Everything pictured here is somewhere on the other side of Hana. I like Hana better than the rest of Maui. The hippie vibe is refreshing compared to the tourist vibe of everywhere else, plus it rains more there so it looks greener.

The bridge below those falls:

The gulch is called Oheo Gulch by the way. The trail goes through a bamboo forest. The forest looks like a bamboo forest.

And the falls are the Oheo Gulch Waterfall. Clever. It’s a high waterfall. Sorry about all the portrait-orientation. Waterfalls and trees, I guess.

Dennis took a really sharp photo of me hanging out in the waterfall pool, but I’m afraid it’d end up on some  porn site somewhere. If everyone were Mormon, I wouldn’t have to worry about that. It’d just be a photo of a guy giving a thumbs up from the bottom of a waterfall. Maybe I should move to Provo. Or Saudi Arabia.

Not always a fan of the species.

Also in the gulch:

This is a view of the “forbidden part” of the Hana Highway. The part that’s beyond Oheo gulch. It’s drier there.

So there you go. I think the highway has some other name on this side of Hana also.

In January, Pittsburgh is colder than there.

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The beach is sort of on private property or requires you to cross through private property or something. There’s a hotel there that has signs posted that declaim any responsibility for you killing yourself while trying to get there. Not without reason.

A few photos I guess:

The beach itself:

And I got about 50 more photos that are some variation on that. The tree is in all of them. Seriously, like *all* of them.

On the hike:

• It’s not very far — maybe 3/4 mile from the place where you park.
• But: the trail is pretty dodgy. There’s one part where the footing is poor (sandy and loose pebbles), and the trail is narrow (ca. 12 inches) and slanting off the edge of a cliff (20-foot drop). It’s about a 10-foot stretch, but that’s about all it takes.
• I was wearing flip-flops, which did not grant me goat-like powers of ground adhesion.
• Ended up gashing the side of my foot.
• Alternately, there’s a trail spur that bypasses this section. It takes you off the cliff and down to the beach, then goes back up onto the ledge above. Would’ve been smart. Would have.
• And then coming back up, we came up one trail too early. This too-early trail goes to the cemetery and is steeper than you want it to be. With loose, sandy pebbles.

Cemetery is like this:

For some reason all the stones had Japanese writing on them. On the interesting scale, I’m guessing the story behind that (unknown to me) rates a 3.

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PS, This was a purely Google-driven headline. Thanks, search algorithms: you’ve destroyed blog post headlines forever.

So there’s a miraculous story here that explains how I ended up going to Glacier Lake at all. My cell phone (with Virgin) gets no reception between Minnesota and Spokane. That is to say, it doesn’t work in Idaho, Montana, or the Dakotas. When I was heading from Tacoma to Montana, I stopped in Spokane to call my brother in South Dakota to see if he wanted to join me for fishing in Montana. He said he couldn’t make it, so I figured I’d leave Montana Saturday after finishing the Lake Fork hike.

But then when I got to Butte or so, I checked my phone and it had received a text message. Somehow, *somehow*, despite being in coverage no-man’s land, my phone had gotten a text message from my brother saying he could make it after all. And then I found a pay phone and confirmed plans. Yes, they still have pay phones. Everyone who saw me using it was also surprised.

(And: I said the story was miraculous, not that it was interesting.)

Fishing at Glacier Lake was great. The guy at the hotel in Red Lodge recommended it. Good job, guy!

Garry crossing a creek.

Elevation: 10,000'.

Ibid.

Glacier Lake shoreline.

Fishing was, as said, good. Used dry flies trailing behind a plastic float. Mostly 12- to 15-inch cutts. Caught one 12-inch brookie. All were good fighters. Also caught this:

The largest trout I've ever seen.

Two pounds? Two and a half maybe? It was a big trout. Caught it on four-pound line and apparently my knots don’t suck. Took probably 10-15 minutes to get him ashore. He took a lot of line. Awesome fish, mad respect.

Gebrüder (I'm not really six inches shorter than him).

Emerald Lake (in Wyoming!), just below Glacier Lake.

• This is a short hike, btw. Two miles each way.
• But steep (ca. 1,500 feet in elevation gain).
• And at high altitude.
• Glacier Lake is a perfect fishing lake: no grass, plenty of shoreline, lots of places to sit.

