High on the southwest slopes of Haleakala lies the Kula Forest Reserve – our guidebooks had described it as having somewhat the character of the Pacific Northwest, with often misty weather and tall redwood trees. The area has many different hiking options via a network of interconnecting trails, all serviced by Waipoli Road, a…
Again, not much of a hike, but what a way to begin the day. Having risen at 3am the day before to catch the bus to LAX and our flight to Maui, we were exhausted by 9pm Hawaii time and went to bed. We had talked about perhaps getting up just as early again on…
Not a hike at all but just sharing our first Maui sunset. Our condo is in Kihei on the south side of the island – from our lanai, we look west across Maalaea Bay to the west Maui mountains. From our vantage point, the sun sets below the southern shoulder of West Maui and…
This was our last hiking day before leaving for Hawaii on the 27th, and we had our sights set on Slate Mountain, a 9,300′ peak on the Great Western Divide – however, more car trouble and a desire to have a shorter day led us to choose instead Antimony Peak near Pine Mountain Club,…
Chris’ cousin Cynthia had some business in Alta Sierra, so it worked out for us to give her a ride and for her to join us for a quick hike up nearby Sunday Peak. The 8,300′ peak lies at the southern end of the Great Western Divide northeast of Glennville and northwest of Lake…
This hike had a really hard time even getting started. The agenda today called for us to drive up to Pine Mountain Club again, this time to hike the traverse from San Emigdio Mountain west to Brush Mountain, these being located north of Mil Potrero Hwy and opposite the Mt. Pinos ridge we’ve recently hiked twice….
Day 2 of MorroFest 2013. We had designs of getting up early and heading into San Luis Obispo before it got hot – so much for that as we didn’t leave Pismo until 9:30, arriving at the Cerro San Luis trailhead about 10:00 after picking up some sandwiches at Subway (our traditional staple on…
What a difference a little conditioning makes. On our previous visit to Cerro Alto in November 2011, we had been very much challenged by the steepness of the trail – at an average gradient of 800’/mile, it has been the standard against which all our subsequent hikes have been measured (i.e., “How steep is…
We had originally planned to hike on back-to-back days over the Memorial Day weekend, but work tasks, family commitments, and general fatigue prompted us to save our walk for the holiday proper. We had tickets to the Dodgers-Angels game that Monday night, so we figured we would hike somewhere close to Cart and Dani’s…
After last week’s failed attempt to do the Mt. Pinos-Cerro Noroeste 13-mile traverse, we realized that doing the same circuit in the opposite direction would be 4 miles shorter, principally because we could park at the west trailhead and save the distance over the top of Mt. Pinos. For some reason, Chris had thought…