Mt. Shasta

2 Weeks ago, I drove up to climb Mt. Shasta in Northern California with a co-worker of mine, Ed, and his roommate Gary. We camped at elevation on Thursday after the most horrific "japanese" fast-food dinner that turned out to be greasy chinese food.... After a nice breakfast, we headed out from Bunny Flat; the snow was gone due to the lack of precipitation last winter, so we were hiking in shorts (these are all Ed' s pictures, i will post mine after I have scanned them):

We started encountering snow after a few hours, and the trail got a lot steeper. This is me on my way to Helen Lake, at which we arrived after about 4 hours:

This is (from left) Gary, Ed, and me with Ed's tent at Lake Helen, where it was very crowded, and everybody was camping on the small dirt section instead of on the snow:

We all felt a little light-headed because of the elevation and the sun blowing down on our heads; we went to bed as soon as the sun set, and got back up at 2 a.m. to head up the mountain. The early start guarantees the snow to be hard, so you walk on it with crampons and ice axe instead of sliding down on the snow. The top is still over 4,000 feet away, and the ascent is very steep, with an average of 45 degrees (100% slope....); the pictures give a little bit of an impression, but not quite (this is me at the red banks):



The sunrise is magnificent, you can see the silhouette of the triangular mountain in the Trinity mountain range in the west:




After reaching the Red Banks, the wind really started blowing hard, so we had to cover up and wear goggles. Step by step by slow step, we made it over Misery Hill and could see the summit, always a good feeling:



With the sun still shining, we made it to the top at 14,192 feet (4322 m) in about 5.5 hours and enjoyed the views. The clouds started moving in and it became overcast, so we couldn't glisade down. After a brutal climb down we picked up Gary at base camp and were able to glisade towards Horse Camp. I was very happy to have made it again, and who knows, maybe it wasn't the last time, as Ed mentioned on the drive home...... Thanks to Ed for the pics, mine are coming up.

Yosemite

We did our usual Memorial Day Backpacking trip on our own this year, and went to Yosemite. I found a trip a little bit off the beaten path (I hoped), and that turned out to be true: we only saw 15 people in 3 days. We hiked from Tioga Road into Pate Valley towards the Tuolomne River. It was pretty hot in the valley, but beautiful views of the river and a quick cooldown of our feet in it made it bearable. We did a little day hike the 2nd day and had some great views of the Grand Canyon of the Toulomne River before starting our way back up the hill. Our second campsite was beautifully situated on a rocky outcrop with magnificent views of Hetch Hetchy and its surroundings. This is us enjoying the scenery the next morning:

It was good to see that even Yosemite has areas that are still serene, even on a Holiday weekend. More pictures to come.

Next weekend I am hoping to climb Mt. Shasta with a co-worker, weather permitting.

Sven

New Zealand North Island

I have finally started scanning the slides from New Zealand, here is the first batch from the North Island. The main attraction are the geothermal active areas, which resemble Yellowstone in the US. The only difference is that since it is all located on private land, you have to pay an entrance fee for every single park you want to visit. We picked Wai'O'Tapu, one of the bigger areas, and browsed through sulfur-smelling landscape for a few hours. The colors of the water are fascinating, created by bacteria that only live at certain temperatures:

Our first hike would be "the best day hike in the world" as stated in every travel guide you could think of. Full of anticipation of going on the Tongariro Crossing, we got into the bus that took us to the trailhead (by the way, this is a source of income for I think half of the population, bussing tourists to their destination...), where we were released into nature with hundreds of others at the same time. We had to hike through lava fields and past volcanoes, very fascinating:

The group eventually broke up and we got to enjoy the surroundings; we started our final ascent of Red Crater, the highest point on the hike at over 1800 meters (yes, the metric system rules :-)). This is me on the last stretch with the active volcano Mt. Ngauruhoe in the background:

From the top of Red Crater we could see one of the highlights of the hike, Emerald Lakes, beautifully situated between barren land and old volcanoes:

Overall, the hike was very nice, but the title doesn't apply, I have done much better hikes. I also didn't enjoy the masses on the hike, but that was something we had to get used to. From Tongariro National Park we ventured south towards Wellington, stopping at Martinborough for some wine tasting (no crowds compared to Napa, which was really nice), and ended in Wellington, where we had to take a ferry to the South Island. The capital of New Zealand reminds me of San Francisco, situated on a Bay with some hills and seismic activity. We found the best comparison by hopping on the Cable Car on our way to the Botanical Gardens:

We also watched the opening game of the Wellington Hurricanes, the local professional rugby team. The Kiwis are extrmely excited about their rugby, it's all over the news, and people discuss it all day long. Even though I didn't remember all the rules, it was fun to watch, and I would recommend every NFL player to play a game without any protection to toughen up....

Warriors

The Golden State Warriors, the local Bay Area NBA basketball team, has finally made it to the playoffs after 13 years of absence. Sabine and I share season tickets with my boss and some of her bosses, and we have been going to regular season games the last 2 years. The team is really exciting to watch, very dynamic, with a lot of energy. But they never seemed to be able to make it somehow, until they changed their coach and got some good players in a trade. There was a big hype for the very first playoff game (it is a best of 7 series), especially since they beat the number 1 seeded Dallas Mavericks in the first game in Dallas. The 20,000 people in the Arena went crazy during the game; everybody received a yellow "We Believe" T-shirt, which made the stadium look like a huge field of sunflowers, yelling and screaming for the home team. Here is Sabine rooting for the Warriors.

The Warriors ended up beating the Mavericks in 6 games, and I was fortunate enough to also attend that 6th game, which was by far the best sporting event I have ever attended! They are now playing the Utah jazz in the secound round, trailing 2-1. We will go to the game tonight, and hope they will win it.

Welcome to Blog-World

Change is good, they say, so we decided to give up our website service and join the rest of the world in blogging away. This could mean that we will actually post more stories and / or pictures, since changes usually come with renewed energy. It could also mean that there is yet another website that is not used regularly. But we'll try.

The last few weeks (since we returned from New Zealand) have been full of people staying at our place; first John, coming back from South America, then Jen, also coming back to jump into a principal's job, and Jeff, looking for a job in the City and spending random nights here. It has been great to have them around, it's like a big family. Slowly everybody is (or has been) leaving us, so I finally have time to post a blog :-) I am in the process of sorting out the slides from New Zealand, which I am hoping to post in the next week or so. I am not sure yet how many pictures I can fit on the blog, but I guess I'll find out. To try it out, this is a picture I took on a backpacking trip in Yosemite last September; I hiked to Vogelsang Lake and was again amazed at the beauty of that magnificent piece of granite called Half Dome:





I am also working on my old Koga bike; I received a new frame since my old one broke at the crank. It was still under warranty (actually, it was expired 3 months, but they were OK with that), and I got a brand new frame from the manufacturer, which was shipped to and put together in a local store in Santa Barbara that sells Koga-Miyata bikes. I am obviously very proud of this service, since it is a Dutch brand with Japanese frame. Some of the parts had to be replaced, and a piece of the stem was lost during shipping from Santa Barbara. I am hoping that I can ride to work on my new bike on Monday.

Sven