September 2007 Archives

I'd like to see more actual rain as long as we are having cloud and fog

TONIGHT
PARTLY CLOUDY...EXCEPT FOR MOSTLY CLOUDY WITH PATCHY FOG
AND DRIZZLE ON THE NORTHERN SLOPES AFTER MIDNIGHT. LOWS IN
THE MID 40S TO LOWER 50S AT LOW ELEVATIONS TO THE 30S TO LOWER 40S
IN HIGH VALLEYS AND PEAKS. AREAS OF SOUTHWEST WINDS 15 TO 25 MPH IN
THE EVENING...SHIFTING TO NORTHWEST AFTER MIDNIGHT.

SATURDAY
PARTLY CLOUDY EXCEPT MOSTLY CLOUDY WITH PATCHY FOG AND
DRIZZLE ON THE NORTHERN SLOPES IN THE MORNING. HIGHS IN THE UPPER
60S TO MID 70S AT LOW ELEVATIONS TO THE MID 50S TO MID 60S AT HIGHER
ELEVATIONS

The grove of trees circled in red is the objective: a cool respite at 2400 feet. Standing in the way is a steep, hot, dusty canyon trail. The starting point is a small turnout about half a mile past the entrance for the Eaton Canyon Nature Center in Pasadena (map here).

This is a steep hike over a path that is technically closed (you can see many parts are washed away, but happily last weekend's rain storm doesn't seem to have really increased the damage). Estimates vary but it looks to be in the neighborhood of about 4.5 miles and 1500 feet (though I think it might be more like 4, because it is pretty short and very steep).

I can make it in about an hour and a half, but some people move much faster by jogging for parts, a piece of masochism I'd just as soon avoid. Views from the top would be great if there wasn't so much smog.

Some weekend I think I will just keep going up to Mt. Wilson. In the picture below you can see how nice it looks up there, and Mt. Wilson (the one with all the antennas on it) looks deceptively close.

I got to pretend I still lived in Seattle.... about time we had some rain. I am sure there are many trails today that are partially washed away and unstable. I am going to find out after work today at the goat-trail like path up to Henninger Flats that starts about 1/2 mile north of Eaton Canyon. The trail is shockingly steep and is technically closed to the public, although in reality people are up there every day. Major parts of the trail have been washed away during storms, so it might be really messed up now.

All sun today up in the mountains, though it sounds like there are some nice, stiff high altitude winds up there:

MOSTLY SUNNY. HIGHS IN THE 80S AT LOW ELEVATIONS TO THE
UPPER 60S TO MID 70S AT HIGHER ELEVATIONS. AREAS OF NORTHEAST WINDS
20 TO 30 MPH WITH LOCALLY STRONGER GUSTS THROUGH PASSES AND CANYONS.

Video I shot from an aerial pot raid that took place in San Gabriel Canyon. Looks like a fun job if you want to be part of War on Drugs... these guys basically go from one wilderness area to another, get a thrilling airlift ride into remote canyons and pull down pot plants. If they are not airlifted, they just hang out and enjoy the outdoors.

Hiking up 8,000 foot Mt. Williamson last weekend, I was startled when suddenly the high peak quiet and solitude was disturbed by a loud whoosh overhead, as a glider zipped over my head. After watching the thing for 10 minutes at various distances, I still had not determined whether it was a massive remote control plane or a tiny manned plane. I had just about determined it was remote control after seeing it do an upside down loop and shoot uncomfortably close to the mountain's rocky slopes, but suddenly it came much closer to me, and I could see the cockpit and the person inside.

Up on top of the peak, were three men who had come for the express purpose of seeing their friend fly. Loud and rowdy, they shouted insults at their pilot friend, as if he could actually hear them. One man, a pot-bellied, grizzled man who appeared to be in his fifties, actually dropped his pants and "mooned" the pilot as he shot over our heads.

The way it works, they told me is a glider is towed up into the sky behind a small plane and then released. Following the currents, the glider pilot, who likely will have very little flight experience, hopes to ride upward currents and keep sky bound. How they find their way back down the mountain to the landing strip over in the Antelope Valley is beyond me.

As for the hike, it is one of my favorites in the San Gabriels. It runs about 5 miles, 1,700 feet of altitude gain, a strenuous, but short hike. On top you straddle both sides of the range, able to peer back into the smoggy layer covering Los Angeles, and out into the flat desert of the Antelope Valley. You hang above the Devil's Punchbowl, a gorgeous sandstone formation where two fault lines collided, well worth checking out more closely. You can hike down to there from Mt. Williamson, but it is a long haul that leaves you on the wrong side of the mountain range with no transport back.

Here is a photo looking north into the Antelope Valley. Devil's Punchbowl is the canyon in the lower right corner of the picture.

Great day up there. I walked along the ridge line to some of the other nearby peaks... I lay on my back on one of them looking at ravens who were dive bombing the ridge the same way the plane was. One of them came fast and low enough to make the same "whoosh" sound as the plane.

More on hiking Mt. Williamson here.

My world-traveling father emailed me this picture from Djibouti, a small Islamic country east of Ethiopia, north of Somalia. I wager he was likely the only foreign tourist in the entire country driving around last week. Apparently, he almost ran out of gas trying to find a remote lake, and accidentally drove up to the border of Somalia.

The great travel/adventure writer Kevin Fedarko wrote an excellent article on the popular middle eastern drug khat, and its trade and usage in Djibouti, that is very worth reading, but I think my father's email describing his taking the wrong road to find the lake, pulling up to an abandoned beach resort, and driving quickly away from five youths on the empty beach that were approaching his car makes for an equally good read.

The Sierra Club has an interesting report on how to pick a "green beer"... there are apparently multiple ways to do this: either choose a brewery which uses renewable energy and recycles its beer waste, drink local beer which does not take carbon emissions to transport, or just buy a keg which reduces the amount of packaging the beer comes in and can be recycled (and usually is, since you get some cash back for your keg deposit).

So really, the right thing to do for the environment is to install a keg refrigeration system that will allow you to drink a keg over time... except that would use a lot of energy, leaving the only real option to drink excessively or throw a lot of parties.

But if you go the innovation route try New Belgium or Brooklyn breweries for using renewable power, or Foster's which actually manages to recycle its beer wastewater and feed it through a fuel cell, producing enough electricity to power a house. Any guesses on how many times the amount of power the fuel cell produces would be spent on transporting that beer from Australia into your refrigerator?

Back to the high peaks!

MOSTLY SUNNY. HIGHS FROM THE MID 80S TO MID 90S IN THE
FOOTHILLS TO THE 70S TO NEAR 80 ON THE HIGHEST PEAKS. SOUTHWEST
WINDS AROUND 15 MPH IN THE AFTERNOON.

For all those like me without air conditioning, a resounding sigh of relief.