Outdoor Travel Geek

Category: outdoors

  • glacier point snow backpacking

    My first snow backpacking trip to Yosemite was to Dewey Point almost exactly six years ago. Ever since that first trip I’ve been wanting to do the much longer trek to Glacier Point. This week I was finally cross the trip off my bucket list. The trip was sort of a last minute decision. The…

  • ah phuket, lets go diving

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    Landing in Phuket was a bit of a culture shock for me. I knew Thailand was not going to be as developed as Singapore or Europe, but I wasn’t prepared for how different it would be. In Europe and in Singapore transit was pretty easy, there were subway stations or trains for the most part…

  • the summit. whitney. conquered.

    It’s been almost two years exactly since my last trip to Mount Whitney. I failed to make it to the top that time, but vowed that I would return someday and conquer this peak. This weekend I can say that I finally conquered California’s highest peak. The permits make it quite clear that this mountain…

  • shower’s lake

    This weekend I went backpacking with a group to Shower’s Lake. Originally I was thinking of backpacking somewhere on the Tahoe Rim trail on my own. Since I had a hike to Mount Whitney coming up, I figured the Tahoe Rim would be a better place to train since the hike would be longer and…

  • maude lake

    This weekend I went backpacking with some old friends from my previous job at CalPERS. We went to the Desolation Wilderness, specifically to Maude Lake with a day trip out to Rockbound Pass. When we arrived at the trailhead we met a ranger, and asked him what he thought of Maude Lake. He said it’s…

  • family camping

    For those who read this blog on a regular basis (all two of you), it’s probably pretty obvious that I don’t post very often about my family. I think the last post about family was from Christmas, when I went hiking with my parents. On that day I had resolved to go on a trip…

  • mt tamalpais

    This weekend I went hiking at Mount Tamalpais with a few new friends. Our plan was to hike from near Stinson Beach to the eastern peak of Mount Tamalpais, then drive to the Tamales Bay Oyster farm to enjoy some seafood. We started out on the Dispea Trail, which starts near Stinson Beach. It takes…

  • mesa verde

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    Mesa Verde National Park is located in the southwestern part of Colorado. It’s famous for it’s cliff dwellings, built by the Ancestral Pueblos who lived in the cliff dwellings almost a thousand years ago. The drive into the park is pretty epic, a winding road built into the side of a mesa. Mesa Verde means…

  • antelope canyon

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    Antelope Canyon is probably the most famous and most photographed slot canyon in the world. I’ve seen it in pictures many times, in magazines, in galleries, and even in framed photographs on friends’ walls. It’s a place that I’ve wanted to see in person for a long time, and I finally got to visit and…

  • the subway

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    Zion National Park is one of my favorite places. It’s home to spectacular hikes, including Angel’s Landing, the Zion Narrows, and the Subway. These three hikes form an amazing trilogy of hikes, a trilogy that for me was finally completed this weekend, almost exactly three years after first hiking the Narrows in 2010. I did…

  • waterfalls of upstate ny

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    Upstate New York has some amazing scenery, and I was fortunate to be landing in the area near the peak foliage season. First stop on this road trip was to Ithaca, New York. I met my friend Bo at the airport in Newark, and from there we went to visit Caleb in Ithaca. He’s there…

  • eastern sierra hot springs

    I had heard that there were a few good natural hot springs in the Eastern Sierra area on highway 395. But I had also heard that they were kind of hard to find, often on unmarked dirt roads, so I had never really bothered to look for them. This weekend, thanks to Iris and Masa…

  • convict lake

    This weekend I was originally planning to go to Yosemite with some people from my church. We had a permit for Half Dome, so a group of us were planning to do that epic hike. In addition I had some friends who wanted to do Cloud’s Rest. So I was looking at something like back…

  • swift creek trail

    This weekend I went backpacking with some old friends I hadn’t backpacked with in a while. We went to the Trinity Alps Wilderness. I’ve been out to the Canyon Creek trail in the Trinity Alps a few times (one of my favorite places to backpack), most recently during July 4th weekend, but this weekend we…

  • angel’s landing

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    This weekend Jack and I flew out to Denver to meet with Ray and drive back with him to California. On our way back we took a slight detour to Zion National Park in southern Utah to hike Angel’s Landing. On road trips there are many different conversations. At one point we talked about the…