I also had the chance on this trip to try out a new slope meter my brother gave me for Christmas. It was interesting to see how poorly I estimate slope—the very steepest terrain I skied barely hit 40°. It definitely doesn’t seem like that when you’re looking down from the top.

Here are some pictures I took on this trip.

A nice view looking out over Alta from near the Snowbird access gate.

Hiking along the Greeley ridge at Alta.

Looking down over the West Rustler area at Alta.

A box with avalanche control explosives near an access gate on top of East Greeley.

The path up to the high traverse on East Greeley at Alta.

Ready for the plunge.

This is in Glory Gulch at Alta.

Near the beginning of a long traverse to Devil's Castle at Alta.

At the end of the Devil's Castle traverse, near the Apron.

A snowy day at Snowbird near the beginning of the High Baldy traverse. There was an impressive cornice on the right side of the ridge, and all the Baldy chutes were closed.

Here's me, coming down off of Baldy with several inches of new snow.

Snow and fog hiding the top of Twin Peaks riding up Little Cloud at Snowbird.

The sun trying to break through the snow on our last day.

After messing around with it for a couple of days, I am very happy with it. At 1.8, the depth of field is ridiculous—for example, it is very easy to get the wrong part of a face in focus. The lens has a bit of trouble focusing, particularly in low light, and the motor is fairly noisy. Going for the $350 f/1.4 USM lens would probably fix these problems. I also definitely noticed the lack of IS as compared with the kit lens, but as this thing is so fast I really can’t complain about that. In fact, any criticism of this lens can be more or less rebutted by recalling the absurdly low price.

So, here are a few pictures I took with this thing. Several of them were outside at night, and they were all taken without a tripod(!).

My brother Josh.

The street outside my house. Driving was a challenge today.

A branch on our apple tree.

Our mailbox.

My footprints on our front wall.

This is the second-to-last last entry for the summer. The week before school started, I went on an ambitious hike to some fourteeners known as the Wilson group. We had initially intended to hike all three in a day, but as it turned out we only managed to do one: Wilson Peak. You may have seen a picture of this mountain before:

Not depicted: me at the top.

Coors uses the mountain in its logo because from some angles it is a very majestic and picturesque peak. I went with my Dad, my brother, and my friend Chris (from the first installment of my summer photoblog). We hiked into the camp at about 11,000 feet in the evening, set up tents, and set our alarms. At about 2:30am we woke up to beautiful, perfectly clear, moonless skies and frost covering our packs. We started up the trail to the first mountain. After some initial confusion we found the path properly, but my brother had an upset stomach and turned back with my Dad early on. I continued with Chris, and we slowly worked our way upward. It was very dark, and we only had our headlamps to light the path. It was also colder than I expected, but I was prepared and ended up wearing all the clothes I brought (but stayed fairly warm).

5am found us high on the side of Wilson Peak, trying to find our way from a saddle up to the main ridge line. We missed a few crucial cairns in the dark, and so we ended up doing some very interesting class 4 climbing across a band of cliffs by headlamp. We later realized that we were supposed to drop down below them and then hike up. This slowed us down somewhat, and we gained the peak much later than intended, just after sunrise. The hike down was fast, and the weather was absolutely perfect without a single cloud in the sky. Unfortunately Chris wasn’t feeling particularly energetic, having recently given blood, and so he didn’t feel up to doing the other two peaks. We also had a hard time finding the split from our route to the next mountain, Mount Wilson, and because of this and the fact that I hadn’t studied the map particularly well beforehand I didn’t feel up to soloing the remainder of the hike. So, we turned back to camp early and took our time heading down. I brought my new camera with me up to the camp, so I took some pictures of the lake and surroundings before we left.

A VW Bus that fell off the road years ago.

The trail to Navajo Lake goes through beautiful meadows.

Scoping out the terrain.

A month ago the wildflowers would have been gorgeous.

The late afternoon sun on El Diente.

The sun was setting as we got near the campsite.

The view out of the valley across Navajo Lake, before turning in for the night.

The first time it was light enough to take a picture. The trail is pretty rough here :)

The final summit approach. The route we chose is on the very right edge of this picture.

Me at the summit. In the background are Gladstone Peak (left) and Mount Wilson (right).

Mount Wilson (left) and El Diente (right). The traverse along the ridge between them is classic. It's definitely on my todo list for next summer.

A very chubby marmot.

There were pikas everywhere.

Gladstone peak is in the distance.

Navajo Lake, by daylight this time.

Looking back up the valley.

Some rapids below the lake.

My last day of work this summer was August 14th, and I planned to drive home the following day. Unfortunately, I still hadn’t hiked the last Saint, San Gorgonio Mountain. This is the highest mountain in Southern California and I certainly couldn’t leave without bagging it. So, I packed everything from my summer accommodations the night of the 14th and woke up at 3am on the 15th to do my hike. I had been unable to get a permit for my desired trail, Vivian Creek, so I instead had one for the longer South Fork trail. This trail is about 11 miles long (each way) but has the nice feature that the top section can be done as a loop so I didn’t have to retrace my steps the whole way. I got on the trail at about 6:00 and, hiking quickly, gained the summit at about by 11:00 traveling up the Dollar Lake fork of the trail.

Shortly into my trip I discovered that both the batteries in my camera and the spare set I brought were almost dead, so I didn’t take any pictures until the top. I snapped a few there and a few more on the way down. The hike was fairly uninteresting. At the start I could smell wildfire smoke and it made it a bit difficult to breathe. Higher up, everything below was obscured by smoke and smog except for the surrounding mountains. I did the downhill trip very quickly in running shoes via the Dry Lake side. This gave me a chance to see the aircraft wreckage from the 50s that is still on the mountain (see pictures below). There were a lot of tourists from Dry Lake to the trailhead, and I actually had my permit checked by a ranger (which I hadn’t expected). I made it down in a little over 8 hours from the start, including a half-hour break at the top.

Me at the summit.

The Inland Empire underneath the smog.

The summit flag with San Jacinto Peak in the background. The whitish smog is partly from wildfire smoke.

Aircraft wreckage between Dry Lake and the summit. Notice the prop just to the right of center.

Here I have included a picture from a late July sunset on the beach. A few days later, I went up to Lower Trestles with my friend Kevin to check out the big waves that were the result of a nice southern swell.

Sunset at South Carlsbad State Beach

It was a popular day to be at Trestles

10+ foot waves

It was very crowded out there

Kevin wants to ride waves like this someday

Climbing at Big Rock

I went climbing with some friends outdoors near Riverside. It was the first time I had climbed outdoors, and it was a fun experience. The wall was all granite slab, and in some places tended to be worn pretty smooth.

It got hot when the sun came over the cliff

This guy is a good climber

I was in San Diego to watch Harry Potter last night (terrible, by the way) and I took the opportunity to check out downtown and Coronado. I’ve included a couple of pictures I took from Harbor Island.

Then today I spent more time taking pictures on the beach. I’ve been trying out some HDR techniques; you can see the results below.

The downtown skyline with the Coronado bridge on the right.

A ship docked at the Naval Air Station on the north side of Coronado Island.

An HDR image from the beach.

A sandstone wall covered in hundreds of names.

For the past couple days I’ve been heading down to the beach to take pictures of the sunset with my new Canon EOS Rebel XSi. I’ve really been having fun with this camera, and I’m learning a lot (especially how to estimate settings—I’ve been trying to force myself to use full manual controls for most of my pictures, and my eyeballing skills have much improved). I also got the chance to try surfing this evening, but I didn’t get any pictures of that.

The seagulls really seem to come out in force in the evenings.

Those two kids were having a lot of fun.

These guys are done after several hours of surfing.

Almost abstract.

The power plant north of the beach.

Right before I headed home.

I intended to climb San Gorgonio this past weekend, but couldn’t because my intended trail was closed due to “bear issues” (direct quote from the ranger). I ended up hiking Baldy again, this time with my friend Kevin from work. We went up the same way as I went last time, but we were both pretty tired and ended up going down via the ski area (and one helpful lift ride) to hitch a ride back to our car. The weather was unpleasantly hot, and is making me rethink my plans to do more hiking this summer. It was also crowded; Baldy’s proximity to millions of people makes it a very popular mountain. I’ve only included a few pictures because they were kind of uninspiring after Mount Rainier.

