Moments in Dirt and Ink

Los Padres National Forest Click for map. For my second demonstration of how not to approach ice in a car, I entered an iced over corner with an uphill slant in third gear. This is too fast. So after it started to spin one way and I managed, through great "skill", to get it spinning faster the other way, but still headed right into the snow bank, there was the "joy" of trying to remove it from said snow bank. The delay probably doesn't mean too much. This is a short hike. I think I'll follow the motorcycle trail to the road and the road up past to Tecuya Ridge area, then back up to the mountain and down a ridge to the motorcycle trail again. Or maybe the other way around. Either way, I'm heading up Cold Springs Trail first. It is currently closed to motorcycles. Lock on Cold Springs Trail for the winter season. Still fine to hike. There's a couple people walking their dogs back down as I head up. The initial impression of the trail is...

Sequoia National Forest Click for map. It is time for another peak, surely. The rain following the hike up Mill Creek was snow in the very high elevations and I can see the dusting on a few of the peaks nearby. If this has added to more already on the higher peaks, I don't know. Hopefully if it is there, it is still little enough to trudge through. Remington Ridge is another motorcycle trail that gets plenty of hikers. It gets plenty of the motorcycles too and I can see their tread in the trail along with one pair of boot prints on top of them all. It's some 5 or 6 miles up to the peak from here and I would again like to be back by dark. No rain expected today, it just gets cold without the sunlight. Signs at the start to make it easy to find. There are all sorts of people parked across the road from the trail and further up the road in the larger turnouts. The trail looks almost untouched today, so they are here for something else. I expect one of the area hot...

Lake Ming County Park Click for map. To walk around Lake Ming was just a spur of the moment thing, but there it is and there I was and it is possible to walk around it. Besides, there was this weird goose that was just standing around in the cold wind. One goose with a fleshy face like a vulture. Maybe more like a turkey. There is no path to start around the lake, only the parking lot or the picnic areas to walk through. There's not really anyone to disturb while walking through the picnic areas today since the wind is just getting stronger and coming right across the water for maximum chill. There are a few visitors, but all are out moving in some way. A few are fishing. Little fenced in playground to the right and picnic tables and lots and lots of parking. Yep, it's a county park. No swimming, though. At the end of the lot is a wide road signed for pedestrians and bikes and definitely no motor vehicles.

Sequoia National Forest Click for map. One of the Kern area geocachers has been slowly setting a series of "5 Mile Hikes" at the 2.5 mile mark on some of the area trails. It's really quite a nice chunk for a lot of people. I have intended to do a few of them (probably without using the cache as a turn around point) but never seem to get to it. One has been set on a trail I know from attempting to hike up Breckenridge Mountain one day after a snow storm. The top where we were trudging through ever deepening snow and the middle where we were washed with quickly melting snow were not so great, but the bottom was quite lovely. (It probably didn't hurt that our feet were dry when we first got to it, either.) Since I'm familiar with this one, I thought it would be a good one to take Timmy on. Yes, I'm bringing the cat along again. I've devised a way to easily carry him, too, since he is still 19 years old and that's quite old so I don't expect...

Owens Peak Wilderness, BLM Link to map. The scheduled Hundred Peaks Section hike was hitting in a sweet spot weather wise between far too hot the day before and a storm rolling in the day after and I was wanting to get a bit further afield than I have been getting recently, so I signed up. It does tend to mean a far too early meeting in a remote parking lot after already driving nearly two hours and then another few hours to get to the trailhead. The road up cannot be too bad as the Subaru made it. Watching it get there, often with a wheel floating a foot in the air, was certainly entertaining. A large rock leaving nearly enough road to get around right at the end seemed the most difficult obstacle, but was only a problem for the vehicle with the longest wheel base. It does not seem like a very early start as we collect at the marked trailhead. Looking back down the road up Indian Wells Canyon. Plenty of desert out there, but we are already up in the pinon pines. ...

