This was our last hiking day before leaving for Hawaii on the 27th, and we had our sights set on Slate Mountain, a 9,300′ peak on the Great Western Divide – however, more car trouble and a desire to have a shorter day led us to choose instead Antimony Peak near Pine Mountain Club,…
Chris’ cousin Cynthia had some business in Alta Sierra, so it worked out for us to give her a ride and for her to join us for a quick hike up nearby Sunday Peak. The 8,300′ peak lies at the southern end of the Great Western Divide northeast of Glennville and northwest of Lake…
This hike had a really hard time even getting started. The agenda today called for us to drive up to Pine Mountain Club again, this time to hike the traverse from San Emigdio Mountain west to Brush Mountain, these being located north of Mil Potrero Hwy and opposite the Mt. Pinos ridge we’ve recently hiked twice….
Day 2 of MorroFest 2013. We had designs of getting up early and heading into San Luis Obispo before it got hot – so much for that as we didn’t leave Pismo until 9:30, arriving at the Cerro San Luis trailhead about 10:00 after picking up some sandwiches at Subway (our traditional staple on…
What a difference a little conditioning makes. On our previous visit to Cerro Alto in November 2011, we had been very much challenged by the steepness of the trail – at an average gradient of 800’/mile, it has been the standard against which all our subsequent hikes have been measured (i.e., “How steep is…
We had originally planned to hike on back-to-back days over the Memorial Day weekend, but work tasks, family commitments, and general fatigue prompted us to save our walk for the holiday proper. We had tickets to the Dodgers-Angels game that Monday night, so we figured we would hike somewhere close to Cart and Dani’s…
After last week’s failed attempt to do the Mt. Pinos-Cerro Noroeste 13-mile traverse, we realized that doing the same circuit in the opposite direction would be 4 miles shorter, principally because we could park at the west trailhead and save the distance over the top of Mt. Pinos. For some reason, Chris had thought…
The ridge running east to west from Mt. Pinos to Cerro Noroeste contains the highest points in the San Emigdio mountains, within the Transverse Ranges that separate the San Joaquin Valley from Southern California. Having resolved to keep our weekly hikes in the 10-mile distance range, we looked into the classic traverse of the Mt….
One of the destinations that has been on our list for a while is the newly-designated Pinnacles National Park (formerly Pinnacles National Monument), located southeast of Salinas and a two-plus-hour (and not very pleasant) drive from Pismo Beach. There are a number of trails that criss-cross the park, but the highlight in just about everyone’s…
East of Lake Isabella, the Pacific Crest Trail crosses Hwy 178 at Walker Pass, named for the famous explorer and mountain man Joseph Walker who led a party eastward through this pass in 1834. Friends of ours had recommended this trail, and we pondered our various options for a 10+-mile hike. About 5 miles…