Blake, Andy, and I headed up to Mt. Baldy after a week’s worth of storms dropped 5-7ft on the local Southern California ski area. Roads were restricted, lines were long, but we made the best of the day and got in some stellar runs, including skiing the east face of Mt. Harwood after hiking 500ft up from the top of chair 4.

Don’t miss the 4-day old baby elephant! In my wife’s words, “So little and cute.” It’s all relative I guess.

It was a busy spring, and it’s been just as busy a summer. I’ve finally posted some of the promised pictures. I’ve still got about 1300 pictures from France and Germany to go through, I’ll get those up asap. Enjoy.

Rose Bowl Fireworks Show, Pasadena, CA.

Here’s the GPS-track from last weekend’s Death Valley Trip, with altitude shown by color. I actually made it about 200 feet higher than shown in this track; I didn’t have the GPS with me whenI summited Bennett Peak Monday morning.

A weekend in Death Valley, from 282 feet below sea level to almost 10,000 feet above. All of the pictures are now up. I’ll try to add a neat GPS-track map of our whole trip tomorrow.

Katie, Beau, Marcos, and I road tripped it up to Yosemite Valley yesterday, spent the night in Curry Village, and proceded to see every waterfall we could in the valley before we left this afternoon. No spectacular shots, but it was neat to see the valley so wet, as every time I’ve been before the waterfalls were all but dried up. Much to our amusement, the Mist Trail to Vernal Falls was open (it’s closed over the winter because it gets covered in ice and becomes extremely dangerous), so Beau, Marco, and I managed to get ourselves soaked hiking the quick route to the top of the falls. After drying out on top, we opted for the longer route down, via a section of the John Muir Trail (see signage below). It was a quick, but fun trip, and we managed to make it back to Pasadena about 9 this evening, 27 hours after we left.

Next weekend Katie and I are heading to Death Valley to do some camping before it gets too hot, and because we really need to use our new tent. A preview of what we can expect to find can be found here courtesy of Nick, who stopped by DV on his way home from Vegas last weekend.

Katie and I took a Sunday drive north into the high desert to see the annual blooming of the Antelope Valley Poppies. There is a preserve in the southern Antelope Valley, but with the late rains this year there just aren’t any flowers there. However, thanks to a web report, we were able to find some nice fields of poppies nevertheless.

Katie and I just got back from our vacation in Colorado. We had a great time hanging out with Jayson and Kara and managed to get some skiing in as well. Picts will keep coming, so check back over the next couple of days.

...because we were tired of not going anywhere on the weekends and using the excuse that we didn't have anywhere to stay.