LA is just down over the hill...

Kevin on the ridge line.

The first good view of Baldy.

On West Baldy (a small subpeak).

Looking to the main peak.

On the way down, I spotted this character. Yes, that's a popped collar. That's when I knew that this was, indeed, the easy way down.

I'd love to try to ski some of those Baldy chutes sometime.

This was above Mt. Baldy ski area.

On the lift ride down.

I also took a few panoramic shots:

A good view of Baldy (right) and West Baldy (left) a couple of miles from the summit.

A very wide view of the San Gabriels, with LA below. If you look at the big version, you can see the channel islands near the horizon.

For my second (and last) whole day in Seattle, I went hiking with four other friends. We went to Mount Rainier National Park, and hiked the three peaks of Burroughs Mountain, directly adjacent to Mount Rainier itself. It was a fun hike, with lots of snow left from the winter and unbelievable views of Rainier. The weather was also wonderful; it was warm the whole day, but with lots of very interesting clouds that made for great photography opportunities. I also got to introduce my friends to the joys of glissading; the trail to the third peak of Burroughs Mountain was entirely on snowpack, so coming down was fast and fun.

I took more than 400 pictures during the 8-mile hike, the majority of which were profiles of Mount Rainier itself. I’ve tried to pick out the best ones, but I had a hard time limiting myself.

The first expansive views of Emmons Glacier and the White River valley.

There was a lenticular cloud capping Mount Rainier for the entire day.

Shadow Lake.

The path to Burroughs Mountain is ridiculously scenic.

Perhaps a bit nervous for the first snow crossing?

Almost done with the first part of the hike...

Near the top of First Burroughs.

Enjoying the view from First Burroughs.

Burroughs Mountain is an ancient lava flow.

Skyscraper Mountain is on the right.

Looking up the side of Second Burroughs.

The flat top of First Burroughs is in the background as we make our way up Second Burroughs.

Enjoying the view from Second Burroughs. Left of center is Steamboat Prow, which divides the summit ice cap into the Emmons Glacier on the left and Winthrop Glacier on the right.

The beginning of the snowfield up the side of Third Burroughs.

Justin seems like he's enjoying the wet snow.

Nick, Kevin, and Rahul working their way up the ridge.

Made it.

Dust rises from a debris fall on Rainier's northern flank.

The nose of the Winthrop Glacier.

Most of the length of the Winthrop Glacier.

Relaxing at the summit.

Having fun glissading off the summit. Next time I'm bringing skis; I saw some great lines around here.

Kevin is breaking out some kind of move. Our glissade tracks are visible all the way from the top.

I was only about 8 inches away from this guy.

It was about at this point that I really missed my tripod; these conditions are extremely hard to capture without HDR.

The aptly named Frozen Lake.

I have no idea what those lines in the sky are, but they sure looked cool.

Less than a mile left to go now.

I also stitched together eight panoramic images from the hike, and I’ll include some of them here. Click on each of these for a larger view. These are very large images, although they have been scaled down a lot from the originals.

Emmons Glacier feeding the White River.

The view to the north from First Burroughs.

Looking at Rainier from Second Burroughs.

Third Burroughs is on the right.

Somewhat overexposed view of Winthrop Glacier.

Extremely wide view to the north from the summit of Third Burroughs.

This weekend I traveled to Seattle to visit some Rice friends who are interning/working there. We went to Gas Works Park to watch the fireworks show over Lake Union. It was extremely crowded, with thousands of people carpeting the grass for acres. We managed to get right to the water, and I set up my tripod directly in front of the fireworks barge (although there were some unfortunate bushes right in front of me). A lot of these pictures were taken with my friend Kevin’s Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3.

Some remains of the coal gasification plant that used to be here.

Yeah, there were a few people around...

Somehow the people in the photo had really interesting expressions on their faces. Kevin took this one.

Lake Union was crowded with all manner of boats.

OK, found my spot.

The west bank of Lake Union.

Getting darker.

The Seattle skyline, just before the fireworks started.

These things were weird.

From the finale.

The smoke from the show.