Two-Heel Drive is a blog for hikers, campers, backpackers and nature cravers in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. Need someplace to go? I've hiked all the best Bay Area trails: check out my favorite hikes or read the park profiles I wrote for the San Jose Mercury News.
She wrote it up the other day.
Our route took us through some incredible scenery (is there any other kind in the Sierra?), including a night of cowboy camping at Precipice Lake, the site of one of my favorite Ansel Adams photographs. It just so happened that the night coincided with the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, making for one memorable night.
Her pictures are awesome.
I did a quick guide to shooting a waterfall with a blur effect.
In the first week we’ve had over 500 visitors and 1,100 page views, which isn’t half bad for a site that I’ve done next to nothing to promote, and which is getting zero Google juice because it’s so new.
Any link love you can send our way would be most appreciated.
Just happened across this one this morning. A city woman goes hiking, ranking difficulty according to which footwear is required:
Rating system:
- Heels: So easy you can hike it in heels
- Flip-flops: Too long or hard to hike in heels, but flat flip-flops would work
- Pumas: A nice stroll not much harder than walking in the city
- Trailblazers: If you want to be nice to your feet on this hike, they’ll need some more serious protection and support.
- Hiking boots: Pull out the ugly shoes and summon your closet granola. This hike is going to kick your ass.
Like so many gals dragged onto the trails by their current swains, she first went to Castle Rock State Park. From her write-up:
I learned a couple things on that excursion. One, a pastrami sandwich from Robert’s Market in Woodside with a bottle of red wine transforms a hike into a gourmet experience. Two, my boyfriend and his friends talk about how to get women outdoors. Three, women talk about how to get men to talk to them. And four, men can get women outdoors if they talk to them and women will go outdoors since the only thing to do is talk. Perhaps that is how to solve life’s greatest mystery - how to make both men and women happy.
OK, so I am officially required to state that imbibing wine in the middle of a hike is deeply ill-advised (they’ll force me to join the Sierra Club if I don’t make these disclaimers), but hey, I’m for all blogs that explore life’s greatest mysteries
Despite the sex-and-the-city-on-dirt vibe, the hike write-ups are descriptive and informative, always nice attributes in a hiking blog. Latest trek: Berry Creek Falls at Big Basin. Nice pictures.
Fall Creek Unit might best be described as the Hiker-Friendly Unit of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, which has a few ancient redwoods in its main section, lot of car campers and a popular swimming hole along the San Lorenzo River. The Fall Creek Unit, a few miles north, has no facilities (not even a porta potty, much less a drinking fountain), but it does have some of the region’s best trails through second-growth redwoods, Douglas fir, tan oak and other trees. It’s pretty much all shaded, which guarantees pleasant hiking in the height of summer.
Fall Creek is rarely crowded, because most people don’t know it’s there. The parking lot is about a half mile from Highway 9 on Felton Empire Road and you can’t see the sign till you’re right on top of it. Once you get there, though, you’re in for some sublime trekking. Here’s a map I mashed together from one available for a $1 download at Virtual Parks.org. Please buy the real thing, this is just a scaled-down approximation.
My favorite hike is a fairly strenuous eight miles along the route shown above. It starts out for .2 mile down from the parking lot to the Fall Creek Trail. At the trail junction you bear left, following Fall Creek for .6 mile till you reach a bridge crossing the creek.
Note that once you’re on the bridge, the trail to the right is barely noticeable, whereas the one to the left is very obvious. It’s best to take the trail to the left and head .4 mile up to the lime kiln ruins. There used to a large lime mining operation back here. All that remain are these old stone walls:
When you’re done checking out the ruins, continue on the Cape Horn Trail for about a third of a mile to a junction with the Lost Empire Trail. After a left turn here, it’s a steep climb for 1.4 miles to an excellent glade along a creek called Lost Camp: a great place to stop for lunch.
From there it’s another .7 mile, again uphill most of the way, to the Big Ben Tree. It’s a massive old-growth redwood, perhaps 800 to a thousand years old (wild guesses on my part but hey, it’s really big).
From there you take the Big Ben Trail downhill for 1.4 miles through one of the loveliest parts sections of the park. It’s remote, quiet and shrouded in towering redwoods and Douglas firs. And, thankfully, all downhill.
