Archive for June, 2009
Summer ‘09 in Pics vol. 8
San Jacinto Peak
My latest mountain conquest is San Jacinto Peak, east of Los Angeles and just to the west of Palm Springs. It is an impressive mountain, rising up from land not much above sea level, and the views from the top can be spectacular, if the smog isn’t too bad. San Jacinto is the highest peak of the San Jacinto Mountains and the second highest point in southern California. I climbed it on Saturday with my dad, on the Devil’s Slide trail starting near Idyllwild. This is a moderate hike of about 15 miles, with around 4500 feet of gain. I found it to be an uninspiring trail with only mediocre views until the very top.
Summer ‘09 in Pics vol. 7
Mount Whitney
I hiked to the top of Mount Whitney on Saturday. This mountain is the highest in the continental US, and is a popular hiking destination. There is a quota on the number of people who are allowed on the mountain between May and October, and I very luckily managed to obtain a permit on short notice. As it turned out, the whole thing was something of an adventure.
Summer ‘09 in Pics vol. 6
Mount San Antonio (aka Mount Baldy)
Yesterday I climbed Mount Baldy, the prominent peak directly north of Los Angeles. This peak is most frequently climbed from near the bottom of the Mt. Baldy ski area (you can even take one of the lifts to make the trip shorter, if they are running). I thought this sounded a bit weak, so I took the Bear Canyon trail starting in Baldy Village (elevation 4200 ft). This route has 5900 feet of elevation gain on the 6-mile trail to the summit (a fairly steep grade). I thought it would be a good warm-up for Mount Whitney, which has only a few hundred feet more vertical gain but a trail nearly twice as long.
I started out at the Mt. Baldy Visitor center and worked my way up through a narrow valley filled with gigantic pine trees and slightly trashy summer cabins. The trail quickly moves up the side of the valley and then eventually up the side of Bear Canyon. This is a long, steep slope with sustained switchbacks that definitely takes some work. The trail works its way up onto the ridge, where the views get better and the trail becomes a bit more varied. A mile or so from the peak the trail winds along a ridge and past several lesser peaks, with great views in all directions.
Ctrl-C is Back
My (indirect) host, fsckvps.com, was pretty messed up by hackers using a HyperVM exploit. Fortunately, the server I use seemed to be OK, but the DNS servers were down and due to one thing and another I wasn’t able to set up alternate nameservers until just now. I’m using free service from afraid.org. It seems kind of slow, but it’s definitely better than nothing. Anyone know of any alternatives? Is it possible to roll my own?
There is a slight improvement; http://www.ctrl-c.us/ now redirects to http://ctrl-c.us/ :-)
OK, it’s now way past my bedtime. I’m getting up in just a few hours to go on another epic hike. Pictures to follow.
Summer ‘09 in Pics vol. 5
Villager Peak
This past Saturday I climbed Villager Peak, far out to the east in the desert. This 5756 foot peak lies on the southern side of the Santa Rosa Mountains, in the Anzo-Borrego Desert. The top offers fantastic views (potentially 100+ miles) in all directions, and the area tends to be quite secluded. The catch is that the trailhead is below 1000 feet in elevation, located on low salt flats only about a dozen miles from the huge inland Salton Sea. This means the prospective hiker is looking at almost a mile of cumulative elevation gain on the 13 mile round-trip hike.
Sandwich no. 1
This is one of my favorite sandwiches. It’s a slight variation of the “California” served at this restaurant (I don’t like mayonnaise). I find that it’s very convenient to make two of these, so find a friend (or eat them both, if you’re hungry enough). For the mustard, pick your favorite type. I like whole-grain dijon on this particular sandwich.
Keyboard Remapping in Windows XP
When I found that I had to use Windows for work, the first thing I did was to install gvim and my usual host of plugins. The next thing was to remap caps lock and escape. I switch these when I’m using Linux because I don’t really ever use caps lock, but I use escape all the time (especially in vim). In Linux it’s a simple .Xmodmap entry:
Summer ‘09 in Pics vol. 4
El Cajon Mountain
This past Saturday I went on a hike by myself to El Cajon Mountain east of San Diego. I chose it because it was listed as the most strenuous hike in the San Diego area, having lots of ups and downs (the trail to the mountain has a cumulative elevation gain of more than 4000 ft even though the total elevation difference between the peak and the trailhead is closer to 2000 ft). It’s a little less than 6 miles each way. I finished in 5 hours including a half-hour break at the top. It was tiring, but certainly nowhere near the hard hikes I’ve done in the Rockies in the past. Based on this, and other people I saw on the trail, I have concluded that San Diegans are some wussy hikers. :)