Morning reflections in Keyser Brown.

September Morn Lake, where I presume Neil Diamond danced until the night became a brand new day.

A 12-inch brookie I caught there.

A 120-inch brook I crossed there.

View of Keyser Brown and First Lake from the trail above.

First Rock Lake (with rocks).

Big Thunder Mountain.

• Should have spent more time fishing at September Morn.
• Not having a working watch is hard.
• Had serious line problems, but was able to salvage enough to jam knot a couple strands together for fishing up at September Morn.
• Then lost most of the rest of my line hiking back from First Lake and, thus, was out of the game.
• There was a nice fishing hole for nine-inch cutts at the bottom of a cascade between First Rock and Keyser Brown. I thought someone should know.

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PS, More SEO fodder in the title. Sorries.

Originally planned to hike up to Black Canyon Lake and probably to Sundance Pass, camping, I dunno, somewhere. After about a mile of hiking, I realized that I’d just spent seven days at sea level and was now at 8,000 feet and climbing. Objectives were toned down accordingly.

• So ended up camping at Keyser Brown Lake — about seven miles from the trailhead and 1,500 feet of elevation gain (I think the lake is at a little over 8,000 feet).
• Just about passed out trying to get my tent set up.
• Took about 45 minutes trying to get my food appropriately hung.
• Trail follows the river most of the way, although there are some miles where there are trees that get in the way of seeing the river.
• Some dude coming down the trail said he saw a grizzly, but I’ve pretty much determined that grizzlies are merely legendary like, z.B., Sasquatch.
• There was one other dude camping near the lake. He was from Minnesota and so, naturally, he helped me get my rain fly on tighter than it was. I told him he was only reaffirming the stereotype.
• Mountain House lasagna is good, but it’s hard to get all the cheese off your fork.
• The good campsites are all on the back side of the lake.

Highway 16 running through Mt. Robson Provincial Park (Fraser River at left).

The goat welcomes, the clouds warn.

You can ride your bike for the first 3.5 miles -- but no further.

Bridge over Robson River near Kinney Lake in-flow.

Disappointingly stable.

Lunch-time view from the shelter at the Whitehorn campground.

Whitehorn Mountain and the Robson River: the money shot.

Same place, other money shot.

Photo of the Falls of the Pool

View from the Emperor Falls campground.

Berg Lake and Berg Glacier from the trail up Toboggan Falls.

Mt. Robson and Mist Glacier and clouds.

Outflow from Berg Lake.

It's sort of like the waterfall is dreaming of the mountain. It used to live there after all.

The bottom of the steep part.

The river below Kinney Lake.

Enough.

• Camped first night at Whitehorn, second night at Emperor Falls.
• There are a lot of people backpacking in this area. Many are friendly. It’s supposedly the most popular back country trail in all of Canada.
• It was way less crowded than Banff/Jasper.
• Very nice, very well-maintained camp sites — there are pads with bark and benches and stuff.
• Have to make reservations a month or so in advance.
• Took my point-and-shoot camera, which doesn’t do well with bad lighting; i.e., it’s prettier than these pics make it look.
• On second day hiked up to Emperor Falls, set up camp, walked down to Lake… eh, I forget. Some lake on the Jasper side of the line. Then hiked up Toboggan Falls (probably worth it), then went back to camp and played solitaire.
• Mountain House Chicken Teriyaki is pretty good.
• The two miles between Whitehorn and Emperor Falls is the steep part, but you pass by three big waterfalls, which sort of breaks up the horror.
• The first three miles (to Kinney Lake) is a tourist hike. I saw a Mennonite family biking up to the lake (the women were wearing dresses, it was sort of cool).
• I think the weather there is usually iffy.
• I don’t like breakfast.
• A&W in Canada (the restaurant) is awesome. Just really, really awesome. No joke.

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It’s not the mountain’s fault. Or the glacier’s or the marmots’. I mean not as such.

Mt. Edith Cavell waits to swallow the unwary.

The lower part of the trail looks like this.

The One View.

That photo was basically the peak in terms of photography (lighting aside). The peak in terms of topography came two hours, five miles, and 3,000 feet later.

The view from (near) the top.

So I was walking back down and there was this family stopped on the trail ahead of me and the guy gives me the *shh* sign, so I sneak in quietly expecting to see a moose, bear, big horn, or cougar, only to find out at the family has been paralyzed by a small rodent. "Is that a marmot?" the guy whispers to me. Yes, sir, that is a marmot.

Back at the bottom, a great view of a pond with ice bergs.

And then I went back to my campsite and watched TV on my iPod for two and a half hours.

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Hike starts at Takakkaw Falls, then heads up the Yoho Valley along the Yoho River for which the Yoho National Park was Yoho named. I just hiked up to Twin Falls and then came back via Marpole Lake, so it was sort of a lollipop hike and about 10 miles. (Supposedly making the hike longer by taking in part of the Iceline Trail and/or heading up Little Yoho Valley is also worthwhile, although I’m distrustful of recommendations regarding hikes anywhere near Banff/Jasper, especially when they add 2,500′ in elevation.) My hike goes up the river, passes a couple of small waterfalls, then passes the bigger Laughing Falls, then continues up-river until you get to Twin Falls, then comes back down via Marpole Lake. Ten miles round-trip and iirc 2,000′ or so of elevation gain.

Here are pictures:

Yoho River near the trailhead somewhere.

Falls, laughing.

Shadows on the Yoho.

I used to live in Twin Falls, Idaho, but those looked different from these.

Evidence that I was there and that my hair was messed up.

Same falls, more down-river.

Marpole Lake.

A wild marmot.

Takakkaw Falls = back to the start.

I dunno. It was nice. There’s a lodge at the falls where you can I guess stay the night or get tea or lunch. I’ll have to do that one time somewhere.

Okay.

bkd

One way in which they are *not* analogous, however, is that the Crypt Lake hike trailhead can only be accessed by taking a boat over from the Waterton Townsite harbor. The boat runs twice in the morning, then picks people up again in the evening. Thus the group dynamic: when you get to the trailhead, there are 50 or so people arriving at the same time and, thus, starting their hike at the same time. And when they do, it looks like this:

And the dude right in front of me had those stupid "bear bells" attached to his walking sticks. And he flailed a lot.

Speaking of bear bells, the first mate on the ship advised hikers against using them since bears do not associate bell sounds with danger, instead associating them with the bottom of the food chain. To little avail.

Everyone hikes together in a line. It’s like the Grand Prix of Monaco. Whoever starts out in front is going to stay there because the trail is too narrow to pass ever. And no one is going to move over to let you by since you’re all on the same lap. Exactly like Monaco. Anyway — enough crowd dynamics. Suffice it to say that you never walk alone (on this hike).

Some other details:

• It’s an out-and-back.
• 11 miles round-trip.
• 2,500′ (iirc) elevation gain, although I think that’s a simple high point-to-low point measure.
• The sun is always in the wrong place. This is probably endemic to being on the east side of the Rockies.
• There aren’t any water sources until you get to the lake on top.

Also, if you don’t have your hiking legs, your altitude lungs, or your foot callouses, it’s a pretty solid warm-up hike.

Photos:

Twin Falls -- and, no, I don't know where the other one is either.

This is the valley (canyon?) you hike up.

As the woman in front of me in line said, "maybe you can Photoshop it".

Then, once you get past there, the trail gets “interesting”, as (maybe) shown in the following photograph:

Note: Photo not taken for its aesthetic value.

You might have to click on that one a couple times to see the people there on that ledge/trail. If you get it zoomed in (click on the photo, then click on the photo again on the resulting page), you’ll also notice that the trail appears to dead end. But it does not!

And: 5 miles from the trailhead and we're still bumper-to-bumper.

So there’s kind of that hole at the end, right?

This is what the valley (canyon?) looks like from the ledge, btw.

Anyway, then, there’s a ladder that gets you up into the tunnel.

As evidenced by this photo.

But then, the tunnel’s not quite as big as it looks.

It gets tighter from there. Kind of like that one ride they had at Disneyland in the 70s.

View from the end of the tunnel.

And then when you get out of the tunnel, there’s *this* ledge:

This is the less-hairy part. I wasn't taking photos during the portion where I was holding onto the cable with both hands and dangling my feet over the abyss.