El Paso Mountains Wilderness (BLM) With the new year, I seem to be out playing the Hundred Peaks Game again. Today has two targets that will be two separate hikes in the expanses of generally ignored Bureau of Land Management lands up peaks simply named for the color of the rocks that bring them to their height. The first is not entirely ignored as it sits within a Congressionally designated wilderness area. The route to the start is a decidedly rough road where the high clearance 4x4 is very desirable. After a slight maze of numbered roads, we park at the top of a gentle and rocky slope ready to get started up the mountain. Out on a gentle slope of desert with snowy mountains in the background and nature cheering us on with a rainbow. Or maybe that is just a good indication we will get some rain on us eventually. We head up the gentle slope past a mysterious fenced structure. It looks a bit like there is a gap between ourselves and the mountain to the north, then ...

Los Padres National Forest I had a good time stomping around in the early snows last year climbing up some peaks on the Hundred Peaks Section list, so with the coming of the new snows I thought about doing some more in the area. The peak guide for Eagle Rest refers to a final class 3 climb to reach the summit, which sounds like something best avoided in winter, so I let that fancy go again. A couple weeks later, I noticed the Doggetts were actually leading a hike to those peaks. Ignacia has completed the list six times and Peter has managed it thirteen times. If they think it can be done, it probably can. The only person who has done it more is a character called Mars Bonfire. (I am assured this is a real person, really called that, and otherwise famous. He has a Wikipedia page that does not even mention his twenty-five list finishes. He has moved on to other adventures now.) I sent off an email to express interest and found myself signed up. They even scouted it the ...

Sequoia National Forest We climbed Sunday Peak with our backpacks weighed down with #10 cans of peaches and things out of the kitchen to get the feel of a weighted pack before going out for a three day trip. It was probably meant to shake out whoever might have signed up for a backpacking unit even though they should not have. I remember it being a sunset hike and we all had a grand time, so there was no actual shaking. I probably hiked it again in a similar way before going out on a five day trip another year. The camp is gone, but the driving directions still say to park near the sign for Camp Mountain Meadows GSA. I am rightly suspicious the sign is gone, but it has simply been replaced with one for the trail so that it is still easy to find. The area could be confusing with a motorcycle trail running past and the old camp road heading down to the meadows the camp was named for, but there is a second sign a little deeper in that makes the correct route clear. This wa...

Sequoia National Forest We stayed the night at Cedar Creek Campground, which is also a good starting point for climbing Bohna Peak. The road up the creek through the campground continues past the last site to what could almost be called a parking area and a trail continues after that. The creek quickly becomes a stunning thing of ledges and cascades. It is quite surprising after seeing it as the overtrampled flow of water over jumbled rocks and dirt that it has inevitably become within the campground. Cedars and cottonwoods along Cedar Creek. A thin canyon with tall cottonwoods. Many flowers are blooming along the creek. The trail crosses the creek often and sometimes gets very nearly into the creek. As I edge along a rock wall trying to keep my feet dry, there is suddenly an odd hole in the side. Very square and very deep and very consistant, it must be an old mine.

Sequoia National Forest I signed up for another Hundred Peaks Section outing, this time bringing along another geocacher who is not at all worried that there are no geocaches to get along the way. The planned early morning start got earlier when the weather for the weekend became known. The high for Kernville, somewhere down the hill a bit, is expected to be 104°F. Up here, 3000+ feet higher, that translates into something that is on the correct side of body temperature but still very hot. Twenty minutes after sun up, it is not yet hot, but it is certainly not cool either. I have dropped in three bags of water at 2.5 liters each to try to make it through the 12 mile or so day without drying out. I find a half liter a mile is a minimum on days that hit 90°F when on trail and these will be off trail miles. The water is heavy, but the pack is riding better than usual with the extra weight as we start up a thin track in the grass, climbing steeply up the hill. Without a t...