With reports of good snow cover and half-decent weather over the weekend, Ben Cain (a good mate from b-school) and I decided to do a backcountry trip above Lake Tahoe. Ben knew the area fairly well so on his advice we drove up towards Fallen Leaf Lake near South Lake Tahoe. We took his 4WD as far as the road was open, geared up and started hiking in along the lake, which was dotted with some lovely (and expensive) private lodges. Ben was on skis with skins and I was on snowshoes with my snowboard strapped to my backpack.
Fallen Leaf Lake.
After walking the length of Fallen leaf Lake we ascended slightly and hiked past Lily Lake. We then turned north and started our ascent of Mount Tallac (9735 feet). We found it pretty tough going as the snow was really deep and soft, and to top it off the weather started to close in.
"We’re going up there?!?!"
We got ourselves towards the top of the ridge around last light, and with the light failing we had just enough time to shovel out a shelf in the snow and set up camp for the night. The storm quickly grew into a blizzard and it blew hard for the rest of the night giving the poor tent a good battering. It was a chilly night too, and getting out of our sleeping bags to stir the food on the camp stove outside in the tent vestibule wasn’t a popular task!
Made it through the night!
By morning, we had a good metre of snow drift up against the tent, but the storm had lightened slightly. It was still snowing heavily though so we made the decision to descend (rather than climb even higher on the mountain), not just because of the risky weather but also because the avalanche danger was pretty high.
The descent was definitely the fun bit of the weekend, and the snow going down was AMAZING – some of the best powder I’ve ever experienced!
In early 2005 I had my first visitors to San Francisco. First to visit were my great friends James Habersberger and Katie Brown from Melbourne. Katie works for Exxon-Mobil back in Oz and had managed to wangle a weekend off from her work in Houston to come and see me in SF.
The view over UC Berkeley campus as seen from Barrows Hall.
Cal’s Memorial Stadium.
California St, near Chinatown. Telegraph Hill & Coit Tower.
Cablecars at the turntable. Katie & James on the cablecar.
A city panorama of North Beach and Russian Hill.
Next to visit were my parents, who were in the country for a work conference. We took a day trip to Napa Valley and stopped off at Meadowood for lunch (a lovely country club), and of course there was the ubiquitous trip across the Golden Gate Bridge on the way back into San Francisco.
The weather doesn’t get much better than this!
Fantastic!!!
I left Alex and Laura in Antigua and flew down to Nicaragua to catch up with Jolien. I flew into the capital Managua and caught a bus down to the old town of Granada.
I’d describe Granada as "having potential" – it’s like a run-down Antigua, with some beautiful colonial-style buildings, restaurants and hotels. We made a mistake at signing up for a boat tour around the island archipelago near Granada, as it was a complete waste of time. Nothing much to see etc.
One highlight was a day-trip we did to the Laguna de Apoyo, and old volcanic crater that is now a natural lake. We caught a ride down to the shoreline where there were a few hostels and hotels, but they wanted us to pay to use their "beach" so we walked off to find a quiet cove that would cost us nothing. The water was cool and clean and a refreshing change from the tropical heat. We did however miss the last bus out and luckily found a taxi to drive us back to the highway!
Our next destination was the island of Ometepe, a massive island formed by two volcanoes in the cetre of the Lago de Nicaragua. Volcan Concepcion is still active and lacking in vegetation, while the other lower volcano is dormant, covered in rainforest and has a lake in its crater. We planned to hike the second volcano. The rainforest was beautiful but there really wasn’t much to see, as we were in the clouds for the upper half of the hike. We caught glimpses of the lake at the volcano summit but there really wasn’t much to get excited about.
Walking to the ferry. Home sweet home on Ometepe.
A very muddy track up the volcano.