Seriously. Although, to be fair, it wasn’t bad going up. Coming back down, though, when you can’t look at where you’re stepping without also seeing how far you’re going to fall if you miss your step, is somewhat more fear-inducing.

Oh wait, here’s another view:

It's a long ways down.

And I’m kind of an acrophobe. Like, my palms used to sweat when I’d play Marble Madness on the XBox. Anyhoo:

Another mile, another waterfall. That's not Crypt Lake at right, btw.

*This* is Crypt Lake:

Which basically looks like other lakes that you can drive to.

It’s a little anti-climactic is all. And then you hike down the way you came. At the tunnel, you meet the people who came in the later boat. It’s awkward. Much dangling. And eventually the boat picks you up and takes you back to civilization. Everyone rides back together.

bkd

PS, The bottom 2.5 miles of this hike (each way, = 5 miles total) really suck due to tree prison issues. It’s an amazing set-up whereby the trees manage to block your view, but don’t block the sun. Stupid trees.

1. We set off from the Hurricane Wash trailhead and did the hike as an out-and-back overnighter, camping near the Jacob Hamblin Arch.
2. The most inspiring scenery of the hike (the series of high-walled amphitheaters that curve overhead) is hard to photograph.
3. Hiking to the arch and back from Hurricane Wash would be very doable as a day hike (ca. 14 miles).
4. The first five miles of the hike are merely pleasant; the good scenery picks up after the confluence with Coyote Gulch.
5. Hiking past the arch, there’s some cool scenery for a couple miles, but after the petroglyphs, there’s not much else on offer (we didn’t hike all the way to the confluence of the Escalante, though, so there might be something great that we missed).
6. The campsites were all pretty amazing with great views and soft sand for easy sleeping. Don’t know that I’ve ever slept any better on a backpacking trip.
7. You have to walk through the water in several spots, but you never have to go more than ankle deep if you don’t want.
8. We didn’t find the fresh water sources that I’ve seen referenced in other write-ups.
9. The problem with Mountain House isn’t that it tastes bad, it’s that it’s too much of one thing; the JetBoil is still an amazing product.
10. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah is where this is.

Endut.

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I hiked Spooky and Peek-a-Boo Gulches about the same time last year. It didn’t change much during the intervening 13 months. Here are pictures (obviously).

As was noted last year, it’s a very skinny slot canyon:

Getting through the gulches requires some amount of athleticism (or your older brother to offer you a hand):

It was sort of a rock-fall chimney that you had to climb through. I took the photo from the top part (I went first since I was athletic enough), Garry’s at the middle part, and Craig’s coming up from the bottom.

And then Peek-a-Boo has cool little features like this:

And this:

And then there’s the 20-foot drop to exit Peek-a-Boo, which isn’t as bad as it sounds. This is an awesome hike, btw. It doesn’t hold a lot of surprise for me at this point, but I’d do it again tomorrow just because it’s a fun set of situations to have to navigate.

Then we went to Lower Calf Creek Falls, which I’d also visited before (on the road trip). Not much wonder there, either, but a nice, easy hike and still pretty.

And then we went to Coyote Gulch on an overnighter, but that warrants its own post. Not that I’ll necessarily get around to it, just that it’s warranted.

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* That is to say, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument**, which is accessed via the town of Escalante.

** AKA, the Bill Clinton Came in Third in Utah, So He Didn’t Care about Pissing People Off There by Surprise-Executive-Decreeing a National Monument That Locals Didn’t Want Monument.

Ohiopyle is a state park because it has a river (the Youghiogheny), some waterfalls, hiking trails, part of the rails-to-trails bike route from Pgh to DC, and a small “town” whose economy appears based on selling convenience store items and renting bicycles.

I didn’t take a photo of the town. My bad.

Sometimes kayakers go over these. Just not when I’m there.

I dunno. It was kind of pretty and all. I probably should have gone there this last weekend rather than three weeks ago, might have had good leaf color or something. Went on a sort of hike while I was there, which took me to two other waterfalls, but they were mostly dry and therefore unimpressive.

Western Pennsylvania looks like this a lot. It’s not exactly breathtaking, I mean, not like the Sierras or Cascades or Southern Utah or whatever. OTOH, it makes up for quality with sheer volume. I don’t mean that backhandedly. It’s pretty cool that everything is valleys and rivers and lakes and trees here. Tons and tons of valleysriverslakestrees.

