Another Bear Valley Weekend

Had another great weekend up Hwy 4, skiing pow, playing with Kai, drinking wine, and racing!  Stayed at another VRBO in Arnold, CA with Mi-Suk, Alexis, Thomas & Camille.  Got a good balance of skiing, hanging out, and playing with the kiddies.

They've got a LOT more snow in the last 3 weeks.  Check out Mokelumne peak from 3 weekends ago...

and from this past weekend...

Vid from 3 weekends ago...

The Wood!

Is so GOOD!



Had an amazing day on Sunday (Mar 18) as Kevin, Paul & I headed up to the wood for  day trip.  The forecast called for 2-4" during the day, but it was probably snowing 2-4" per hour the whole day.  Never stopped snowing... I <3 storm skiing.

Woot Woot!

Another busy weekend...

Early last week, I signed up for a trail run on Saturday thinking I wasn't gonna be able to head up to the mountains so I might as well.  I hadn't really been running, so I figured a half marathon would be good.  And it was quite good.  I think I was the only runner who mistakenly put their number on the back of their shirt...

from http://www.coastaltrailruns.com/cm_wntr_canyon_meadow.html 

For those of you who haven't done any of these trail run events (this was my first)... it's a lot of fun.  There seems to be 3 folks who organize these races around the bay area.  I haven't done any of the other two... I just did this race as it was 10 min away from my house.  Actually more like 12 min... as I woke up at 7:35 (as I turned the alarm off)... got to the staging area at 7:48, parked in the overflow lot (a mile away), ran to the bathroom, and registered for the race as they were counting down... 10...9...8... Perfect timing!

• Coastal Trail Runs
• Pacific Coast Trail Runs
• Inside Trail Racing

There were probably 200 folks there, which was quite a surprise to me as it had been raining all week and the trails were quite muddy with tons of downed trees.  Felt a lot tougher than Tough Mudder jumping over trees, hopping over streams, and crawling under some branches.

finding yu-mo...

 

After this quick escapade, I made it home to say good bye to the Schmidt's who have been in town for their spring break.  Looks like we had a visitor last night on our front porch...

After walking to Piedmont Ave with Kimbo & Mingie to pick up a bagel, I got to work on a few things I've been meaning to do:

Make some parallettes... voila!  Following these directions... except I had to go for 1.25 in piping as Home Depot didn't have enough T joints for the 1.5 in PVC... http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/13_03_Parallettes.pdf

Make a Greenland Paddle... I've been meaning to do this for a while as I have 3 kayaks and 2 paddles.  Plus Wile-E, my wooden boat has been yearning for a wooden paddle.  He told me he wants one for X-mas last year... http://www.blueheronkayaks.com/kayak/paddle/article/makegreen.htm  The key to making these for me was finding a really sharp knife to whittle down the paddle once the shape has been cut with a band saw.  Sharp knife at my household = kitchen knife.  And it worked wonderfully.  Now I've got to sand it down, test it, and finish it. 

AND I got another unicycle.  Just a 20 in. MUNI, not a 36 in coker like I really want (I'm saving up for that)... but I'm pretty stoked on it nevertheless.

And finally, I got to spend some time in the kicthen (aka Oakland's Test Kitchen) and made some Lemon Gelato with our newly acquired ice cream maker.  mmmm...  We have an overstock of lemons from our lemon tree and I've been trying to figure out how to go through all of these lemons.  And I figured Lemon Ice Cream would be a fun present to give to our friends.  So I'm still working on the recipe... lots of taste testing... it's a lot of manual labor.

That was Saturday (St. Patty's day)... forgot to wear green...

Sunday I went skiing!  Best day of the season.  I'll report on that later... hopefully.

NeMo LaY - April 2011

Last April, there was a great base to get out into the backcountry.   I only skied Squaw twice the whole month, but got in 6 days in the backcountry on two separate trips to the E. Side.

April 8 - Fun Pow at Squaw

http://tahoepulp.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/april-pow/

April 9-12 - Skied out in the East Side with Kevin, Bako, B-ral & Moses... Matterhorn, Tioga, then the peak above Mono Lake.  

http://tahoepulp.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/more-footage-from-dana/

April 20-24 - Toured out to the Sawtooths with Funk, Miley & Splitboard.  

http://tahoepulp.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/little-slide-and-a-snowy-saw-tooth-ride/

http://tahoepulp.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/little-slide-and-a-snowy-saw-tooth-ride-ii/

Weather info for Kayaking across the bay...

After finally kayaking to work, a few weeks ago, I'd like to do it again soon.  But it's gonna be condition dependent for sure.  I made this page mainly for myself so I can figure out if I can make it across the bay in the upcoming days.

• Check the weather
• Check the wind (TI, iKitesurf page)
• Check the tides.  Should be Ebbing when going to work (SF)... and flooding when coming home.  
• So if it's Slack -> Ebb (i.e. high tide) between 5 am and 9 am
• Make sure the America's cup isn't going on...

http://www.bask.org/trip_planner/

I just thought of this... but basically days that are Spare The Air... are good days to go.  It's gonna be hot with little wind.
http://sparetheair.org/

Tide Chart at Middle Harbour 

http://www.windfinder.com/forecast/oakland_middle_harbor

Real - Time Tidal Chart

http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/ports/index.shtml?port=sf

Real-Time Wind Chart

http://www.windfinder.com/nearby/crissy_field

Pear Lake 2012

My fourth visit to this hut, and definitely didn't disappoint.  I'll let this vid do the talking...

An extended version is here...
http://youtu.be/XJsZ_JvwGkY?hd=1

I've got more pics here...




And the panos here...

Enjoy!

Weekly Pano: Pear Lake Hut

Just got back from an amazing trip with Kevin, Moses, and Toro out to Kirkwood -> Pear Lake Hut.  Here's a little teaser of the trip.  Toro skinning up on day 1 at Pear Lake.  We decided to tour out to Little Matterhorn for an evening session. 

Rob's Ride!

This past Sunday, I blew off my soccer game and cruised down to Santa Cruz to go Unicycling.  Yup, unicycling, with a bunch of folks I'd never met.  This wasn't a normal uni ride, this was Rob's Ride... recommended for folks with 36" wheeled unis.  There were 4 of us on unicycle on the ride: Rob (who's been doing this ride for close to 10 years and has 15,000+ miles on his uni), Nathan (who has ridden on all 7 continents, has done a few 24 hour races, etc...), Ken (who set up the webpage and let me borrow his spare KH 36"), and I.  There were 5 others on mountain bikes doing the ride as well.

I got there a bit early so I could practice, and if I didn't get the hang of it, I was going to take off a bit early with Ken.  But after a few tries, it wasn't very difficult to ride.  Especially in front of Rob's house, where it's perfectly smooth and flat with little traffic coming through.  Soon I could go backwards, do some stand stills, and hop off the curb.  So Ken & Rob encouraged me to stick with them and start at 10 am.

Rob & Nathan showing off their skilz:

http://robsride.com/

The ride is really fun.  We started up past UCSC, and up into Wilder Ranch.  On the way we passed Mission Santa Cruz, and was really fun cruising around with other unicyclists.

In the UCSC campus Nathan and Rob split off and did the Enchanted Loop, a technical single track, and about half of us stuck to the normal route.  Maybe next time...

Here comes Nathan and Rob from their loop. 

After we descended back to the ocean and met up with Hwy 1, we followed the busy bike path back to Steamers. 

All in all, an amazing ride, and can't wait to do it again soon.  

Rob's rideShare your bike routes @ Bikely.com