Two-Heel Drive

Yeah, I should’ve been out hiking yesterday but instead I spent the afternoon gawking at the clever creations at Make Faire, where wacky do-it-yourselfers get their ya-yas out every year at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds. While there’s a smattering of annoying Burning Man types using sculpture to make political points you already know by heart, quite a bit of it is frolicsome and zany, and much of it is downright ingenious and practical, like this no-frills fold-down camper, called the Quickup.

Here’s a peek through the back door, and the view from the front. The table folds down and a 7-foot by 4.5-foot bed folds out. It has a little sink, stove and nook for a porta-potty.

I head the guy who made it bragging that it stood up to 80-mph winds. His site’s here (more pictures of how it works are there, too).

This blog post has much more on the designer, Jay Baldwin, who is quite the pioneer on things like this.

More of my Maker Faire pictures are here.

A travel writer mentions what happens when people try to retrace the steps — and recapture the shots — of Ansel Adams.

The first step on an Ansel Adams-inspired trip to Yosemite is to visit the gallery run by his family. It is in the park’s central area called Yosemite Valley, and displays and sells Adams’ work as well as photos taken by several contemporary artists. Before Adams died in 1984, he spent years living in a house behind the gallery and leading workshops there. Now others teach the workshops, and the gallery is managed by Adams’s grandchildren. The gallery’s staff leads free camera walks three days a week. The gallery also shows a free film about Adams once a week, rents out cameras and tripods and sells keepsakes and guidebooks.

I ordered three books written by Adams from the gallery’s Web site before my trip: Adams’s autobiography, his collected photos of Yosemite and a step-by-step explanation of some of his works called “Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs.” By the time our plane landed in Fresno, Calif., I felt well-equipped to step inside Ansel land.

But Yosemite does not often appear as it did at the moments Adams tripped his shutter. Nor is it easy to stand where he stood and capture the same images.

“I’ve had people say they are kind of disappointed,” says Glenn Crosby, the curator of the Ansel Adams Gallery. “They only know the park through Ansel’s eyes, and he was only showing you the keepers. The park is not always as dramatic as his work.”

I have to wonder: who the hell are these disappointed people?

Yeah, Adams was one of the greatest photographers to ever snap a shutter and his images certainly rise to the definition of fine art. But if you can stand in Yosemite Valley or at Tunnel View (to say nothing of hiking into the High Country) and experience disappointment, how can you possibly imagine yourself perceptive enough to appreciate the tiny fragments of it Adams captured in his pictures?

Cameras were invented to preserve the memory of visiting places like Yosemite, but no picture can convey the experience of being there.

OK, rant over. Actually, the article offers a nice overview of the relationship of Adams and Yosemite and is worth a read if you’re thinking of visiting.

Nice places to car camp near Silicon Valley:

• Mount Madonna: Most ecologically diverse county park, with miles of great redwood and oak woodland hiking. It’s better to camp here in the spring or fall. The marine layer from the Pacific keeps the park’s campgrounds downright chilly in the summer, even if it’s in the high 90s in Silicon Valley. We went one July 4 weekend expecting a respite from the heat and came home a day early because we were tired of freezing our fannies off (it’s not like winter cold, but it’s nippy enough to be uncomfortable in the summer).
• Uvas Canyon: Totally shaded, this campground probably offers a better haven from the heat. The canyon’s gorgeous waterfalls will be a mere trickle in summer, but even then, the sound of running water is comforting.
• Sanborn Skyline: The few paved parking lot sites for RVs are unappealing, but the walk-in sites are excellent: shady, well-spaced and, as near as I could tell last summer, not heavily used (not for the weak of leg, though: the campground is perched on a steep hillside — schlepping gear up to it won’t be a vacation, but it might tire out the rugrats). Sanborn Skyline also has excellent single-track trails up into the Santa Cruz Mountains.

I had a much more extensive list working but a software glitch killed the rest — please fill in with your faves from around the area, if you’ve got a minute.

This has nothing to do with hiking, or the Bay Area, it’s just a cool thing to do: Touring the crazy-beautiful Norway coastline, which is what lucky sod Stephen Regenold will be up to for the next few days.

Specifically, I’ll be ski-touring in the Romsdalfjorden region, where fjords snake as long slate passageways around mountain peaks with names like Ytstetinden, Skjervan and (my favorite) Trolltinden.

