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You may remember a spanking I received a year or two ago at the SCVPA photo contest.  Time marches on, my tears have dried and my wounds have healed and I entered another local gallery’s photo contest.  As you can probably guess by the title of this post, I did much better this time around.  I entered five total photos and took first place and honorable mention in landscape category, as well as an honorable mention in the man-made scenery category.

Three new ribbons, 25 dollars cash money and a picture on the front page of the local newspaper.  I could get used to this high rollin’ lifestyle.  Small pictures of the pictures I entered are below, along with a shot of the dolla dolla bills I won.

I originally wrote a thought provoking post on big brain descriptions of each of the pictures, but I wrote that on my phone and somehow lost it.  Looking at these shots, I want to get back up to Bodie to do some more lens work as the place is just teeming with potential shots.  Even better I’d like to work there for a season and see all shots the behind the closed doors.  I obviously am getting back to Death Valley this year, once the temperatures are a bit more benign.

It feels good to get some applause for the shots I put up, we’ll see if this starts anything big.

So, I have inexplicably gotten 3 emails (two from people I don’t know) asking about the Circle of Solitude trip. Generally just asking for the basic route/information on it. I am going to use this sentence here to plug the usefulness of the comment box in cases like this, instead of email please feel free to use either but comments are cool!

Now onto the subject at hand. The Solitude Circle is generally as follows and I do plan on wearing my brand new Adama for President T-shirt out there, hopefully on the summit of Triple Divide peak.  There are many options as is always the case in the Sierra Nevada, this is just a general outline.

This one launches from the Bubbs Creek trail head, right at Road’s End in Sequoia/Kings Canyon.  This is one of the more popular trail heads on the west side of the Sierra Nevada, partially because of the easy access to the Rae Lakes loop from here.  So from Bubbs creek you head to the Sphinx creek junction and head south over Avalanche pass.

Options: from here you can head into either Deadman or Cloud canyon.  From Deadman Canyon you can cross Copper Mine pass (just north of peak 12,2345) into Cloud Canyon or take Elizabeth pass trail (we’ll ignore this one for the CoS).  Either way you go, you have to get over to the south-east side of the Colby Pass trail near Gallats Lake.  For this trip, I’d like to hit Triple Divide Peak, seeing it from the High Sierra Trail was inspirational and intimidating.

From Gallats lake you head east towards Junction Meadow, bypassing Milestone Bowl and Kern Point.  Once you get to Junction meadow you’re on the High Sierra Trail for just a few marvelous minutes as you head north.  The HST then breaks East up to join the Pacific Crest Trail, but on the Circle of Solitude you keep heading north, staying away from the highway of people that the PCT is comparatively.   Heading north, you’ll eventually come to Lake South America.

At LSA you have another good set of options.  You can head south and east towards the PCT and when you hit that you head north again over Forrester pass.  You stay on the PCT for quite a bit, until you get to Vidette Meadow where you head back west towards the Bubbs creek trail head and completion.  The disadvantage to this PCT option being that you have so much time on the PCT with all those people.

I think the true spirit of a hike entitled the Circle of Solitude almost requires you to head straight north from Lake South America instead.  Heading north you’ll cross over Harrison pass, which is lower in elevation than Forrester, but less maintained (if at all).  From Harrison pass you start heading north-west from here to Lake Reflection and then straight north to the Bubbs creek junction and then again west, back towards the trail head and completion.

So that in summary is the Circle of Solitude.  Quite a bit of it is off trail, or at least has the option of being off trail, it’s all remote and lightly used.  I’m looking forward to it and recently found out that Gant has been successful in getting time off for the trip, but that Jared won’t be attending this time.

PS. Adama for president.

I just signed up for the Death Valley Marathon 2009.  Exciting times indeed, the last one was just plain fun despite my inherent dislike for running in general.  It’s in stunning Titus canyon, it’s not a big race with lots of wankers and douchebags, it is just a bunch of dedicated runners (and people like me) doing what they love in a beautiful place.

