Leakage from a Cluttered Mind

Geocaching milestone

Phil — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:21:11 +0000

Thanks to a few days of caching in the desert, in particular the Planes, Trains, and Automobile series near Barstow, I’ve reached over 4,000 caches found.

Hiking on the beginning of section C of the Pacific Crest Trail

Phil — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:57:17 +0000

Caches on PCT section C starting at Cottonwood Canyon trailhead

From a geocaching perspective, there is an interesting section of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) that begins just north of I10 near Cabezon. My goal for the day was to start at daybreak from the Cottonwood Canyon trailhead and hike north as far as the Whitewater Preserve. I didn’t achieve those goals, but had a great time anyway.

I got to the trailhead later than I intended because it seems I always underestimate how long it will take me to get organized, have breakfast, and drive. It also took me longer to find some of the caches than I estimated. I got close; I could see the Whitewater River and hear the water, but I adhered to my turn-around schedule and made it back to the trailhead just after sundown.

It was a nice day, in the high 70’s, and just a light breeze. The first caches weren’t too difficult, but after cresting the pass and starting down into the Whitewater drainage, a different cacher was hiding the caches and chose to make them more difficult.

Elevation graph: 2500 ft in 13 miles

During the 13 mile hike I only ran into one other hiker, and that was near my turn-around point. On my way back, as sunset was approaching, i was serenaded by coyotes—never saw them but there was much barking and howling. Finished with 32 caches found. If I ever get back to the area I’ll start at the Whitewater Preserve trailhead and try to find the other 20 or so caches on the PCT in this area.

Back at the motel, I was too tired to invest much energy in finding a restaurant, so I just went to a nearby mom and pop Greek restaurant (Nina’s Pita and Pizza) that only had 3 tables and ordered takeout. The Yelp reviews were good, and my gyros plate was very good.

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Beginning the journey to the Roughneck Rendezvous III

Phil — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:45:34 +0000

Today was the long drive south to Palm Springs in preparation for the geocaching event Roughneck Rendezvous III at the Ocotillo Wells SVRA. I decided to go earlier than my friends from the Geocachers of the Bay Area (GBA) because there were a couple of interesting hikes I wanted to do.

My route took me into the dreaded (for me, at least) southland freeway system (the 5, 210, 10), but since I passed through during mid-day, the traffic wasn’t bad. When I got to Redlands I headed south-east on San Timoteo Canyon Road. This route included a short power-caching run with the caches named after auto raceways (start here). Power-caching trails like this are meant to be done by teams, but I wanted to see what it was like. The experience wasn’t enjoyable. The small, country road had a considerable amount of traffic and I could barely get off the road for parking. At times it felt unsafe, so I did a few and skipped a few.

Next, I navigated across Highway 60, intending to pick up a number of caches along the Jack Rabbit Trail. I was immediately put off by a large sign saying it was a private road and trespassers would be subject to arrest. After the fact investigation suggests an over-aggressive landowner, and that it really is an unmaintained county road.

I went on to Sunset Avenue in Banning and found a few as the sun was going down. This was a nice little excursion, worth finding more, but I ran out of daylight.

With that, it was time to head to Palm Springs and check in to the motel, eat, and get ready for a big hiking day tomorrow.

Mentryville: hiking in the rain

Phil — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:23:23 +0000

Before driving home from our motel in Santa Clarita, we decided to take a little hike (and find some geocaches), even though it was lightly raining. Since checkout time wasn’t until 12 noon, we could hike, but still shower and change into dry clothes. We started our hike at the end of the public road in Pico Canyon and hiked up a paved trail to Mentryville, and beyond. Mentryville is now a ghost town, but was founded as a very early California oil town. Wikipedia has a brief article. There are a number of caches along the trail. We found six before we decided we were too wet and cold. It’s and interesting place and worth getting a docent led tour. Besides there are a lot more caches farther up the canyon.

Geocaching on a quick trip to Riverside

Phil — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:58:24 +0000

I took advantage of a trip to a birthday party in Riverside to pick up three fizzy square type geocaches (the kind where to qualify you must have filled the 81 squares of the Difficulty/Terrain rating matrix). Two of them were in Riverside along the Santa Ana hiking/biking trail and one was near Sedco Hills east of Lake Elsinore. I learned that when I hand enter coordinates to the GPSr, I need to double check them because for the cache near Sedco Hills I was off by a couple of miles. The interesting thing is, it was a perfect place for a geocache. Anyway, it was a nice little side adventure.

Following this afternoon activity, we drove north only as far as Santa Clarita, hunted up a Mimi’s Café, and stayed the night in a comfortable motel. This way we didn’t have to fight any of the morning commute traffic.

Eileen’s birthday

Phil — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 06:17:42 +0000

We visit with the family in southern California too rarely, so when we got an invitation to Eileen’s birthday party in Riverside we decided to make a quick trip—down and back in a long weekend. We had a good time, and Karen enjoyed time with her brothers and cousin and nephews and nieces.

The Bloom kids and spouses

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Need to train more for long, hard hikes

Phil — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 05:51:52 +0000

A hike I want to do is 14 miles and 4,000 ft of climbing. Today I hiked 9.5 miles at Del Valle Lake and climbed 1600 ft. It went fine, but I can tell I need more conditioning. It was a very nice day. I hiked in just a t-shirt. Here’s my track log and elevation profile.

