the last 5 weekends

I'm woefully behind on blogging, but here's a synopsis of what I've been up to the last few weekends.


My friend Glenn is getting married next weekend. The bachelor party was actually a couple of days in Pismo the weekend of Oct 11-12. It was good to be at the coast and see the ocean. Although it's only 2 hours away I think it had been about a year for me. We saved some dough by camping, so that we could blow it on ATV rentals on the dunes near Grover Beach. Talk about fun! Biggest sand dunes I've ever been around. Nine of us rented four-wheelers and spent an awesome couple of hours racing, jumping, and wrecking (no serious injuries) all over those things. Whoever comes out to visit me next, that'll be top on my list of fun things to do!


Glenn's brother Dan created an Extreme Croquet course throughout the campground using two croquet sets. I came from behind to take the lead at the last wicket, only to have it stolen from me through some questionable moves by the nefarious Brandon. I can't tell if I'm sneezing/coughing or laughing about something in this pic. Glenn is about to be whacked with Brad's mallet, or judging by his expression, maybe he was already knocked silly =).

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Let me tell you, folks around here take October 31 pretty seriously. These are a couple of roommates and friends in their Halloween costumes. The Joker is Beau, and Kyle (another roommate) is the drunk werewolf. I got invited to no fewer than four Halloween parties, but ended up just staying home because a severe allergy attack left me feeling pretty miserable that night.
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Jeff and Evan on the Boundary Run, Kaweah River. An early winter storm caused the flow level to jump weekend before last, and I was able to capitalize on it with three friends. It was a narrow window and we hit it just right, as the following graph shows:

Yep, we paddled on 11-2-08. The Corp of Engineers flow data is invaluable for knowing what rivers are running when. We kayakers keep a close eye on the website with these graphs. Some of the guys in the kayak club even get updates sent right to their cell phones when the flows reach a certain threshold!

A short video clip of my friend Jeff running Bumper Rapid, which is on the Gateway run of the Kaweah above the town of Three Rivers. The only difference between storm flows and spring runoff is that the water's murky.


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A hunter went missing in Fresno County on 11-1-08, and the search was still ongoing last weekend. I drove up with a couple of other rescue team members to participate in the search effort. Here's what I e-mailed a friend about it:

There were volunteer teams from maybe 8 or 10 counties at the search. It was neat to see all these strangers come together to help somebody they don't know. We bushwhacked and scrambled up, over, around and through all kinds of terrain yesterday and today. It snowed at the elevation we were at overnight Saturday, so yesterday we were searching in about 4 inches of snow! (On our way to the briefing this morning at the command post, we started fishtailing pretty bad on one snowy section of road. I was frantically trying to get my seat belt on before we crashed, but thankfully after sliding all over and off the road we eventually came to a stop without hitting anything!) By last night I was definitely ready to come home, but some of the others have been there close to a week!

A Fresno Co deputy and Tom, one of our team members.

We were in a really beautiful area. There were no roads or trails to the above. We bushwhacked up to it, so it's likely that not very many people have enjoyed that view.

Unfortunately there was no sign of the missing hunter, but I did come across this very dead coyote.

A quick lunch break on Sunday. The sun's shining in this pic, but it actually snowed on us most of the day.We came across this old mine shaft/cave that wasn't even on the map. I hear the park service doesn't show these types of things on maps due to liability concerns. It's amazing what you can run across when you get off the beaten path!

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October 26 was a fantastic day. Four of us decided to attempt an off-season summit of Half Dome. The cables were down for the winter, but we had awesome weather, great fellowship, solitude at the summit (normally there are crazy crowds on top, and a line to get on/off the cables), and some great animal sightings.

Mike and Madison on the cables. You can't really tell the angle from this shot, but this section is steep!- significantly steeper than 45 degrees. You can see the height they're at by how tiny the person in the background (to the left of Mike) is.

We saw a few big bucks right off the bat, before we even got on the actual trail.

Group shot on the way down: Me, Madison, Mike, and Katrina.

Group shot on top

A tagged black bear we encountered on the way down. Many folks don't know that black bears are often brown or cinnamon in color. Still black bears though. Unfortunately that's the only kind of bear we have in the Sierra anymore. Mike heard the bear first. It was only 20 or 25 feet away in some thick brush. It was heading towards the trail behind us, so I jogged back a few steps to get some better shots.

Strike a pose! As it turns out, the girls were much braver around the edge than Mike or I. We spent half the time trying to tell Madison to step back and stop doing crazy antics while leaning over the edge to catch the view 2500 feet straight down =). I, on the other hand, prefer to crawl out to the edge on my belly while maintaining at least three points of contact with the ground at all times.

Victory!

Getting ready to attack the cables again on the way down. Mike had a death grip on those things! Halfway down I was trying to get more pics and his terse response was "Just KEEP MOVING- Let's get off this rock!!"

Leaving at 5 am and getting back after 9 pm made for a long but fun-filled day. Even the trip home was blast, between singing in the car and hot juicy burgers/ freezing temperatures at Carl's Jr.. Seriously, for some reason this particular restaurant had the AC blasting everybody inside with frigid air. One employee responded to complaints of patrons (not even us) by saying, "sorry, if we touch the thermostat we get fired." The not-so-bright employee dutifully asked another patron if he could get him anything else, and the customer suggested, "a blanket?" It was quite humorous, including when Katrina started stuffing napkins in her clothing as insulation.

Alright, so that's been my last few weekends. Next update should be a work update- or maybe I should throw in a post announcing my recent change of address?