The creek crossing at the bottom of this section is tricky: you might have to wade through during the rainy season, but in late summer it’s usually possible to rock-hop across. Once you’re across you turn right and follow the trail downstream. The riparian corridor along here is simply gorgeous: small waterfalls here and there, bubbling and trickling water, all downhill. Borderline perfect.
You can stop off at the Barrel Mill site. It’s mostly rusty old junk left over from the industrial era but it does offer a place to rest your feet. Eventually the Fall Creek Trail closes this loop at the original bridge crossing, which means you’re just .8 mile from the parking lot. Cross the bridge and keep following the creek downstream till you see the sign pointing to the parking lot. Note: Make sure you turn right here, not left. From there it’s an easy climb back to where you started from.
Fall Creek links:
Here’s a Google map to find the parking lot:
Gambolin’ Man pointed this out:
Dutch Flat environmentalist and author Russell Towle has died after being pinned against his own car by another vehicle while stopped along Interstate 80.
The accident occurred just after 4 p.m. Thursday along the eastern end of the Yolo Causeway between West Sacramento and Davis.
Towle, 59, was well-known in Placer County environmental circles for his passion in preserving the North Fork of the American River canyon. An author of a history of Dutch Flat, Towle had lived in the mountain community east of Colfax since 1975.
Terry Davis, conservation director with the Mother Lode chapter of the Sierra Club, described Towle as a low-profile but tireless worker for saving trails and preserving the North Fork.
Towle, who wrote a book about Dutch Flat and kept up a respected blog about his trail experiences, was remembered Tuesday by Auburn State Recreation Area Canyon Keepers founder Jim Ferris as someone with an incredible enthusiasm for the relatively undisturbed North Fork canyon area.
Towle’s father was driving the truck that caused the fatal injury. From his blog’s last post.
For those who didn’t know Russ personally, or who only knew him in one context of his life, his family would like to share a little more about him with readers of this blog.
You already know he was an avid hiker in the Sierra river canyons near our home, and a tireless advocate for the preservation and development of public access to historic trails in the Sierras. Russell was also a brilliant and innovative mathematician, entranced by higher-dimensional forms. He was a computer animator. He was an extremely doting father who enjoyed every single moment of life with his kids. He was a lover of classical Latin literature and Shakespeare, of Tintin comics and Terry Pratchett novels. He was a historian and a writer; a geologist; a linguist; an artist; a builder; a musician with a special love of Brazilian music; a nature lover and photographer. He was a tireless trailblazer, who habitually carried loppers on his hikes, to trim the way and ease the passage of others who would follow.
Russ was self-taught; formal education processes were far too slow for his quick, deep, wide mind.
He accompanied Gambolin’ Man on this adventure.
Any minute now in Palo Alto, I’m told.
Prior to the press conference, Whitton and Dyer released a few facts about the Bigfoot remains. The animal has reddish-brown hair, gray eyes, is over seven and a half feet tall and weighs over 500 pounds. His footprint was said to be over 2 feet in length and his hands are almost 12 inches long from his palm to the tip of his middle finger. He’s also a male.
Good to know; I’d hate to think what a female sasquatch’s naughty bits look like.
(Original press release here).
This just in: twitter folks say they’re watching the news conference live on CNN. I cannot bring myself to watch, it would bring too much shame on my profession.
How did I miss such a hot story?
UPDATE: Surprise, surprise: Fox News says little is revealed at news conference. Of course if there was a way to blame the limp-wristed liberals who hate America, then they’d have had a real story.
UPDATE II: TechCruch covered the news conference and wrote it up with mock/ironic credulity.
OK, so I’ve been a bit productive. What I’ve done since yesterday:
Those oughta keep you occupied for a minute or two.
So I’ve got a basic site started. I know what you’re going to think: I screwed around for a week and ended up with one that looks just like this one? Well, tough noogies. I had to rule out a lot of sucky looks just to get this far.
Stop by and leave comments if you’ve got a moment.
I tossed it together this morning because, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. The page has an RSS feed and everything, so it could be fun, though it will oblige people to actually write stuff, an activity many liken to having a molar extracted.
(Not me, I like getting my teeth pulled!)
We’ve had substantial contributions of hiker lore around here over the years; maybe we can use this page to store it all in one tidy location.
UPDATE: with the new site up and running, you may as well head over there.