The closest place to hike near my house is a county park called Almaden Quicksilver. A mere ten minute drive from my front door, it offers enough to keep me interested and going back over and over again. Wildflowers, steep grades, rolling ridge hiking, multiple trailheads and trails, historical sites, wildlife, views, and surprisingly uncrowded [...]
Hi guys! I’m still here! While gearing up for the summer backpacking season I realized I’d never posted about an early season visit to the Bodie Hills. I’ve visited Bodie State Park many times in the past, but I’ve never really explored beyond the park boundaries. Given the snow conditions this year, on a mid-June [...]
I’ve been so busy lately I’ve had to neglect calipidder.com a bit. But we were able to squeeze out to 395 to pay a visit to some of our favorite country over an extended four day Memorial Day Weekend. We drove out Friday night and met the crew at Fossil Falls BLM camp along 395 [...]
After Saturday’s visit to Fossil Falls, Cerro Gordo, and the U2 tree we didn’t have a lot of light to find our campsite outside of Death Valley. We like to primitive backcountry car camp in the BLM lands outside the park since there are fewer restrictions (i.e. we can cook over a campfire with the [...]
I’ve been meaning to visit Cerro Gordo for a long time and it was with great excitement that we turned up the dreaded road on Saturday afternoon. I have heard that the road condition is anywhere from an easy Sunday drive to a 4WD nightmare. Truthfully, the answer lies somewhere in between, depending on the [...]
On Wednesday we will be leaving on a backpacking trip that will have us above 10k for six days, so we decided to head to the mountains this past weekend and get in some hiking and sleeping at altitude. Our Saturday goal was to hike the duo of Sonora and Stanislaus peaks, a 12 mile [...]
On the northern side of Anza Borrego there are the remains of an old calcite mine. In operation around WWII, they mined optical calcite for use in gunsights. It didn’t last long, since around the same time a synthetic alternate was discovered, making the mining of calcite financially no longer feasible. What is left are [...]
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