Outdoor Travel Geek

Category: outdoors

  • panoche hills

    The Panoche Hills is a large area owned by the Bureau of Land Management. If you’ve ever driven down highway 5 from Sacramento to Los Angeles, you’ve passed right by it. It’s a hilly grassland area, which in my opinion, is not all that interesting. It seems like the only reason why this area gets…

  • cold canyon

    It’s been a pretty rainy week. Today there was a break in the rainy weather, so after Sunday service I decided to try to go and do something outdoors. I ended up just going to Cold Canyon to hike on my own. I’ve been there numerous times but for some reason I don’t have a…

  • mud blast

    Today team #YOLOLOL went to run Mud Blast, a mud run along the San Jaoquin river. For me it was the end of a crazy semi-vacation. I call it a semi-vacation because real vacations should be kind of relaxing. This vacation has been pretty exhausting, though still really fun. I wasn’t even sure if I…

  • mount whitney

    At just over 14,500 feet above sea level, Mount Whitney is the highest mountain in California. It’s actually the highest point in the continental United States, the only taller mountains in the United States are in Alaska, with Mount Denali standing over 20,000 feet. Mount Whitney is probably the highest place in the North America…

  • loch leven again

    This weekend I went backpacking at Loch Leven Lakes. It’s a pretty easy and short hike, at least as far as backpacking trips go– under 10 miles round trip. It’s also an easy trip to plan for, since permits aren’t required and because it’s so easy to get to, right off of highway 80. I…

  • training in tahoe

    In a couple of weeks I have a permit to hike Mount Whitney, which is the highest point in the continental United States. It’s a pretty long hike– 22 miles round trip and about 6,000 feet in elevation gain. So lately I’ve been trying to hike more to get into shape for this grueling hike.…

  • lassen peak

    Today I went with a few friends to hike Lassen Peak. It’s a hike I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but haven’t been able to since the trail to the peak has been closed for maintenance. It’s only opened a couple of times in 2012, and this weekend was the last scheduled opening…

  • royal gorge rerun

    A couple of days ago I went mountain biking at the Royal Gorge area with Dave. We didn’t get very far. So I decided to explore the area on foot. I heard there’s some epic scenery about seven miles in, so I decided to head up early in the morning to try to find it.…

  • trinity alps wilderness

    This weekend six of us went backpacking in the Trinity Alps Wilderness. I had already been here once before, so I know it’s a pretty special place. Typically I don’t like to go backpacking to a place where I’ve been before, and although I knew it’s a pretty amazing place, I was kind of wary about…

  • round top attempt

    So I didn’t realize this until recently, but apparently according to the US Forest Service, every wilderness area is a special place. I know this because every time I enter a wilderness area I see a sign that says, “You are about to enter a special place.” It makes me think back to a previous…

  • cloud’s rest

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    Last year I finally got to hike up to the top of Half Dome, crossing one of the world’s epic hikes off of my bucket list. I was hoping to do the hike again this year, so at the beginning of April I applied for a permit. This year they changed to a lottery system,…

  • reno, rest, relaxation & return

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    The drive from Seattle to Glacier National Park took almost ten hours. Originally our plan was to hit up Yellowstone after Glacier, and then Arches and Zion, and then hit Las Vegas before heading home. But looking at the map, we saw that each of those drives would be at least a good eight hours.…

  • glacier national park

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    Often when car camping for multiple days in a row there’s a bunch of leftovers. Those leftovers are great when thrown into a pot with some ramen noodles. In this case we had some leftover seafood soup from the Korean restaurant we ate at outside of Seattle. It made for a really tasty breakfast. It…

  • crater lake

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    I think part of the reason why I like road trips is because my family used to go on them when I was a kid. I have good memories of road trips in our family minivan. My dad would be driving, my mom would be riding shotgun and my bro and I would each have…

  • lava beds

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    Tonight we’re staying at a campsite at Lava Beds National Monument. The drive from Burney Falls to Lava Beds was pretty ridiculous. The GPS kept wanting to take us on dirt roads, and for a long time I kept trying to force it to recalculate by continuing on paved roads. Finally I just gave up…