My track at Del Valle

Elevation profile

Tioga Road is still open

Phil — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 05:15:06 +0000

We’ve had very little rain, which means the Sierras have received very little snow. No snow means (besides the ski-resorts hurting) all the roads over the Sierra passes are still open. In particular, Tioga Road through Yosemite is still open and it usually closes for the season around Thanksgiving. In fact, according to this document with records starting in 1933, this is the latest the road has been open.

We took advantage of the open road as we drove over to Lone Pine and back. I didn’t see any snow or ice on the road, but it certainly has been cold—the creeks and lakes are frozen. Tenaya Lake was very interesting. It was completely frozen over and people were walking, skating, and playing all over it. Note the lack of snow on the shore and on the ice. That seems so incongruous.

On our way back over Tioga Pass we stopped at Lembert Dome and hiked up to Dog Lake. There were a few icy patches on the trail that were getting slick on our descent, but we avoided taking a spill. I kept thinking how this shouldn’t be possible at this time of year. We shouldn’t be able to drive to the trailhead, and we certainly shouldn’t be hiking at 9,000 ft elevation without snowshoes. I hope it breaks loose and snows a lot soon.

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Alabama Hills arches, 2011

Phil — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:03:24 +0000

The boulders of Alabama Hills and Mt. Whitney

Just west of Lone Pine, the Alabama Hills are a picturesque range of boulders of all sizes. In fact, it is so picturesque it has been used for location shots in hundreds of movies, mostly westerns. A pamphlet available at the visitor center describes a driving tour that stops at several of the film locations. We did that interesting tour a couple of years ago, and even watched a couple of the highlighted movies on Netflix.

Mobius Arch frames Mt. Whitney

This trip we were interested in arches, and Alabama Hills has a lot of them. The one shown here is the most popular and even has a marked trail leading out to it. I had done some internet research and found the GPS coordinates of a number of other arches, so we set out to find and photograph them.

Interestingly, a couple of years ago we searched for the Eye of Alabama with just descriptive information—no GPS coordinates—and failed. We hiked all over the general area and never saw it. This time I spotted it easily from the road. Go figure! Check out the slide show for photos of more arches.

I should also mention that we skipped the motel continental breakfast and headed to the Alabama Hills Café. I forget which omelette we had, but it was so good! And large enough (4 eggs) for both of us.

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Death Valley after Christmas 2011

Phil — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 04:20:52 +0000

I have never been to Death Valley (except for a very brief visit to Eureka Dunes), so a visit has been high on my to-do list. Karen, however, has not been enthusiastic and whenever I brought the subject up she usually talked about alternatives like Mammoth, Bend, Grand Tetons, Smokey Mountains, or White Mountains (the New Hampshire ones). It’s hard to argue, because I love those places too, but I just insisted we go right after Christmas and sort of guaranteed her a good time.

Death Valley landscape from Zabriskie Point

We left on the 27th (Tuesday) and drove to Lone Pine by going through Yosemite over Tioga Pass. That was a strange experience because usually the pass is closed for the season around Thanksgiving. There just hasn’t been enough snow to permanently close the road. It was cold because Tenaya Lake was frozen and people were playing all over it.

We arrived in Bishop in the late afternoon and I thought dinner at Amigos would be better than anything in Lone Pine. To kill a little time we browsed Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Gallery. Beautiful photography—I’m not patient enough to learn the techniques to capture photos like that. Dinner was great but we discovered that the signature dish we really like is only served as a special on Saturday.

Wednesday morning we headed from Lone Pine to Furnace Creek and Golden Canyon. The trail-head was already busy and the parking lot was full, but we just parked across the road. While there were a lot of people close to the trail-head, after a couple of miles they thinned out. We hiked all the way through Golden Canyon and up to Zabriskie Point (lots of people again). After getting a few photos, we headed down Gower Gulch to return to our car. There were few people on this part of the trail.

Twenty-mule-team wagons at Harmony Borax Works

We looked around a bit at Furnace Creek, toured through the museum, stopped at the Harmony Borax Works for some photos, and then headed back to Lone Pine.

On Thursday, we returned and first hiked to Darwin Falls. The trail starts up a dry wash but soon runs along a trickling stream in a brush-filled canyon. Amazingly, there is a small waterfall that apparently runs year round. We met a returning hiker who told us there was an upper falls, but it looked like more rock-scrambling than we wanted to attempt.

Our next stop was Mosaic Canyon which had some interesting geology. Lots of jumbly rocks with a layer of marble in between. After a mile and a half or so the trail hits a dry-fall and we chose to go no further.

We stopped at Stove Pipe Wells to look around and upon returning to our car noticed Toyotie (my friend David’s Toyota 4×4) nearby, so I looked for him in the café and chatted a bit. Then we drove out to the west side of Titus Canyon but decided we didn’t want to hike in on the road (one-way traffic east-to-west). So, we started back, but detoured a little ways up Wildrose Canyon and stopped for some photos at some old ruins—the Journigan Mill. (Check out this paper by Russ Journigan describing mining, milling, and being shut down by the feds. Fascinating story.) While we were there David and his family drove up as well. I wonder what the odds are of unanticipated encounters in Death Valley.

We had further adventures on this trip, but not in Death Valley so I’ll describe them in another post. I think Karen enjoyed the trip. Avoiding long drives on bumpy dirt roads and finding interesting places to hike were key to this.

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