calories yesterday and was starving by the time I got home. The day was topped off with a BBQ beef sandwich, very good mac & cheese, and a live jazz band at one of our local San Carlos restaurants. I am really proud of myself for being able to complete that hike all by myself. What is better is that not once did I regret my decision to do that solo hike.

My plan for next Saturday, assuming my knee is better is to attempt to climb Eagle Peak in Yosemite. 12 miles, over 100 switchbacks, more than 3500 ft of elevation gain, hopefully one mega WOW view of a rockin' waterfall, and one friend crazy enough to agree to go with me (I guess when you have known a person for over 18 years they get used to your whims).

Wish me luck!

Randomness Part 2 - Photo Issue

Random shots of random stuff! I like these pictures so I figured I would give them their 15 minutes...


Washington is very pretty! (Olympic Penninsula)

Castle Rock State Park - viewing platform looking at Monterey Bay


Pt Reyes National Seashore - cool Eucalyptus tree

Very agressive birds at the top of Mt Walker (WA) - I think this bird was posing, I wasn't the only one to get the shot

Dad and I at a waterfall on the middle fork of the Smith River.

Half Dome - My goal in June

Mission Peak in Fremont, CA from the trailhead

Test shot of iris with my new camera!

Me soaking wet at the base of Wolf Creek Falls - Photo courtesy of my friend Mark

View from the trail up Mitchell Canyon while on my Mt Diablo hiking excursion

Ahhh, Maui. This was taken in Haleakala Natl Park.


These are just a few of my favorite pictures. Enjoy!