If you’re free this Saturday, Mount Baldy’s San Antonio Ski Hut needs your help:

Dear Friend of the San Antonio Ski Hut:

In addition to the Fall Work Party scheduled the weekend of June 7th , we will have a one-day Work Party, Saturday May 30th.

We will meet 10:30 am at the San Antonio Falls Rd. gate, to help carry supplies.

We will be carrying 2×4’s, 1×6’s, and possibly food/beverage and other related items up to the Hut. Please come prepared with a large backpack AND some rope/cord and/or tie downs, strapping, etc.

This will be a BYOB trip. No meals will be provided. Participants will earn a full-weekends credit towards Host Qualifications.

ALL PARTICIPANTS MUST RSVP

Work party reservations normally fill to capacity within 48-72 hours, so do not delay your RSVP.

We are also still in need of additional participants for the June 7th weekend. Please email me if you would like to attend.

Please reply to this email to RSVP.

· Work Party participants will be required to sign a release waiver

· Please bring a large backpack, so you may help ferry supplies. Small backpacks will not cut it.

· No animals allowed at the Work Party. No children this Work Party.

· Be prepared to carry heavy loads, work hard and eat good.

· We encourage new Hosts. Please bring someone with you to the work party you think would make a good Host. We will be qualifying new Hosts via Work Party’s.

· Please bookmark our website. The site lists current “Host Schedule” contact info, and work party dates.

· Hosts are encouraged to contact Gil Estrada prior to their scheduled Host weekend, to see if there are any supplies that might need to be carried up.

· Please conserve firewood.

Reservations will be confirmed by email, with additional instructions forwarded on an “as needed basis” as the date approaches.

Gil Estrada

Hut Chairman

2206 Silver Tree Rd.

Claremont, Ca. 91711

909-624-8224

offpiste1@aol.com

Well, I’ve made at least one person happy:

Hey, I love the new blog. Especially the last couple of posts about the 50-year storm in the sierras. There’s a sense of immediacy and local-relevance I haven’t seen on your site before. This adds a compelling new dimension to your content.

Thanks for the feedback! You’ve inspired me to update my header to better reflect the new content…

Well, with scheduling snafus making it difficult for me to get back to Shasta, I’m reluctantly shifting toward summer mode, so I thought I’d re-edit one of my few (actually only) summer hiking trip reports: the Langley Loop.

This is a great overnight or long dayhike in the Cottonwood Lakes/Horseshoe Meadows region of the Southern Sierra Nevada mountains, with a stop, of course, atop Mount Langley, California’s southernmost fourteener.

I’m tempted to turn this into a Trip Report: just got back from a 1500+ mile road trip, helping my brother-in-law and his family move from Livermore, California to Castle Rock, Colorado.

The drive was very, very long, as you’d expect. We took I-80 from Oakland to Salt Lake City, and I must say Northern Nevada wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Fairly mountainous. I saw a few peaks, in fact, that looked tempting for a little backcountry skiing—if we weren’t doing 12-hour days on the road.

The salt flats of Utah were impressive, if bleak, and we diverted south from SLC to hook up with good old I-70 through Grand Junction to Denver, a route that rekindled many happy memories of driving to Colorado ski areas for my brother’s FIS races.

Aside from the usual moving attractions—lifting heavy furniture and being driven crazy by inlaws—this was a fine way for me to wander more of this great land of ours. And it’s always nice to be able to help out family in need.

As for my brother-in-law, he’s a freelance graphic designer who worked for Adobe for a few years, and also does web design. If you’re in the metro Denver area and you can stand to hire a Californian, check out his website, NathanTanemori.com.