Anyway,

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Hike started at the Paria Townsite, about 30 miles east of Kanab. The townsite was an actual town until 1900 or so and then was later used as the site for some (purpose-built) sets for a few western movies (of which I’ve only seen The Outlaw Josey Wales). Headed up the Paria River and through the canyon until I got tired and set up camp. Camp looked like:

Pretty area. Nothing really in terms of landmark, must-see stuff, but otoh, I didn’t see anyone else in the canyon/on the river at all over the 16-or-so miles I hiked. Kind of a muddy river. Spent maybe 20-percent of the time actually in the river (max: knee-deep). Was probably a good thing I took poles.

Ended up doing this hike because I didn’t really want to do the “big hike” I’d signed up for (Buckskin Gulch and the *Arizona* Paria). Mostly because four days was going to be too long to be sleeping on the ground and too short to have a good time on a 48-mile slot canyon hike through a river. I’ll do it on purpose some time, take my truck so I can park at one of the Utah-side trailheads, and go in at Wire Pass and out at White House. Some day.

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They were pretty fantastic and there were a lot of tourists. Frex, here’s half of the parking lot:

It’s showing fewer than half the cars that were there. Kind of amazing given that you’re driving 28 miles down a washboardy dirt road. OTOH, the Prius made it, so it’s obviously not a big hurdle.

When I got there, there was a huge family group just heading down the trail. It was grandma’s birthday. Probably 40 people ranging from age 0 to maybe 80. The posted maximum group size is 12. They wore a lot of University of Utah gear. Draw your own conclusions. Mine involves West Valley City, one of those 2 1/2-year missions to Russia, and a ward where there is no Sunday school.

Headed down the trail:

You can actually see the entrance to Peek-a-Boo Gulch in that photo, but you’d have to know what you’re looking for. It’s just a fold in the rock, about halfway up and 25% over from the left. Waldo and so forth. Here’s what it (the opening) looks like zoomed in:

It goes toward the left. Anyway.

Catherine at the B&B had given me instructions that involved starting the loop by going up Peek-a-Boo. By the time I got down there, though, I’d caught up to The Family Group and, thinking that a narrow slot canyon might decrease the usual joy I receive at listening to the cries of a hundred ten-year-olds, I kept going toward Spooky Gulch.

Which, after the fact, I think was better anyway. It’s narrower, but a whole lot easier to get into.

Here’s the one place I had to get down on hands and knees and crawl along the dirt like a common lizard:

And then things got narrower.

So I think that was the narrowest spot in the canyon. I had to walk through their sideways and, even doing so, the rock walls were compressing my chest as I slid through. It’d probably be less dramatic if you squatted down a little bit, but I didn’t do that. (I had to take the backpack off in order to fit through sideways.)

This would kind of be a bad hike if you were claustrophobic. Or, like, stout.

After a while, you come to parts of the slot where you have to scramble a little. Here’s one:

Not sure if the photo captures it, but you’re trying to squeeze through some tight spaces while climbing up “steps” that are chest-high and not crack your head open in the process. It’s kind of fun. Here’s another little hole I had to climb through (photo taken after climbing):

While you’re walking through the gulch, there are some spots where the sun gets down to the bottom of the slot, others where you can’t see the sky. It’s interesting. The rock formations are cool and weird, Seussian even.

Oh, and it’s sort of awkward (especially in Spooky Gulch) when you hear someone coming down the canyon when you’re going up. There aren’t a lot of convenient passing locations.

Not too long after the arch, you exit Spooky and you’re up on a flat, red-sand plain. According to the directions I got from the B&B hostess, I needed to turn left at a right angle and keep walking until I found Peek-a-Boo Gulch. Catherine, the hostess, suggested that I err on cutting the angle too acutely rather than too obliquely, since if I missed the end of the slot I’d end up wandering through the desert for a couple weeks before probably dying.