Here’s another reason why I love the DV Marathon.  Without knowing it, I finished third in my age group thereby getting me a ribbon for this minor achievement.  Since I didn’t know it, none of us attended the award ceremony that night.  A couple weeks later I get a letter in the mail with the ribbon and a congratulatory letter.  Well, this year I plan on going to that awards ceremony and I’m going to go hollywood actor style in my acceptance speech.  Someone will have to physically drag me off the stage this year.

Hopefully the gimp and pimp combo will be able to overcome their fear of the outdoors or whatever the issue is before February so they can see the ceremony this year.  And as always there are tons of things left to explore in DV itself making for a really great weekend of the pimp wearing his medal and the gimp experiencing narcoleptic fits.

The last Death Valley Marathon writeup.

White Mountain III, a long foretold return to WM by the original crew from White Mountain 2003 fame is on the calendar.  September 15-18, 2008 are the dates.  Aaron, Bonnie, Jarr, Lan, Vu, I and any others who want to roll are all on the roster this time around.  The first two trips were the definition of memorable events, thankfully in a largely good way.

The last time we did this was 2003, and it was so fun we did two of them.  Then we all went our seperate ways, trying to recover from the trauma that we all suffered at the hands of defeat that summer.

An interesting aspect of this trip is that there will be three professional photographers/videographers/wankers and then there’s me, so there’s apparently going to be way too many cameras here.  But, at the very least there should be good pictures everywhere, unlike when it’s only me and Gant, who’s pictures I never see anyway.  Though, you likely won’t be able to say anything stupid without it being caught on one or more cameras.  Since I put together the first WM03 movie and made everyone look like jackasses, I’m sure I’ll have to watch myself very carefully for the sequel.

Well, Lan has spearheaded this new attempt.  Within an hour of him sending out an invitation email there were dozens of emails flying this way and that.  I can’t wait for this, it’s just plain old White Mountain, but it’s beautiful to me.

World of Warcraft is down, the server crashed.  The new 1.9 patch appears to have gone poorly.  I have fond memories of software/patch releases and then the dread as you realize something went wrong.  The number of people whose lives seem to revolve around video games is greater than most people imagine.  Right now, I appear to be one of them  WoW being down sucks.  Software, gaming software is all I know for this discussion is a mindboggling mess of code, put together over long hours, by dozens of different people, with different ideas and a short time to get it all done.  Software development is an endeavour into attempting to tame chaos.

Though, on a more current level, in World of Warcraft, I was about to smelt some copper/tin bars and then forge some new pieces of armor to sell for gold to finance purchasing some more raw materials for forging some of my own suparsweet armor.  Though there are literally thousands of people that are right now fuming alongside me.  Though they will post and rant and rave on messageboards.  I’ll just sit back and do something else, unless it takes too long.  If it does, I’ll go ahead and start ranting/raving alongside them for my fix.

What else has been going on…I bought a 20d, have been snowboarding alot, continued my peak a month program, am in the process of making some big plans for this upcoming backpacking season.  I’ve had some big plans for this site, though WoW has distracted me from them, it has also distracted me from my workout regimen, and sleep, and personal hygiene for that matter.

Well, off to update other portions of this site.  In particular, maybe put some pictures up, hopefully start a concise list of peaks/dates done so as to motivate me to continue the peak a month program.  Ooops, WoW is back up.  Maybe later…

1.17.06

Well now I have been busy lately. But people are complaining, so I’ll update the storytime page here. I’m not sure I have much to talk about, but I’ll try my best. I’ve been enjoying my new Canon 20d and snowboarding alot. I’ve been working and busy there, continuing my peak a month program and using my new home gym setup.

It’s cold up here in Gorman, no real snow yet, but just a good general level of cold. It is after all winter. I’ve been sort of occupied trying to plan a longer 8-10 day trip on the High Sierra Trail this summer/fall. Trying to arrange people with other counties and states, who have different jobs, schedules and school. People with family and friends and previous plans. It’s tough trying to coordinate all that so far.

Bleh, forcing myself to write isn’t really working. I’ve deleted 3 full paragraphs of stuff that I want to write about here, but can’t. I am just going to wait until I have something to write.