HILLS HURT, COUCHES KILL hiking log

I got some hanging out in my yard too. A nice 3x3 and a fork. Neighbor has an apple tree and they cross our yard to get there. One of these days....

 

Top of Mt Whitney
Took 3 attempts over 2 years to get to the top, first and second time we ran into extreme weather and decided to descent the mountain.

 

Originally from California. Never did much hiking around there. Planning on doing Shasta and Whitney sometime in the future.

 

Same, born and raised Orange, CA and moved out to FL earlier this year.

For Whitney I'd suggest camping at trail camp******* or constellation lake and taking a day pack to the summit. Never tried Shasta tho

 

@crackils Whitney is an amazing hike. I did it ten years ago right after I got married. I'd post a photo but yours are better.

 

Please, I would love to see it! Anything Mt. Whitney related is a 10/10 in my book

I'll be out in S. Ca again Labor Day week for:

Mt Baden Powell + either Mt San Bernadino or the iconic Mt Baldy

 

The 99 switch backs kills, but worth it. Some amazing views on the way up. Did you push through straight up or did you split it up over a few days?

 

No kidding, going down the 99 switch backs also seemed to take forever and made me question how we even made it to the top! I'll try and find a picture of our previous attempt of Whitney during March/April. The entire 99 switch back's were covered in snow/ice so you just have to climb straight up

As for going up/down we did it all in one go. Started at about 1AM or so and got back to the car in the late evening. Looking back we should have camped and made it a two day journey (we even had the permit to do so, but at the time was working at a hospital in S. CA and needed to be back for a shift). I was pretty tanked by trail crest and that was my least favorite part of the hike mainly due to my overall fatigue.

Mt Whitney attempt #1 (totally and utterly unpreppared, had crampons on that were meant for gardening and used trekking poles as my ice ax... how young and dumb I was..)

 

Because you asked...

The date on the photos is 9/16/2010. We did the one-day pass thing where you can start at midnight and have to be off the mountain by the following midnight. That's how they used to do it. I don't know how it's done now.

28-year-old me at the summit.










EDIT: I forgot to mention that Mt. Baldy (Mt. San Antonio) was my back yard. I used to race bicycles both road and mountain and that road up to the village is a very famous training route for the doped-up pro cyclists. We'd see them all the time while we trained. I don't have many old Baldy pics but I'll take a look.

Glendora Mountain Road goes up the "back" side and was a classic ride we did every Thanksgiving (the turkey ride) with a group. Good hiking. Great place.

 

Awesome pictures! Thanks for sharing. Also they still have day passes and they use the lottery system, but I found that it is easier to just wait for a cancellation.

 

@crackils That's good to know. I did a double century down in Death Valley about twenty years ago and since then I had wanted to go back to Whitney.

WARNING: Bike, not hiking pictures. I won't derail the thread so I'll make it quick! @b_r_o Back to regularly scheduled hiking pictures after this!

19-year-old me (second to the left) Death Valley Double Century


Another, somewhere on that road beyond Furnace Creek. Whitney somewhere over there to the right.


And because I'm looking at old stuff; here I am with my coworkers at the time, somewhere up Baldy screwing around. Notice the paper plates as roster numbers. I'm dumbass number 13. This is top quality digital photography from 2002 is my best guess. I worked at JensonUSA in the early 2000s both as a bike technician and cutting my teeth in the IT world.





And because I'm digging through ancient stuff, one last photo. This is a race picture from 2005. This is one of the last races I did on a team before my life changed drastically and I had to move away from California.

 

I took about two weeks off for health and because we've been breaking temperature records non-stop. I went out to Saguaro National Park East.

It is hazy which kept the temperature under 100. I felt pretty good.

Dead and alive. I wanted a wide shot but there was no more room to back up.


This is where a waterfall goes when we aren't having one of the driest monsoon seasons in recorded history.


National Park trails are usually in good shape.


Dam!


No cool animals, no water, nothing too exciting.

EDIT: The haze is again due mostly to the California wildfires. The sun through the haze is a crimson and the air didn't "taste" great. 2020 is awful.

 

Well, can't really do much hiking with this smoke everywhere

My buddy and I have a 22-24 mile day hike planned for whenever the smoke clears, hopefully this weekend.

My kid is officially too big for her backpack. Lately we've just been hanging out by rivers and lakes so she can poke around

 

I'm doing a 3/4 mile and 1200 vert hike this weekend too a friends cabin saturday morning. Then probably going to do another 3/4 and 500 too a glassing knob for deer, elk, and bear.

 

The week after archery opener, I hiked a 3000ft gate keeper, then proceeded to get 6 miles in on little higher than 9000ft ridge, to catch heat cramps lol. This year was a hot one even in altitude. Getting off the mountain almost became a medical emergency. I think I’m going to start packing some liquid IV for the early seasons now. Especially in the high country.

 

Nice! Take some pics

 

I stopped hiking around July. Had to get the second home ready to sell. Not gonna lie. Don't really feel like I missed out on much. Hotter weather brings out more dumb people that do the shorter hikes from the trail head. One of my last hikes is on a pretty popular trail, we usually go further in than most, and there was a gal who had SAR come get her. Heat exhaustion got the best of her and she twisted an ankle pretty bad. Minimal gear of course. Tennis shoes. Its popular but still a decent hike. She went down in the boulder field. No shade for at least half mile in each direction. I left all the water I had on me with her group. They were baking in the sun. But ya know, some folks need that pic for the gram.

 

Mellow day today. Wasson Peak in the Tucson Mountain Park. I hadn't been up here since last September.


Our most popular plant and only source of shade, nice and up close.

 

Ill post a trip report soon!

 

22 miles in 7 hrs

Left from Stevens Pass, headed south on the PCT for 16 miles to Glacier lake and then hiked down to the highway where we stashed a car. The smoke had finally cleared, there was some rain the night before so everything was damp and cool, no dust on the trail


Lake Susan Jane




Lake Josephine




Mig Lake




And then climbing to the pass










Trap Lake




Looking back from Trap Pass






Glacier Lake




Some nice Peet moss




Field after field of huckleberries



Seriously, I could have walked out with 2 five gallon buckets of huckleberries..