The Stuff We Do
Today was to be our last full day in the Eastern Sierras. Tomorrow we would say good-bye to Wayne and Diane (at least for the moment) and do the car-plane thing in reverse. Today’s weather wasn’t going to come through for us with a sunny send-off; if anything, it was even more swirling and truculent than yesterday’s. Maybe even with thunderstorms or rain or politicians… 🤨
Continue reading “Lundy Canyon (Sierra Nevada, CA) 09-Aug-2022”
Sidewinder and Willow Canyons run next to each other on the west side of the Black Mountains about 30 miles (48 km) south of Furnace Creek. The hike to either starts from a minimally signed gravel pit just off of the Bad Water Road. We hiked to the waterfall (which was running!) in Willow Canyon in 2017 and had planned to hike the slot side canyons in Sidewinder that same day. On that occasion, our car was the only one in the parking lot when we left for Willow. When we got back not too much later, the lot was near to full and lines of people were heading for Sidewinder. We decided to hike it later. We didn’t appreciate at that moment just how much “later” later would prove to be. So Sidewinder became (finally) Adventure #2 for this year’s trip to Death Valley.
Continue reading “Sidewinder Canyon (Death Valley National Park) 09-Nov-2021”
This last week, we went with our long-time friends, Wayne and Diane, on what might best be described as several “multi-modal” adventures in Death Valley National Park. We combined stand-alone hikes with those facilitated by a 4×4 vehicle and threw in some touristy stuff too. This was our first chance to spend time with them since our San Juan raft trip last June (a planned mule-packing trip in September succumbed to a critical medical issue and way too much wildfire smoke 😥). In all, we did six different adventures over six sun-drenched 😎 days, then drove home just in time to meet the next batch of rain and snow aimed at Southern Oregon. 🥶
Continue reading “Marble Canyon (Death Valley National Park) 08-Nov-2021”
Up until 2008, our adventures were retained only as memories and on 35mm slides. While our memories may have faded (just a bit), the slides haven’t – and we have a lot of them. So we’re digitizing a select few to bring some of our past adventures into the 21st Century. The photos below are some of those old slides.
“Two engineers, a physicist, and a biologist walk into a bar. And the bartender says…“
Well, we’ll never know what was said (if anything) since I can never remember a joke (except for the one about the three-legged pig) or, if I do, I invariably garble the punchline. But no matter. This is about four guys – Alan, Chuck, Tom, and myself – and our experiment with the fine art of alpine style mountaineering back it what now seem like simpler times (but really weren’t).
Continue reading “Four Guys and a Peak (May 1985)”
After we finished our “make-up” hikes near Las Vegas, we headed north to do some new (to us) hikes in Death Valley National Park. In 2018, we had paid a long awaited revisit to the Keane Wonder Mine. Access to the mine (one of the few in the valley that actually returned a profit) had been closed for several years for safety reasons but had reopened in 2017. Our hike of it in September was HOT but nonetheless very enjoyable. While perusing Michel Digonnet’s excellent Hiking Death Valley guide, we found a hike that started at the Keane Wonder’s trailhead but swung north, past Keane Wonder Springs and Cyty’s Mill, then climbed to the site of the Big Bell Extension Mine.
Continue reading “Big Bell Extension Mine (Death Valley NP) 23-Jan-2020”
BOOTS on the TRAIL 