Here’s what the route between the gulches looks like:

I figured that so long as I followed the footsteps, at least I’d see where other people had died of dehydration before doing so myself. Didn’t work out that way, of course. Here’s the top of Peek-a-Boo Gulch (close to the top anyway):

So, yeah, then you basically just go down there. Peek-a-Boo Gulch isn’t quite as narrow as Spooky, but it’s got a few more unusual features. Here’s a hairpin turn I thought was cool:

Yep. Then here’s a cool arch+light situation:

It’s kind of hard to get into good positions to take photos in there sometimes. Here’s a bridge overhead:

And then you’re just about at the bottom of Peek-a-Boo, where it gets kind of interesting. There are a couple of big pot holes that you have to either long-jump or climb down and back up. Fortunately there were some people around there so that when my long jump fell a little short I got a hand-up so I didn’t have to retreat down into the mud. These potholes are positioned between some pretty cool arches:

And then this is how Peek-a-Boo ends. Or how it begins if you start here:

So it’s pretty close to straight up from where I’m standing to where the green jacket guy is, and then it’s pretty much straight down from where I’m standing to the bottom of that wall. And at this point, I was wondering how it is that this is such a *tourist* hike. Seems like a lot of narrow squeezes, pull-ups, having to trust your entire weight to the friction between the soles of your boots and a near-vertical wall, and stuff like that to be such a tourist hike. Oh well. Maybe it’d be way more crowded without those features. Or maybe way less.

Catherine also suggested heading up Dry Fork as sort of a cool-down after Spooky and Peek-a-Boo. It was nice, not nearly as dramatic, but: nice.

It does open up a little better and let a little more light in, though.

Then once you get to the top of Dry Fork, you head cross-country looking for the parking lot.

Really cool experience, something I hadn’t done before, worth doing, etc.

bkd

It’s spring now, but anyway:

Wall Street, Closed

Thor's Hammer, I think.

This is probably too many photos. Whatever. They're all uploaded already.

Top of Queen's Garden trail.

Truly.

A tree.

It was from this spot that I added the new used car to my insurance policy.

Amphitheater.

I don't remember if this road was inside the park or not.

So that’s a lot of photos. You can see them at “full size” by clicking on them, you know, if that’s your thing. Most of them are from a little hike I went on down the Navajo Loop and connecting to the Queens Garden trail. Pretty and short and a little icy and steep at the top of Navajo. For some reason, probably because they’re mean, bitter people, the Parks Service closed the Wall Street trail — which is sort of the whole reason to come to Bryce. I mean, you know, that and the hoodoos, but whatever.

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Red Canyon is in Southern Utah. It’s a little place that’s west of Bryce Canyon, which is a bigger place. Maybe. I haven’t measured. Bryce Canyon doesn’t seem all that big to be honest. While at Red Canyon, I hiked the Cassidy Trail up and then hung a left onto the Rich Trail (thinking this would help with my finances) and then, at the appropriate time, took the Ledge Point Trail.

It was snowing much of this time and about 50-percent of the trail was under snow. When I got done with the Ledge Point, I tried to keep going up Rich, but was thwarted by accumulated snow and an inability to figure out where the trail was supposed to go. It had all been so much easier when I could just follow the creek bed. So then I turned around and walked back down to my econobox.

Some photos, sure:

Ledge Point!

Some red rock, trees, and snow.

Snow, falling.

What the hike lacked in length, it made up for in cold, snowy conditions and gray skies.

And FWIW, here’s what Highway 14 looked like on Monday.

I suppose I could have bought chains before leaving Cedar City.

Excelsior, I guess,

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It’s cool that they close the pre-dawn gate once they’ve allowed enough cars into the park to fill the parking lots. Wind: strong. Dressed: warm. Slept in car while waiting in the parking lot: maybe half an hour. Sky started glowing: 6:10. Looked like:

This. It's Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa (the Big Island) in the distance. Well, stars also in the distance. The implied sun is also distant.

Photos taken: 450 or something like that. For the entire day, not just the sunrise. Entire photo-day: spent at Haleakala.

I’m not a connoisseur of sunrises, so I don’t really know why this one is special, or if the particular one I saw was, in fact, special. It’s interesting to note, though, that the sky starts glowing 45 minutes before the sun actually crests the horizon.

The sun, actually cresting the horizon.

To the naked eye, it was already broad daylight, though, no matter how that photo looks (I have some much darker ones taken much later — heck, I can take an under-exposed photo *any* time of day; it’s a talent I have).

