2021

 Merry Christmas!  Late.

Time has been a slippery eel this year.  Periods of seeming inactivity made time pass slowly.  Then the calendar began to fill, to which we were so unaccustomed that entire months passed quickly and unnoticed.  That brings us to the end of the year, with nothing yet posted on the blog.  

Here is a brief synopsis to catch up (and incidentally to serve as our Christmas letter).  Memory is foggy in Slippery-Eel-Time years, so I have organized the general flow of events by looking through old photos and picking one for each month.  Or sometimes two.  I can no longer count.

January

Mostly projects around the house and hiking.  Chad got me a cheap laser cutter, which he then spent much time and effort to retrofit with niceties like safety interlocks and a water cooling system.  I gave it warning stickers and proceeded to burn... er make... stuff.

February

Local van camping trips and hiking at Joe Grant and Arroyo Seco.  We were happy to see that many local areas that had burned the previous year are recovering nicely.

March

In a truly talented move, I broke my hand doing laundry.  Fortunately, I could still hike, sometimes with Chad, and sometimes with Kean, who was still doing online college from home.

April

Chad and I went out to the desert to Not Act Our Ages to celebrate my very large round-number birthday.

May

More local camping in the van, this time to Bodega Bay.  We were lucky enough to find a rare last-minute coastal camping spot (these are hard to come by around here in this era of too many people camping) and explored the hills on our bikes.

June

For the kiddo, gainful employment for the summer as a counselor at Hidden Villa.  For Chad and me, mountain biking!  Pictured are a trail up near Downieville, and our camp from a quick bikepacking trip to Henry Coe.  Both pictures may look idyllic, but rest assured, we also found the requisite amount of suffering on hills that one is never quite fully in shape for...

July

Road trip up to WA!  This was the longest excursion of the year -- we spent a couple of weeks on the road, visiting Linda on the way out of CA, meeting my brother and dad on a crystal dig in NV, climbing Lassen Peak, exploring places to mountain bike in southern OR, visiting my parents, seeing my brother again back at his place with the rest of his family, hiking and camping at Mt Rainer, camping on the slopes of Mt. Shasta, and making an early-morning run home through the Central Valley to outrun the worst of a heat wave.  

August

The long-awaited dropoff of the kiddo in Southern CA for college!  While this was a big transition for Kean, he did appreciate being able to attend actual in-person studio classes at Otis.  One nice feature of the area is that one is able to occasionally walk down the hill to the beach.

September

More jolly projects and bicycle time.  Chad had an unusual work week in which he was up in the mountains with some USGS folks, assessing conditions in the big Dixie wildfire burn area.  I camped with him near Oroville on the way up, but had to be home for a Tuesday night rehearsal, so rode my bike across the Central Valley through a mix of small idyllic farms and large less-idyllic headwind-infested farms to catch the train home from Davis.

October

Many pictures of the cat on my phone.  Kean was missing the Bobber, so I instituted the COD, or "Cat of Day" text stream.

November

More fun micro-trips.  First a weekend up in SF to celebrate our anniversary, which at that point was about as Covid-free a major city as one could find.  It was decidedly odd to be doing urban things like going to dinner, to a museum, to see live jazz, shopping...  Later in the month, we made a run down to Joshua Tree to meet up with Kean and some friends for Thanksgiving camping.

December

I sang with Early Music Singers in our first concert since the pandemic started.  It was so weird to walk into the church for the dress rehearsal to be surprised by the Christmas decorations, and then realize it was the first time any of us had been in that space for two years.  I was the only one bold enough to go with a bright green mask (hey, the director did say any color of mask...).

And to end the year, mountain biking in the snow on the way up to Downieville (lots of Downieville weekends this year, but this was the first one where we encountered snow).

Kean is now home for break after a successful semester, and it is time for feasting!

Anniversary Trip: The Scenic Way Home

We opted for the scenic route up 395 on the way home from the desert, since we were denied that route on the way over.  This allowed us to camp at a lovely mostly-empty campground near Bishop:

We especially enjoyed watching the light change on the Eastern Sierra as the sun set.

The next morning, as we headed north, remnants of snow from the storm at the beginning of the trip became apparent.  It was also chilly!

