Mount Diablo
Rising a decidedly non-devilish 3,849 feet above sea level, Mount Diablo is not quite the highest summit in the Bay Area, but it is Contra Costa County’s highpoint, and, thanks to its remarkable prominence, Diablo offers not just fine views from San Francisco to the Sierra, but in fact one of the largest viewsheds in the western United States (more…)
Posted in Hiking | 2 Comments
Where’s Your Sierra?
I have a distinct mental image of “The Sierra”—and this isn’t it. My Sierra is heavy on Owens Valley and fourteeners, with lots of dry, dusty, austere granite brooding high above sun-baked desert. I’m generally aware of other, wetter parts, such as Yosemite, but like the beach some two miles from my house I tend to forget it exists unless it’s right in front of me (more…)
Posted in Hiking | 2 Comments
Kearsarge Peak Panorama
Great views but beware the mining trail! Kearsarge is described in Jay Anderson’s Climbing California’s Mountains as “possibly the quickest-to-reach significant summit on the entire eastern side of the Sierra.” With that kind of billing, who could resist? In keeping with my loop-or-bust tradition, I decided to ascend from the west, via Lilly Pass, with a planned return via that wiggly line (more…)
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Sony RX100-III
Is it possible the closer we get to perfection, the farther away it seems? The updates to Sony’s third-edition RX100 digital compact are practically a wish list of the impossible. How about a wider, brighter 24-70mm Zeiss lens, for starters? How about a bright, high-resolution pop-up electronic viewfinder? And how about Sony’s Bionz-X image processor engine, which confers the holy grail of HD video (more…)
Posted in Gear | 0 Comments
Fixing Your Feet
If your chosen sport has anything in any way to do with your feet, I say John Vonhof’s Fixing Your Feet is a must-have. This massive 350-page book details the prevention, coping, and recovery strategies of those penultimate foot-bashers, ultramarathon runners. No, there is not a simple fix to be found here, nor, as Vonhof himself writes, is there such a thing as a universal fix (more…)
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Cirque Peak Panorama
I wanted an easy peak, but easy in the right way—and hard in the right way, too. In that regard, Cirque Peak, in the John Muir Wilderness just south of Mount Langely and New Army Pass, worked out to be just about perfect. Cirque was easy in the sense there was no dangerous climbing, and no routefinding worries, either (more…)
Posted in video | 5 Comments
Revelation Bowl
Well I’m still thinking about skiing… Here’s something from 2012: Revelation Bowl, in Telluride, Colorado. What’s interesting is it looks like the video was shot in black and white, and selectively colorized. But this is just a trick of the light and landscape. I also love the way the frame is dominated by the terrain’s bold diagonals, and that glint of sunlight on the ridge below (more…)
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The Vertigo Machine
It is unlike any other chairlift I know of, and it scares the hell out of me every time I ride it. I’m talking of course about Mammoth Mountain’s wonderful Chair 23, that aging triple that gains elevation as quickly as any modern quad thanks to its brain-defying steepness. As the season progresses my own brain seems to adapt, a bit, to the optics of Chair 23 (more…)
Posted in Skiing | 2 Comments
Memorial Day
For me, the 2013-2014 winter began and now ends with Mammoth: a Thanksgiving opening and a Memorial Day close. Yes, in terms of snowfall, this year ranks easily among the most dismal in memory, and yes, too, not a single peak in my projects folder saw daylight, but in the absence of backcountry snow, it was a family-focused ski year for me, and a great one at that (more…)
Posted in Skiing | 2 Comments
The Agonies of Digital Media
For those of you with not a bit of digital data in any form, I envy you. You must be out there, somewhere, perhaps as part of some primitive tribe living deep within an impenetrable jungle, though no doubt even now the barons of our digital age are plotting ways to get you, and your children, posting selfies on Facebook and Twitter. A smartphone helicopter drop, perhaps? (more…)