The sun: exposed.

I don’t know much about sunrises, but watching it at Haleakala brought me to a stark, sudden realization: the sun is one big ol’ bright, fiery round thing. Seriously.

Should've just uploaded this one and not the previous one. Oh well.

They also have an observatory at the summit that looks like it’d be a cool place to work. And windy! I didn’t see anyone working there, though.

No one.

Once the sun got finished rising and I walked around the summit a little (there were pink clouds, and a few rocks and ridges), I headed down to the visitors’ center and the crater to go hike along the Sliding Sands trail. It’s the trail that the now too-famous Maui Revealed guidebook says is The One Trail on Maui. Like, if you only hike one trail, it should be this one.

The top part of the trail.

Silver sword plants along the trail -- none in bloom.

I hiked to that place out there where the trail ends, Ka Luu o ka Oo. I think.

The bottom of the non-crater crater.

The crater within the crater.

Scourges of the park trails.

*Swirling* Sands is more like it! (Har!)

Seriously: if you could get a big river flowing off of that ledge? Dang near perfect. Alas.

Evidence that I was there.

• It’s like walking on Mars (I imagine).
• Except with oxygen and reasonable temperatures.
• It’s also sort of like being at Death Valley.
• Only it’s in Hawaii.
• It’s kind of a tourist hike, although the more of a tourist you are, the sooner you turn around.
• I also wish there were a rain forest at the bottom of the crater. I’m hoping to get final edit on all future terraforming activities.

Pretty scenery, so long as you like rocks (and sand). I ended up hiking maybe five or six miles total. Thing about the hike is: the best views are at the top. So the further down the crater you go, the more repetitive it becomes and the more you’re going to have to hike back up. It was pretty and, especially for what I’m used to seeing in Hawaii, unusual. But it seemed like the more effort you exerted, the less you got back from it. Diminishing returns is what they call that.

Done typing,

bkd

I’m wondering if the Valley hike is prettier. I hear it’s easier. And I can’t quite figure out if the “13 crossings” hike is just the valley hike. Probably won’t do either.

(It’s not, I checked. But for some reason it’s hard to find information on “13 crossings”, only random people saying how great it is. It turns out it’s another “great Maui hike” that’s sort of inaccessible because it’s all on private land or some nonsense. And how can anyone in good conscience close off prime hiking trails, insist that you can only access them through a certain company, and then allow people to be charged $125pp just to go on a dumb hike?)

Most of the trail looks like this. And you don't ever make it to the top of the ridge in the distance.

It also mostly looks like this.

They have trees like this there. Think they're "cook pines".

This waterfall was in the distance -- it might be where you go if you pay $125 or trespass or whatever it is you do with the 13 thing.

The view from (near) the top.

With jade,

bkd

It’s inside Olympic National Park, in the Elwha Valley area-thing.

Here’s the picture that I’ve decided I want to have show up at the top of the homepage (until I post another article at which point it will be replaced by that article’s picture):

You can almost *smell* the goblin!

Right, so that’s the Goblins Gate. Or Goblin Gate or Goblin’s Gate. I’m guessing the Parks Service doesn’t really know either, so I’m not gonna worry about it. Point being, it’s the best part of the hike and the only real Sehenswürdigkeit there. IMHO. Basically there’s this river and then it makes a sudden right turn and immediately after making this right turn, it has to go through this narrow part where the goblin is. But about half the river misses the turn altogether and has to seethe in fury, churning anti-clockwise in desperate agony just because it ended up in the wrong lane a half-mile back and there weren’t any signs saying that it was going to have to make a right turn eventually.

It’s like driving on the east coast.

Here’s a picture of the seething. It may not look angry, but, trust me, if you could *see* the undercurrents here…

It's like trying to get out of the Qualcomm Stadium parking lot.

So the part on the top of the photo is the raging vortex.The main river is coming from the left. That little stream pouring into the vortex is just a little stream that pours into the vortex. It’s not a good photo.

Here’s another picture of the gate, which I liked, and in particular a rock that makes up the gate, which I liked.

Already pictured.

Other than that, though, the hike was like a well-written eulogy: gloomy but coherent.

There are trees and moss and clouds. It’s dark. In most places, yes, I’d call it a tree prison. Here are some trees with moss.