Chad in his happy place.

We stopped at Panum Crater to hike around the obsidian deposits and look at Mono Lake.  These domes are pretty much all made of glass.

Small bits of tufa at the edge of the lake.  This is the same kind of deposit as what there was near Trona Pinnacles at the beginning of the trip, just with the lake still present rather than dried up like Trona.  (These tufa towers are also much smaller.)

More obsidian

The Eastern Sierra, under a dramatic sky.  We ended up having to follow 395 all the way up to Highway 88 before we found a pass that was open.  With scenery like this, that wasn't a terrible fate!

W Tree Rock Scramble

A few years ago, I found myself riding through Sunol regional park in the East Bay, and noted that there was an interesting label on one of the drainages on the map: "W Tree Rock Scramble".  Of course that piqued my interest.

This route turns out to be not a trail, but rather a designated scrambling route up a wee canyon through steep terrain -- the sort of thing that naturally draws me in.   I've been meaning to get back there to explore it ever since then, but a little thought and research made it clear that the endeavor would be most fun under just the right conditions.  Too hot, and it is full of rattlesnakes.  Not what one wants to be surprised by when reaching around a boulder for a handhold.  Too wet, and the rocks are slippery and more difficult, and cold.   A big poison oak year, and, well, that is it just too itchy.

So really, a very narrow window exists. It's gotta be November or later, after the rattlesnakes give up due to cold, but before the winter rains start. That usually coincides with busy holiday and singing seasons, so I just hadn't gotten out to do it.   

Last week, there was finally the perfect day - I had time, it was 70° out, and we haven't gotten much rain yet this year, so there wouldn't be much water in the creek (hopefully) and there wasn't that much poison oak this last year, relatively speaking.

My route in ran along the hillside above Alameda Creek.   This area is full of faults, which clearly are active enough to lead to steep hills, so the hike in was a good warmup.   I enjoyed hiking while taking in the views and listening to podcasts in the warm sunshine.

I eventually dropped down to the creek level, and found my way to the "W Tree", which was not hard to spot.  There was even a sign :)  Time to deviate from the trail!

Others have been here since the last rainy season  -- there is no way this cairn would still be here otherwise.  One can tell that water runs through here frequently; there was a faint slick of water on the most of the route even though we hadn't gotten much of any rain since last winter.

You may notice the excellent green color of the rocks above. This area is chock full of scenic metamorphic rocks with swirls of fantastical coloration. It is fun stuff to scramble through, both visually and because the rock is hard enough to provide many good hand and footholds.

Conditions were such that one could move up this drainage relatively quickly by channelling one's inner quadruped. That was what I had planned for, so it was fun.  The climbing gym has been closed for months, so I've been looking for more opportunities to clamber on rocks outside.  I found myself a dry waterfall or two to climb. Just little ones; nothing stupid.

After about 45 minutes of scrambling, I came to a trail junction.  Though I wanted to keep scrambling, it was time to head back if there was any hope of making dinner that night at a reasonable hour.  Plus, I wanted to save some of the scramble to come back and do with Chad!

The trail headed back up and over many hills, with scenic views of trees,

hills covered in brand-new green grass, poking up through last year's old brown grass,

the edge of Calaveras Reservoir,

and cows both young and old munching on the fresh new grass. I accidentally deviated from the real trail onto a cow trail at one point, but the landmarks were such that it was easy to navigate back to the car. A most excellent hike!

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BigBoy 2000

 We have a perfectly good small folding saw that I use in the yard.  Chad, however, gave me another one for Christmas.

You may notice its funny name:  BigBoy 2000.  What you may not notice from the photo above is just how ridiculously large it is.

Unfolded, this thing is almost as long as my leg.  Naturally, I found it necessary to engage in tree carnage.  The overgrown oleander got to be the first target; the saw showed itself to be sharp in the way that only new blades are, and made short work of vertical spires that had gotten too thick to trim back with the loppers.  If they saw me standing on the top of the back fence attacking the offending oleander, the neighbors surely have one more reason to think we have lost our marbles.

Now one can’t help but wonder about the BigBoy’s larger cousin, KatanaBoy...