Strawberry Mountain Wilderness is an isolated and lightly visited area just east of John Day, Oregon. At just under 70,000 acres, there are approximately 125 miles of trail through this…
This easy and enjoyable hike along the Crooked River is a great option for cool weather hiking in low snow years in Central Oregon. Otter Bench is a narrow plateau…
My last full day in Sydney was another perfect one - warm and sunny, with a light breeze to keep me from sweating to death. I had another big day…
After a week of being cooped up in our Sydney office, I was really excited for the weekend. The weather forecast was perfect and I was ready to explore. On…
On one of my earliest backpacking trips I had a view of the Sphinx rock formation. When I got home, I eagerly Googled it and discovered trip reports about the off-trail…
The Circle of Solitude in Kings Canyon National Park was first written about in Mike White's guidebook to Kings Canyon. He describes a loop around the Kings-Kern and Great Western Divides…
If you’re following me on Facebook, you know that we just got back from an incredible roadtrip to Yellowstone via Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming. I tried to post regular updates with…
In August of 2008 I did a gorgeous backpacking trip through Hoover Wilderness and the Northeastern corner of Yosemite National Park. One of the highlights of that trip was getting…
Rancho Cañada del Oro is an Open Space Preserve just south of San Jose. It is one of my go-to parks for a quick hike since it’s such a short drive for relative solitude. Even on its busiest day you’d never guess you were a 20 minute drive from the 10th largest city in the US! I decided to head there on Sunday morning to get in a couple of hours of hiking in the ‘pineapple express’ – the warm rain that is currently falling over California.
Although I didn’t get the typical sweeping views or blankets of wildflowers, the hike was still beautiful. The lack of views made me look more closely at my immediate environment where I discovered newts, twisting ancient oak trees, and fresh tracks from the large mammals that live in the park.
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