But mostly the hike's not this pretty.

Just didn’t want you to get the wrong impression there. Mostly there are trees on either side of you and nothing to see but trees. When you’re down on the river, all there is is a river and then some mountains covered in clouds.

I suppose it might look different with better weather.

When I got off this trail, I decided to go down the nearby Mills Lake access trail. The lake will disappear soon as it was created by a dam that’s getting busted in the near future, though probably not by Lancaster bombers. The parks service isn’t that cool. The hike down to the lake was short but strenuous (read: steep). At the bottom, you mostly saw a river (the lake is further down as it turns out) and mountains covered in clouds.

There’s also this little fellow:

It's 15 feet tall!

IMHO: the only remarkable thing about this waterfall is that you have to walk through a knee-deep creek to get to it. The water there is cold in the winter. It had probably been snow a couple hours before I stood in it. I probably should have taken a photo of me standing in it. Battery was low though. Barely even got this shot off. And now you get all the benefit of being there without the hassle of having to later chip ice off your boots just so you can get your feet out.

And then I left there and ate at Wendys in Port Angeles on the way home. Am still amazed that you have to pay $4 to get over the stupid new Narrows bridge. Man. Seems like renting a private helicopter to airlift you over the Sound would be about the same price and, if you scheduled it in advance, potentially more convenient.

Nice to get outside though.

bkd

Went to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park or Parks over the weekend — left Thursday, came back Saturday. Camped for a couple nights. Hiked a little bit, took pictures of trees (see previous post), drove in concentric, ever-widening circles, wore rain pants in anger, used the new generator, and failed to strike up a conversation with a deaf girl from New Hampshire (based on her license plate).

Some photos, not so much of trees this time:

 

Note rain gear — the pants were more effective than the jacket. The Marble Fork is the riverlet down below — the falls up above there were cool and flowed over marble, but they were hard to photograph in a way that makes them look appropriately cool. This hike is at lower elevation, so: no snow, no trees.

 

Higher elevation, thus: snow, trees. I’m happy for my truck when it gets to do real truck things, like drive in the snow.

 

Sure it was too wet to sit down and sure I was eating off of a frying pan with a pocket knife and a spatula, but you have to admit that’s a pretty properly fried medium-rare sirloin.

 A bear box at the campsite — sadly, no bears were inside.

 

An Indian head on a sign for a national park named for a Native American of the Iroquois tribe who lived 3,000 miles away from the park, around which is gathered an Indian family, from India, one of whom has just cracked his head open on the black metal arch holding up the sign and is bleeding profusely. 

Good:

• The last mile of the trail to Marble Falls hike was pretty nice.
• And I was impressed with myself for taking rain gear in my pack up to the falls since it was really sunny the whole way up. I like impressing myself, although it’s easier to do than it probably should be.
• I was not responsible for the parks service having to kill any bears (I don’t think).
• The rural area just to the west of the park (Hwy 180 and Hwy 245) was really pretty with steep green hills and wildflowers — didn’t look anything like California.
• Slipping around on snow-covered trails to see really big trees is more fun than it probably sounds.
• Successfully tested my power inverter and generator.
• The steak was good.
• I found chocolate Charleston Chews and Full Throttle Fury at the Christian camp general store at Hume Lake.

Bad:

• The first 2.5 miles of the trail to Marble Falls was full of the same scrubby chaparral that we have in Orange County and that makes me never want to hike here.
• The Potwisha Campground that I stayed at lacked charm. And the neighbors’ kids lacked boundaries.
• What with the snow and all, most of the A-grade hiking trails were inaccessible.
• $18 a night for camping just seems steep to me, especially when you have to spend all your time there worrying about whether or not you’ve hidden all your food from the bears.

The bear boxes are kind of a downer. So long as you’re obeying the rules, you can’t really do stuff like take food with you into the back of your truck that you may or may not eat before falling asleep, for instance. It really had me ticked off that I was having to go so far out of my way to keep the bears from raiding the campsite until I saw what the bears were doing to keep us out of theirs. Boy, do we owe them bears a big ol’ Thank-You.

Good trip, though. Should go again some time when the snow melts and I can hike up to the lakes and waterfalls.

bkd