Anyplace with names like that can’t be all bad. A former co-worker of mine did a Norway ski tour last year and declared it spectacular — definitely one for your life list. This link from the Norway Trekking Association looks interesting.

Another page at Infohub.com lists Norway tours for hikers.

We’d been driving all day — up to I80 to Highway 89 and Sierraville near Tahoe, looping over to Quincy on Highway 70 and returning on the same road to Oroville and back down out of the mountains into the flats of the Central Valley north of Sacramento.

It’s board-flat for miles heading south toward Yubaville, then up on the right, these crags appear in the distance. I had no idea what they were, but knew it’d be cool to head over there and check ‘em out.

View Larger Map

They’re called the Sutter Buttes — surrounded by private property and essentially inaccessible. Just a bunch of old, extinct volcanoes (though what fun it’d be if they became active again!). That Other Tom wrote about them the other day, mentioning an organization that leads guided hikes there.

The Buttes are the series of miniature mountains and volcanic spires located between Williams and Colusa, about 50 miles north of Sacramento. Because the Sutter Buttes are surrounded by privately owned ranches, the access roads that lead to the interior valley and trailheads for summits are blocked by locked gates.

The owners of the interior mountain tops, the Middle Mountain Foundation, will unlock those gates for a series of guided treks on weekends from now through May. They include a trek to the North Butte, my favorite here. Guided trips to see wildlife, ridge views, artifacts and others also are available.

www.middlemountain.org generally charges $35 to take people there and show ‘em around.

A typical day in the Buttes begins at 8:00 am and ends around 3:30 pm (unless otherwise noted). Trips are scheduled and will proceed in all but the most severe weather conditions. Participants of all hikes should be prepared to expect uneven footing, stepping over rocks and boulders, crossing streams, and hill climbing. Spring hikers are likely to encounter wet, squishy, ankle-deep grass, while fall trekkers will be contend­ing with thistles and stickers. Poison oak is abundant, but you will be warned of its proximity. Rattlesnakes, though common in the warmer weather, are usually reclusive and inactive during our hiking seasons. Hikes are limited to 20 unless otherwise stated.

If this isn’t on your must-hike list, it oughta be.

(Sutter Buttes pictures at flickr.com.)

Rick D. says it’s in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Sokehs Rock, or Paipalap, juts out and towers over the northern extreme of Sokehs Island. About five hundred feet from base to summit, the massive basalt formation is easily the most impressive natural formation on Pohnpei. Very similar also to Diamondhead. The profile resembles Yosemite’s signature landmark. However it is much much thinner. A rope has been strung along the route to the top to provide some support (mostly psychological).

Click the link to see the uncanny resemblance.

Wikipedia has an interesting entry on the Micronesian state that governs the island. I had no luck finding int on Google Earth.

Doug McConnell’s Open Road site has a bunch of his Bay Area Backroads programs archived. I watched one a minute ago — on a visit to the Farallon Islands — that had me thinking how great it’d be to hike there.

Nobody can: it’s a national marine sanctuary. Doug and his crew had to get a special permit to see the islands up close. Only a few scientists live there now, studying the animal life. That’d be the job of a lifetime (till the boredom of living almost 30 miles out in the open ocean set in).

Of course if you’re really adventurous, there’s always shark diving.

Open Road’s blog is here.

That’s “O-hi,” by the way. CNN has one of those “getaways” pieces that mentions this detail:

Take a hike: Of the 24 hiking paths that crisscross the valley, the 6 1/2-mile Last Chance Trail, which winds through the forested Santa Paula Canyon, is the most beautiful — and the most popular. To avoid crowds, opt for the Shelf Road Trail, with its dramatic valley views.

Cool obscure Ojai fact: it was the hometown of Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man!

Rebecca posted her Bryce Canyon & Cedar Breaks galleries.

The Sierra Buttes are a rocky hilltop visible from Highway 49 north of Sierra City. It’s been my “to go” list for some time now (but then again, pretty much the whole range is on that list). Getting up there isn’t a terribly daunting task — it’s right next to the Pacific Crest Trail — though this story in the Nevada County Union notes there are three routes to the top: A four-mile trail, a two-mile trail and even a quarter-mile route, which requires four-wheel drive and high clearance to make it to the parking area.

Either one offers the view of a lifetime, I’d imagine.

Here’s a view of the Buttes from Highway 49: