Freaky abroad...

Mount Shasta (4322m)

2011-08-01T23:46:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, Christian and me tried a new challenge after our previous trips to Mount Brewer (4136m) and University Peak (4155m): Mount Shasta. Besides being a volcano, it is also quite impressive that it overtops other mountains in the area by 2000m. This made a nice view from the highway long before we reached the town at the base of the mountain!

We could already explore in more detail the upper parts of the trail. Did not look too long or difficult from below... ;)

We spent the first night at the camp ground at the end of the road. The next day, we used to test some of our gear, in particular the Firngleiters. It was fun, although a bit difficult (maybe because I tried to use them like normal skis). The following photo really makes me look a bit like a beginner...

On Sunday, we got up at 1am in the morning and started the summit attempt from the parking lot (2100m). Things were going very well and we reached the Helen Lake (3200m) at 4am. This is the place where many other hikers were camping overnight. We had a short break and put our crampons on, because the trail now went up a steep and icy slope. The crampons were pretty important, but the ice axe that was recommended by the local guide was of no use, so we were rather using the hiking poles.

Shortly below the so-called Red Banks (3900m), things were getting difficult for me, because of early forms of altitude sickness. I started to feel a slight head ache at exertion. However, at this point the scenery could still make up for it as you can see in the picture below. This is how it looks, when a big mountain casts a big shadow!

But the most difficult 400m were still before us... And the last slope before the plateau is called Misery Hill. There's a reason for that because it really looks like misery how humans try to slowly get to the top of it (4250m). Left foot... right foot... left foot... Don't stop... don't go too fast... keep a steady pace... It is some state of trance in which you move forward. The plateau looks really nice (and is really flat, which was far more important for me at that point!!).

And then, finally, done, the peak (4322m) at 8am. I was so relieved about having reached the top that I nearly forgot about enjoying the great scenery!

My head ache was steadily increasing and I also started to feel sick. So, we decided to descend quickly again. Unfortunately, we could not use the Firngleiters in the upper part of the mountain, because the snow was not soft enough. Only in the lower parts it was a real win to have them carried all the way up. Anyway, below 3500m I was quickly feeling OK again. We were back at the camp ground at about 2pm and at about 3pm at the local Round Table Pizza :) !

So, while it was for sure an exciting trip, I think I've had enough 4km mountains for a while and will rather resort to Austria's "smaller" mountains, you know, bigger is not always better ;) !

Moving from Alternate to Accepted

2010-09-30T00:37:00.001-07:00

Several weeks ago I received a message saying that I was moved from alternate to accepted. No, this was unfortunately nothing personal (^^), but my talk at one of the biggest computer science conferences world wide! Find below one of the several conference buildings in the center of San Francisco..

They even shut down a street just for the conference. On the next picture, you see what Oktoberfest in San Francisco looks like ;)

This is what I'd call an advertisement..

People streaming out of the keynote speaker room with a capacity of about 10.000 seats. Unfortunately, my talk was in one of the smaller rooms ^^.

The Black Eyed Peas live on stage on treasure island. It was a bit weird with all the business people in a festival atmosphere, but nevertheless it was fun (and the lead singer girl was pretty amazing... ^^)!

What would a weekend in California be without a hike? Great weather for getting to the top of Yosemite Falls.

It has been exciting 10 days in the bay area, and tomorrow I'll be (again) on my flight back to home sweet home...

Stefan and Andi visiting

2010-09-18T05:04:00.000-07:00

On the weekend, Stefan and Andi have been visiting! After spending some time in Kopenhagen and desperately leaving after we realized that we could not see the famous mermaid but a poster with "www.mermaidexchange.com", we went back to Aarhus. Well, there is one more thing to mention about Kopenhagen: They have an awesome Scotish bar and Stefan obviously knows the importance of getting a really good whiskey ;).

On the train back, we could see the "Great Belt Fixed Link". In Aarhus, we tried to find city bikes, but most likely due to the recent festival they were all gone! We still did the city bike harbour photo, just without the city bikes ^^.

At the harbour, we selected our favourite ship:

On our long way back by foot, we found a bike counting machine. So, to our relief there seemed to be still some bikes left in Aarhus. 138 bikes passed the point on that day. We tried hard to somehow trick the machine to belief we are bikers, but we could not make the counter increase..

This was my last post from Aarhus, as by now, I'm already back home. German Autobahn was quite fun. And immediately after returning, I had of course do a mountain tour (click here for photos)!

Moni and Simon visiting

2010-08-31T12:40:00.001-07:00

This is what I really like about Denmark compared to California: Every now and then some friends from Austria can come by and visit me! Last weekend, it were Moni and Simon that gave the solitudinarian some company. They were lucky to chose a time when all sorts of strange things are happening in Aarhus because of some festival (they also planted a forest in the middle of Aarhus, but unfortunately it was just obvious that the main users of a forest in the middle of a city are drunk kids). This is how Danish children are grounded, and they even seem to like it..

Well, from previous visits I learned that the ice cream parlors are one of the biggest attractions. The next photo shows Simon and me with a "I gonna love it" sized ice cream (I also learned from a previous visit that a "I gotta have it" sized ice cream is not preferable ^^):

And finally, I could resolve a bet with Daniel and Lisi, it was about the "blond" blog entry he asked for in a previous comment: A photo with one of the beautiful ice cream girls. I must admit, that she is not very enthusiastic about the photo, but I hope it counts nevertheless ;)

On Saturday afternoon, we used the city bikes to visit the harbour. I'm very proud of myself to be now an old hand Aarhus city bike station discoverer knowing most station locations by heart. This was very beneficial :).

Unfortunately, Moni and Simon did not stay for Monday morning, so they could not see the office. But we decided that we nevertheless need to take a beautiful couch photo like Lisi and Daniel.

Well, this time I'll only have to wait one week until the next visit: Stefan and Andi will arrive in Aarhus next weekend and I'm looking forward to it!

Laura and Elli

2010-08-15T13:21:00.000-07:00

Last week, I was in London visiting the office in Buckingham Palace street. After flying from Aarhus to Kopenhagen and later to Heathrow, I could use the so-called Heathrow express to get to central London. The underground system was quite impressive as you can see on the picture below...

Unfortunately, I had only the street address of the hotel, so I had to do a lucky guess on the correct one. I had to smirk when I entered the hotel. I mean, what would you expect to happen if a desoriented guy with a half finished Burger King meal goes to the reception of a noble hotel and says something like "I think G booked a room for me" (G being a synonym for a very large search company; I avoid direct references to keep the blog as unsearchable as possible). If I'm unlucky they put me in a mental station. Well, I was lucky, and so a good-looking German girl from the hotel staff started to flirt with me. Oh, I'm sorry, probably she just tried to be nice... Probably because she didn't want to lose her job that's why she was nice. Yeah, that's probably the correct reception ;). Hm, but after seeing "inception" I don't care so much about reality or dreaming anymore as it seems to be kind of interchangable ^^.

The hotel room was the best room I've ever been in. Especially the bathroom; I was sort of amused by the amount of mirrors and glass...

The office was very impressive; never seen anything like that. One nice feature was a facility that allowed to get a bit of a flight simulator feeling. On the picture, you can see me pointing at the Uniteich!

On the weekend, I took the bus to Oxford to meet Laura and Elli who happened to be there during their England round trip. In the double decker bus, I could get the front seat on the top deck! When Laura and Elli arrived, I shouldn't have been surprised, but, I mean; what is the first thing one would do if you arrive in an unknown city? Of course the answer is: Shopping! Well, I don't know; maybe this is a gender specific issue that I wouldn't expect this ;) Anyway, thankfully it did not take too long for them to buy their Oxford T-shirt, so we could move on to the museum of science ^^. The museum itself was not really exciting, but an interesting citation drew my attention:

"However powerful our technology and complex our corporations, the most remarkable feature of the modern working world may in the end internal, consisting in an aspect of our mentalities: in the widely held belief that our work should make us happy."

After eating some ice cream, we cooked dinner at the youth hostel. And despite fundamental dissensions about the amount of noodles a single person can eat; and nearly triggering a fire alarm with burnt cucumbers, it was quite fun ;). After the dinner we explored the youth hostel game room. Maybe I should not write this here; but to my shame I must admit that I lost against the girls in tabletop soccer..

The next day, we attended a mass of the church of England. The priest was a woman and it was amazing how she reminded me of some teacher in Harry Potter...

Well, time passed by fast in Oxford and my flight back was booked for Sunday afternoon. So, I had to say good bye to Laura and Elli..... Below you can see a photo with me and the two lovely girls ;).

On the flight back, I had my first experience with multiplied gravity, because I had to go to the front of the plane while it was approaching for landing in Kopenhagen. Just when I stood in the middle of the plane, the pilot pulled the plane upwards forcing me on the floor and sort of turning the world around me. So I was glad to reach the ground of the airport in Aarhus...

Lisi and Daniel visiting

2010-07-28T16:08:00.000-07:00

After two eventful weeks with ups :) and downs :(, I finally have some spare time (and photo material) for my third Aarhus blogpost. So, the weekend was great, because Lisi and Daniel came for a visit! And my office is really a place to enjoy...

The sea is great too! And finally I had someone to go to the beach. Regarding the temperature, I would guess somewhere between Elmsee and Almsee... So, it's warm enough to wet one's feet. And more is not necessary anyway as the water is not very deep:

One of the main attractions of Aarhus seems to be the botanic garden. It was a nice place to visit with lots of different species. However, plants, piranhas, cactuses, palm trees, butterflies, coffee plants, and water lilies were not the only attraction there as you can see on the picture below ;-) !!

We enjoyed the different ice cream parlours a lot. Not necessarily only because of the good ice cream. Lisi always tried to make a match between the beautiful girls behind the glass case and me ^^. Well, anyway, here is the evidence that I'm taking my main goal for the internship (+10 pounds) very serious:

Getting around in the city is awesome with the free city bikes! At least if you have a 20 DDK coin and some patience to find a pick-up spot with a free bike on it. A bit more patience if you are a small group of three people. And you should probably enjoy the feeling of riding a bike uphill, because this is how it feels riding a city bike. Well, the good side is that they are really robust! We could explore the harbor of Aarhus with them:

So, it was a sad moment when they left again on Tuesday. Now I'm feeling a bit lonely again. However, next Wednesday I will fly to London to meet some other interns - and on the weekend I'll maybe see another friend...

Please send me a postcard!

2010-07-11T05:52:00.000-07:00

I LOVE postcards! And I actually just received one (shown below) from Sarah & Franz transmitted as an e-mail attachment from Andi - Thx ;-) ! If you want to brighten up my stay here with a postcard (and spare Andi the trouble of scanning it) - please use my Danish office address: Aabogade 15, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. Include the company I'm working for (I leave out all direct references in order for this blog not getting revealed too easily) and my name before the street address. I would be delighted to receive some mail and I ==promise== to write back!

In the meantime I could also set up a reasonable internet connection in my appartment using a wireless router. Next picture is for nerds only - isn't this awesome? Just a little piece of home I'm connecting too.. ^^

Today, I attended my first evangelical mass. Although it was a big church in the center of Aarhus (see below), the Raum-der-Stille would have fitted the number of attending people comfortably.. Additionally, there were only 2 people below 35: A 3-year-old and me. And the 3-year-old spoke Danish only anyway ^^.

Yesterday, it was such a sad moment when Forlan (cool player!) put the free kick onto the crossbar. But today Spain is gonna own the Netherlands (1-0) / (1-1) / 2-1. Goals for Spain: Villa and Torres. Goal for the Netherlands: Snyder. What is your tip?

Aarhus

2010-07-05T08:06:00.000-07:00

So, I'm back abroad! And traditionally, the starting point of the blog is always the photo just after arrival (see California 1 and California 2). This time I'll spare all references to any textile objects; time moves on ;-). Addtionally, instead of taking the plain across the Atlantic, I took the train up to Aarhus (Denmark). Yesterday, I arrived and my room is awesome:

And in particular, there are two nice pictures in my new room. First, a crowd of people for not feeling lonely:

Second, a beautiful woman with an interesting look. I'm still trying to figure out what she wants to tell me - what do you think ^^ ?.

Mount Brewer (4136m)

2009-09-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

My last wilderness trip this summer was to the top of Mount Brewer together with Christian. We took off from the bay area at about 5 pm and arrived at the campground at 10 pm in the night. We were pretty lucky to get campsite #1 - but the campgrounds around Cedar Grove were pretty deserted.

The next day we got our permits at the Road's End Ranger Station. On our way there, we saw a bear family cross the street and could make some photos from our car.

We started off with the backpacks at about 8 am from Road's End (1.500 m) towards Junction Meadow.

We reached East Lake (about 14 miles from Road's End, 2850m) at about 3:30 pm. This is where the official trail ended and we had to go cross country.

Our goal was to get as close to the peak as possible on the first day. So we fought our way up.

Climbing up the rocks and trying to find our ways through the bushes was however pretty exhausting. The backpacks seemed heavier than ever. While Christian still seemed to be in a reasonable condition, I was very much at the end of my strength and so we had to give up at about 5:30 pm...

We were lucky to find a nice place to camp at about 3.250 m. After pinching the tent, I fall asleep immediately ;-)

The next day we got up at 5:30 am, put down the tent and started off towards the peak at 6:30 am.

I felt a lot better and especially without the heavy backpack things seemed so much easier! After some time we were in front of the rock faces of Mount Brewer.

There we had a choice to go either up a slope on the left side or try the east grade on the right side (that you can see below).

As going up the slope looked pretty insane to us, we decided to try our luck on the east grade. The first parts seemed very reasonable to us, but we did not know about the upper parts.

Above you can see Christian climbing through a hole in the rocks. All in all, we reached the top of the grade with only minor climbing difficulties. From there we had a better look at the slope on the other side and decided that we would definitely never go up there ;-)

Still ahead of us was the passage from the east grade to the backside of the mountain.

But we turned out to be pretty lucky. What looks rather challenging above was not so bad at all. And so after climbing another 200 m over huge rocks, we reached the top at 10 am. In the peak book, we saw that we were the only ones at the peak since 5 days.

And this was the first entry:

With more than 2.600 m elevation gain from Road's End this is the highest relative peak for me ;-)

We enjoyed some time the incredible views from the top. Towards the east...

Towards the north west (on the top right you can see University Peak and a bit more on the left Mount Gold)...

And towards the south...

We wanted to reach the car on the same day, so we had to hurry a bit on our way down. Below you can see Christian and in the back East Lake.

We could watch some wildlife on our way down:

And finally reached the car exactly before it got dark at 15 minutes past 7 pm.

This is the visualization of the GPS data of the trip:

And the elevation profile:

We decided to push through to Irvine on the same night. But for sure we had to stop for some fast food - we didn't have a gas cooker with us, and all the time I dreamed of a Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger Combo Large...

University Peak (4155 m) and Mount Gold (3950 m)

2009-09-13T22:50:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I was camping with Christian and Karthik in the Onion Valley. It was a very long (9 hours with breaks) drive from the bay area. So I made a small stop at the Mono Lake, next time I come here I'll probably go hiking...

In the evening I arrived at the campground, on the next day we set off for our primary goal - University Peak. There was a pretty nice lake on our way...

At about 3600 metres we were at the bottom of a steep slope. You can see it in the picture below. Actually it looks tremendously more scary if you stand in the middle of it trying not to fall down ;-)

Next picture you can see Christian climbing the slope...

We were all pretty glad when we sanely reached the top of the slope and sweared not to go down this way. Unfortunately the top of the slope was not the top of the peak. There were still more than 250 painful meters to make. They were painful for two reasons: First, my standard altitude head ache knocked within my head and second, at a height above 3.800 you always feel like in need of a second lung. It's very funny that all the hikers that could do quite well until now, suddenly begin to pause every 20 meters. It was harder than on Split Mountain, because to get to the top we had to do some additional climbing. But the whole time we had incredible views...

On the picture below you see Karthik on his last meters, while Christian is already standing on the top.

And finally I made it to the top too - this is an Austrian and an Indian on one of the highest peaks of California ;-)

From the top we realized that there was no reasonable way to go done but again over the slope. The only easier route would have involved about 10 miles of additional cross country hiking, and we did not have time for that. So after some discussions, we decided to go down the slope. From climbing up, we had a lot of respect for it, but it turned out to be not so bad when going down. We took a better route (in contrast to climbing up now avoiding the big rocks and seeking for the small ones), and if you become used to it, it was a pretty similar experience to skiing ;-)

You just had to watch out that you didn't get into the steeper parts... After that we were trying to speed hike back to the camp as it was already getting a bit dark. We didn't fully make it, but we had head lamps, so after 12 hours of hiking without major breaks, we finally arrived totally worn out at the campsite:

So we all agreed very quickly to use the next day for RESTING. So we only did a 5 hour hike to a lake and through many meadows.

On the third day we were fit again and decided to go for the Kersarge Pass (3.584 m). We apreciated the nice prepared trail ;-) This is me at the highest point of the pass.

Most Americans just go over the pass, because they have no addiction to peaks. But Austrians are different as Karthik had to learn the hard way this weekend ;-) So from the pass we went for Mount Gold (3950 m). There is no official trail, but it was actually easier than expected to follow the footsteps of previous hikers. Well, it was quite easy until the very last meters...

This is what you would call a peak! So after doing some more free solo climbing, we were glad that there was enough space for the three of us...

Actually there were two other persons climbing to the top on this day. And just before you ask yourself why they would be as crazy as us - they were not American, they were German ;-) The view at the top and also when going down was incredible, probably one of the best views I've ever had. Unfortunately you can always only fit small fractions of the actual view onto an image...

Fortunately we could get some refreshment in a lake on our way down, as it was pretty hot...

Before leaving the camp ground, we could still get a glimpse of the home of the campground manager. That's what you would call a complete living!

At about 3:30 pm, we finally left Onion Valley - Karthik and Christian went back to Irvine, and I drove back to the Bay Area. At first I thought of stopping at a motel, but then I just tried to drive through. It took me about 7 hours of driving before I reached the appartment...

So there is now less than 14 days left and I'm really looking forward to fly home again! On the next weekend we are planning for another hiking trip to the top of Mount Brewer (4.114 m)!

Half Dome by Night

2009-08-23T14:43:00.001-07:00

I'm just back from a night ascent on Half Dome together with Harald. Californian weather can really suck. While the sun was shining as always in the Bay Area, the Yosemite National Park was haunted by rain on the exact night we wanted to do our hike. So we started off the Bay Area at 8:30 pm and arrived at the trail head at 0:30 am. We started off with our head lights, you can see Harald on the picture below...

It was a pretty cool experience hiking all alone in the dark compared to the masses of tourists that are there during daylight. At first, there was not much rain and it was actually pretty warm. As we came nearer to the top, the rain intensified. At 4:30 am we were at the bottom of the cables... Btw, I'm wearing my new favorite South Park fan T-shirt - Craig rocks ;-)

Going up the cables turned out to be a lot more difficult than last time as water was running down the stones and made them slippery. So it was more or less all on your hands to pull you up, which was quite exhausting. On the top it was 5:00 am, and we still had the hope that after sunrise, the rain might end. And we were pretty tired too, so we decided to stay a while. The rain had intensified, so we had to look for the best shelters we could get up there, which were holes in rocks. Although it didn't hold off all of the rain, at least it was better than just sitting on the plain surface. We could actually sleep for a bit more than an hour. After that we felt very cold and totally wet and realized that the rain wasn't going to stop any time soon. Below you can see the peak photo made short after I woke up ;-)

Now it was getting light pretty quickly, but the sun would not show up. Below you can see Harald after going down the cables. Going down was a bit easier as you "just" had to slide down. Beside him you can see masses of hand gloves ready for tourists to use for going up the slopes. I decided to use just my plain hands as this seemed to give a better grip.

Now the landscape was a totally Austrian experience. Water just everywhere. It was totally different from the last times I visited the place. With all the wet clothes it was also pretty cold.

After hiking down to the Nevada Falls, things were getting a bit better as the rain was not so strong any more and the temperature was higher. We could take some nice pictures of the falls.

The following picture shows the lower part of the Vernon Falls.

After three hours from the top (the wet clothes really made us quick ;-)) we were back at the car and happy to enter a dry environment. Notice again the "real" car on the left... At about 2 pm, we finally made it back to the apartment.

Morro Bay

2009-08-12T21:41:00.000-07:00

This weekend I did some relaxing hiking with Christian in the Morro Bay area, which is half way between Los Angeles and San Francisco. There are so many beatiful beaches, but there is only one problem...

The whole summer not a single shaft of sunlight is seen here as the fog covers all. Well, but we were here for hiking and not for swimming anyway ;-) And pretty soon we were above the fog limit:

And also pretty soon we were at our first peak as mountains are here rather about 1.400 feet instead of 14.000 feet high - you would not think what difference such a single digit can make!

After the hike, we explored the cliffs at the coast, which was a bit dangerous because of the big waves and the slippery stones.

In the evening we checked in at a "Motel 6", but we still wanted to go to the top of "Morro Rock", which is a 500 feet high volcanic mountain. We were very disappointed when we found the following sign:
This is very typical: They built a large parking lot and a broad street around the mountain, but they do not think of building a trail to the top. That's real nonsense! There were some other very interesting warning signs at the beach:

"NEVER Turn your back on the Ocean" - are you supposed to walk backwards when leaving the beach? Well, we stayed at the beach to watch the beautiful sunset...

The next morning we started another hike in the area of the 1500 feet mountains. After a while we came to the following sign:
"Not a through trail"? or "A tough trail?" - we decided that we nevertheless give it a try. But this was one of the signs that actually have a meaning. Well, only if you presume that the following signs that we discovered after about a mile:

We had to backup but finally reached the destination "Hazard peak". It was very hot that day and the trail was partly pretty sandy. As a horse campground was nearby, we met a lot of people riding horses.

This day we also took a trail to the beach, which was very nice as there was nearly no one there!

We got some refreshment in the Pacific. The water wasn't so cold. But the wind on the beach!

After spending some time at the beach we got back to our car. There was another car parked beside it. Well, probably compared to this real CAR you would not call my Ford Focus one...

There was still a short hike to a local peak on our list. There we could again see that we are not real Americans. We parked the car on what we thought was the trailhead, but in fact after gaining most of the height to the peak we found the real parking lot... We should've really known in advance that there must be a parking lot near the top of every peak that has a trail! Afterwards, we finally earned our meal at the Burger King where I ate a "Triple Whopper" - 1230 calories ;-)

Split Mountain (4.285 m / 14.058 ft)

2009-08-02T20:00:00.000-07:00

This weekend was just awesome! I was on the top of Split Mountain - my first mountain above 4.000 meters. We started on Thursday evening and spent a night in Sonora. On Saturday, we went over the Sonora Pass. The high plateau east of Yosemite National Park was amazing. There were a huge number of cows, as you can see on the picture below...

At about 2 pm, we finally reached the trail head (2000 m) with our SUV and started off towards Red Lake (3188 m).

We had quite good conditions and after a bit more than 4 hours we reached the lake.

Where we were keen on getting a refreshment...

... and then suddenly very keen on getting out as quick as possible ;-)

The next morning we got up at about 7 am. The view of the lake and the peak was really great...

We tried to get ready for the ascent as soon as possible. In the background of the picture below, you can see part the stone fields we had to climb up. There is no official trail from the lake to the peak, but on several places one could see tracks.

At about 3500 m, we had to cross a snow field, which was quite fun...

Then it became a bit difficult as we had to climb a few hundred meters high and pretty steep stone slope. You had to check every stone twice before you could safely put your weight on it, even the big ones. Below you can see Ben climbing in the lower parts of it.

Once we reached the ridge, the path became easy again. But now we were at around 4000 m and the height could be felt strongly. Every now and then we had to stop hiking for resting and breathing heavily. At around 12 am, we finally reached the top...

The feeling was pretty good and the exertion of the ascent were all forgotten, below you can see me with my Sun shirt...

The view was incredibly. Below you can see a shot to the west side, where you can see a lot of major peak of the Kings Canyon National Park.

The Split Mountain registration box...

We enjoyed the time at the top, but I was also glad when we started the descent, as I felt now some head ache because of the height. A bit below the peak, we had a wonderful view of the lake...

After taking a short rest and another bath at the lake, we put down our tents and went for the car. It was already getting dark, below you can see Split Mountain casting a huge shadow onto the landscape.

Harald and me reached the car before the sun was completely gone. The other guys were not so lucky, but they had good flash lights, so they could easily hike in the dark.

After the strenuous hike, we wanted to sleep in a motel in Bishop, but we had bad luck. There was no vacancy within a few hours drive, so we had to sleep at a campground this night. After getting a good meal at Jack-in-the-Box, we put up our tents at 11 pm at a local campground. The next day, we had an easy but long drive back to the bay area. So far this was probably my best weekend here in California...

Three Days Wilderness

2009-07-28T22:54:00.001-07:00

I'm just back from my first 3 day wilderness trip and it was the hardest hiking weekend so far... Christian and I tried to reach the top of the State Peak (3847 m), but unfortunately had to retreat at about 200 meters below the top...

So we started from the parking lot (1500 m) Friday at 5 pm and hiked up to the first campground "Lower Tent Meadow" (2200 m). There we realized that we made a big mistake: We did not bring a mosquito spray! Still it was a nice and calm evening as only 2 other parties were at the campsite. This was a completely different experience to two weeks ago, when the night was disturbed by a lot of noise at the campground that was reachable by car. So we got up at 5:30 am the next day, and went up to the Granite Pass (3200 m).

At the top, I was still in an acceptable condition, but when we went on during the hottest time of the day, I got again heat stroke symptoms. Additionally, the mosquitos were incredibly annoying. Christian and me got at least one hundred bites each. I tried to kill as many of them as possible (unfortunately I did not count, but it would be a very large number), but this was also rather exhausting and did not help much. All the time we were near water sources or beautiful meadows, they attacked in groups... At 4 pm, we finally reached the "State Lake" and decided to stay for the night. We were the only hikers in this area. In addition to an incredible amount of mosquitos also a bear visited our camping place...

The next day we woke up at 4:50 and started our peak attempt at 5:30. We had good conditions, because the air was still fresh. It was pretty steep, so we had to start some easy climbing at about 3300 m, taking the east ridge.

At about 3600 m, the mountain finally told us "game over, insert coins". We were at the top of a secondary with no chance to proceed on the ridge. And as we knew that our cars are more than 20 miles away, we decided to enjoy the view from the secondary and retreat.

After 4 hours at about 9:30 we were back at the tent, loaded our backpacks and started a nonstop 9 hour hike back to our cars. Fortunately most of it was downhill, but still we were pretty much screwed when we finally arrived at about 6:30 pm at the parking lot at Road's End. One good thing was that at least for parts of the hike the sun was covered by clouds. And as a proof that there exist clouds in California too, Christian took the following picture.

Short before reaching the parking lot, I met another bear on the trail. As it did not seem to move away, I had to take a loop around it. So in total our trip was a bit more than 60 km and an elevation gain of more than 3000 m...

Alta Peak and Paradise Peak

2009-07-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

This weekend I went to the Kings Canyon national park together with Christian, Ben, Harald and Hannes. On the first day, we went to the top of Alta Peak (11204 feet). Unlike last year, there was no snow on the top, so getting there was a lot easier.

After enjoying a great view at the top, we decided not to go down the normal trail, but try to go down to a nearby lake. Unfortunately this involved more free solo climbing sessions than was to my liking. Christian and I climbed down a 50 ft wall, while the other three tried their luck at a very steep gravel field. Getting around the lake was also pretty difficult and Ben was a bit unlucky as he fell into the water. On the picture below the area around the lake looks quite flat, but if you get nearer you soon realize that only climbing may bring you to the other side.

Unfortunately I was suffering from a heat stroke by the time we were reaching the lake. Hiking with head ache is not much fun. Actually I had exactly the same symptoms as last year.

All of us were very exhausted when we finally reached the car. So only Christian and I were motivated enough to do a second peak on the second day. We went to the top of the Paradise Peak (9,362 feet). It was very hot and we felt Alta Peak in our muscles, but the view at the top was again worth all the trouble...

On that day we saw a lot of dead trees lying around and the amazing thing was that they did not rot, but fall into little pieces. It must take hundreds of years for such a tree to finally fall into very small pieces, but you can still make out where it fell down...

I'm back

2009-07-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

Last week I arrived in San Francisco. As last year, the flight was awfully long and the apartment hard to find ;-) At least I still knew most of the street names and was more confident with the get-into-the-apartment key locking system. Below you can see me on my new king size bed. Looks very similar to last year, but still two differences: First of all, there were no cookies this time (I gonna complain about that!), and second Cindy decided not to come with me.

As everybody always seems to be so much concerned about how much I eat, I included two pictures of my 4th of July dinner menu. First it was barbecued beef sausages with fried eggs and stuffed olives (still have to work a bit on the design of the eggs)...

And second a delicious cup of ice cream topped with strawberries and blackberries...

So, now you should be pacified (and maybe salivating ;-)). My room mate is from Puerto Rico, which is a wonderful island next to Cuba. I can't image why he likes to spend summer in the US. My working and car pool colleague is from Brazil, his name is Marcelo.

So far I did not do much exciting, but watching TV is somewhat astonishing. My favorite TV show is "Dance your ass off" - it's just Dancing Stars brought to the next level. I wonder if there will be some bottom line somewhere.

I got a mobile phone and was called three times in a week, despite I did not give my number to anybody. Unfortunately it was not cute girls that wanted to meet me for dinner (enchanted by my cooking skills), but only telephone advertisements :-(

The End

2008-10-05T11:46:00.001-07:00

On Saturday afternoon, Harald brought Cindy and me to the San Francisco International Airport. We enjoyed the regular traffic jam on highway 101 for the last time... Nevertheless we were at the airport far too soon, so we spent more than an hour waiting at the gate. Fortunately our two suitcases could be checked in as they were both very close below 50 pounds. I already made a list in my head which things to leave behind first.

The 12-hour flight seemed endless. The huge amount of available film choices did not shorten it. After landing in Munich, we went back home by car. And finally... finally... Cindy could meet her boyfriend again ;-) !

Sunset

2008-09-27T16:22:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was the last day of my internship. I could enjoy the cafeteria with all the Indian, Mexican, Chinese and American food for the last time. Well, that's probably not really true, as my corner of the cafeteria in fact rather looked like this...

It was a hot summer day, I can't imagine any temperature below 20 degree at the moment, let's see how it is at home when I fly back... Cindy enjoys the lying in the Sun of top of the sign to the "Java Java", which is of course just a cafe named after a programming language ;-)

After the sunset, I had to return my Sun identity and leave the office. 4,5 months of working as a researcher at Sun Labs are over...

San Francisco Giants

2008-09-26T00:41:00.000-07:00

One of my deeper cultural experiences was watching a baseball game of the San Francisco Giants. The stadium is at a very nice location, such that you can also see the ocean from the upper places.

The impressive stadium was the positive thing, the negative thing was that the waves on the ocean were most of the time probably more exciting than the game itself... Mostly it comes down to one man trying hard to hit a ball with a device that just does not seem to be the right one for this purpose. The other guys on the field basically just standing around watching him as you can see on the picture below.

Only on far too few occasions the ball gets actually hit and only then there is some movement in the game. This fun part usually lasts about 10 seconds. Anyway, people watching the game seem to be more interested in their garlic fries, hot dogs, and popcorn. So they did not really care about the outcome. Cindy and I were of course big fans for the San Francisco Giants that lost pretty high in the end ;-) On the picture below you can see us standing on one of the seats. And yes, the jacket and the hood were really necessary as the wind coming from the ocean is very cold in San Francisco...

Planet Granite

2008-09-24T00:36:00.001-07:00

As my internship finally comes to an end, I have a lot of "last" days. Today was my last day at Planet Granite, the climbing gym that Harald, Doug, Ben, and me used for weekly climbing sessions. Well, Cindy was there too as you might guess ;-)

Despite all the additional weight of the dog, I could actually complete some climbs and improved my climbing skills from being able to do a 5.6 (as on the picture) to a 5.9. The world of 5.10 and beyond is still mostly closed for me, but I will work on it...

As a true fan, Cindy is very proud to wear a Planet Granite T-shirt as you can see on the picture below. Well, maybe it is a bit too large, but they didn't have dog sizes there...

Good bye, Karthik! Good bye, Aritra!

2008-09-21T00:58:00.000-07:00

The summer is coming to an end and so are our internships. Unfortunately this meant that I had to say good bye to my two first Indian friends in the last weeks. First, my working colleague Aritra left. You can see us below, sharing our office with Cindy. I tried my best to make a hiker out of him, which lead to two remarkable ascents, one to the top of Mission Peak and another one to the Nevada falls in Yosemite (even without bear-repellent spray ;-)). During our working hours we shared a lot of common goals that glued us together...

Shortly after Aritra, Karthik left too. He was my appartment colleague and also my hiking partner for nearly a hundred miles. And most importantly I could sit on the co-driver's seat of his car for a few thousand miles... He also learned me some basics of living here, e.g. that a red traffic light in America really does not necessarily mean you cannot go. Although his mountain biking skills made me feel bad, I appreciated the time with him a lot. Below you can see us (Harald, Christos, me, and Karthik) celebrating his farewell.

Pinnacles

2008-09-08T19:48:00.001-07:00

The last August weekend, I made my first awkward steps in outdoor climbing in the Pinnacles National Monument. This post is so let, because the incredible temperature differences at that place caused me to have a cold. We spent two nights on the main campground. First we tried to climb "Rat Race". On the picture below you can see Cindy and me while roping down. It was pretty scary to be the first one hanging his life onto the rope...

On the next day the others did a more difficult climb called "Tourist Trap" (because there were always many low shoe tourists gazing at the climbers). First, Doug did the lead climb. On the picture below is Harald who went second. Third, Ben did successfully complete the climb.

The third climb we tried was going up the "Monolith". I already was a bit sick, so I did not try this one. It was also a bit scary at the beginning as you were immediately very high above the ground. Doug was quite excited during the lead climb. Below you can see him at one of the critical places where he must not fall, because the rope does not really protect him...

Watch out for Doug jumping off the wall!

Cindy was always busy studying new routes. Below, she analyzes carefully the white chock signs on the wall.

Downieville

2008-08-21T19:58:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, I went with Karthik to Downieville. There we joined the family of my supervisor Doug and some of his friends for camping and biking. We did the 4 hour drive on Saturday morning. In the evening, Doug borrowed me his mountain bike to do a short test, whether I would be able to do the 16 miles downhill trail. Unfortunately I failed the test. I must admit that I'm just too much of a coward for downhill mountain biking. It was difficult for me to make out the fun part of the ongoing fear on the 20 minutes test trail. Additionally there was a helicopter landing at the trail head to transport a heavily wounded mountain biker to the nearest hospital. If you wonna know how the trails look like, just search for "Downieville" in YouTube. Despite it was Karthik's first mountain bike experience too, he did a lot better and decided that he can make the long downhill trail on the next day. By the way, he looks awesome when he sits on his bike with all the armor on...

In the evening we made a camping fire. The children Maya and Tobi could have their Marsh Mellows... I think those things are pretty disgusting and would have rather grilled some sausage. Cindy also enjoyed the warmth of the fire.

I decided that I like my life and therefore not join the others on the next day on the downhill trip. I'm just more of an up-hill-hiker than a down-hill-biker ;-) So, Cindy and me went to the top of the highest mountain in the area. It is a pretty impressive peak with a fire lookout tower on the top.

The last few steps to the top were pretty scary, as you had a lot of air beneath your feet ^^

Before going home on Sunday afternoon, Cindy and me refreshed ourselves in one of the small lakes that were around the campsite. But no Cindy! Don't jump! Noooo...

Good bye, Ford Focus

2008-08-06T21:26:00.000-07:00

As my rental car contract ended a few weeks ago, I had to look for some alternative vehicle. It was a hard farewell to the car. It did a perfect service for more than 5000 miles, so I more than doubled the total mileage of the car in less than 2 months - Californian style ;-) So the selection of the replacement was hard, but there it is. I proudly present my road bike that I could lend from one of my working colleagues... To keep the bike and Cindy safe, I bought a lock and a helmet!

Mount Tamalpais

2008-08-02T22:35:00.000-07:00

Today we went to the Tamalpais State Park, which is a few miles north of San Francisco. Just short after you go over the Golden Gate Bridge. On the picture below, you can see my two hiking companions: Christian and Giacomo, who is from Switzerland.

There were a few big trees in the park that seemed to be quite an attraction for the visitors. As I have seen the trees in the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park before (see former post), they were far less impressive for me.

Checking weather forecasts is just senseless here, because it is sunny and hot every day. We did a long dayhike. First we went down to Muir Woods and then up to Mount Tamalpais. A few hundred feet below the top of the mountain, we encountered the American way of hiking. First there was a street plus a parking lot up there. So for a 6 dollar fee, we could have spared a few hours of hiking, if we only had known! Well, but as the last hundred feet up to the peak can be so exhausting for people who are used to drive everywhere, there was of course a cola machine up there... I bought a small refreshment for Cindy, as you can see on the picture below.

The height of the peak was only 2571 feet, but we got an impressive view of San Francisco and the north part of the bay. Below, Cindy is enjoying a rest, in the background you can see a very long bridge over the north part of the bay.

On the last photo, you can see Christian, Giacomo, Cindy and me with a view of San Francisco from the north in the background. It was again a hard day and we were glad to get free softdrink re-fill at the stakehouse that we went to in the evening...

Mission Peak

2008-07-27T15:04:00.000-07:00

Today, we went to the top of Mission Peak, which is a small mountain in the bay area. We were short before 9 am at the trail head, but the parking lot was already quite full. It was also already pretty hot. After a bit less than 2 hours, we reached the top of Mission Peak, from where you have a nice view onto the South Bay Area. On the photo below, you can see from right to left: Christian, Kai, Aritra, me, and Cindy.

At the top, there was no cross, but a rather unusual device...

We hiked down on a hard-to-follow trail, where we met some cows. They were seeking the valuable shadow of some trees near a creek. Most parts of the mountain was however without any trees, just sere grass.

Further down, we discovered a large snake. Unfortunately, we did not dare to get much closer for a good picture and the snake did not take its chance to become a photo model...

There are a lot of dog rules that are stated at the trail head, so Cindy studied them carefully... Fortunately, at least I do not have to use the Pick-Up-After-Your-Pet stuff!

Half Dome and Clouds Rest

2008-07-23T22:27:00.001-07:00

After a few weeks without a blog entry, I am finally able to post some more pictures. Together with Cindy, Aritra, and Kartik, we went to Yosemite to meet there an Austrian friend of mine and his brother. We arrived at midnight at the North Pine campground and luckily found the two guys who already reserved the camping space.

The next morning, we starting hiking up to the Nevada fall. I started about 40 minutes later, because I waited in line before the campground reservations to get a campground for the next night, but even though I was there 30 minutes before it opens, we only got onto the waiting list. After hiking very quickly, I could catch up with the other guys at the second waterfall. On the picture above you can see from right to left Benedikt, his brother Simon, Karthik, Cindy, and me. Below is the profile of our trip. The number of kilometers for the trip was probably even higher than shown on the profile using Garmin MapSource.

So first, we went up to Half Dome. Below you can see Cindy resting on a stone at about kilometer 13. In the background you can see the impressive shape of Half Dome.

Soon Karthik and I realized that the other guys were pretty strong hikers. Finally we found out that they were mountain bike professionals. Damn it! We should have known before... Just before approaching Half Dome they gave a short impression of their skills, giving me a hard time to follow. It was also incredibly hot, which made hiking very hard...

To get to the top of Half Dome, one has to use a rope to pull yourself up with your hands. Otherwise even climbing would be difficult, because of the steepness. We were not alone as you can see on the picture below. Half Dome is one of the most famous mountains in the Yosemite National Park, so there was some kind of a traffic jam at the ropes.

The top gives a perfect view of the valley. Below you can see me standing on the edge of the wall going down into the valley, trying to calm Cindy ;-) In the background you can see El Capitan with The Nose.

After Half Dome, we decided to try to do Clouds Rest on the same day and hike on to Tenaya Lake. Fortunately Karthik volunteered to go back to the valley and pick us up at Tenaya Lake with his car, which is actually a 1,5 hour drive in one direction. Doing Clouds Rest meant however doing another few thousand feet elevation gain... Below you can see Benedikt, Cindy, and me at about kilometer 22 with Half Dome in the background.

While the other two guys seemed to be fresh the whole day, I had to fight hard to complete the hike. At the top of Clouds Rest, I was pretty much at the end of my strength, but there were still more than 12 kilometers to go...

At 8 pm, after about 12 hours, we reached Tenaya Lake. Fortunately Karthik was still capable of driving, so we went home on the same night. We had dinner at 2 am at some iHop in San Jose...

Tuolumne Meadows

2008-07-07T22:06:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, Cindy, Karthik, and I spent again in the Yosemite National Park. The original plan was to hike Half Dome beginning in Tuolumne Meadows, but unfortunately we did not get the necessary wilderness permit on the first day. So we decided to do a day hike to North Dome. On our way there we made a small detour to Indian Rock, which is a unique rock formation. You can see all three of us sitting on the Indian Rock on the picture below.
After 4.4 miles we reached North Dome, which gave us gigantic views. Cindy remembered the tips she got last week in Hollywood and posed immediately at the right position on a pile of stones. In the back you can see the north side of Half Dome.

We walked on towards Yosemite Falls, where we saw a few climbers relaxing after their hard day. Below you can see a picture taken at the edge where Cindy stares down into the valley a wall which is about two thousand feet high.

We were pretty tired when we were back in our car as the whole hike was about 14 miles. We ate at the lodge and slept at the backpackers campground in Tuolumne Meadows. The next day, we dismissed our plans to hike Half Dome, because the public transport system is so poor that the original idea of getting from the valley floor back to Tuolumne Meadows turned out to be impossible. Instead we did another day hike to Coulds Rest parking our car at Tenaya Lake. Unfortunately we started pretty late, as we were tired from the day before and needed more sleep as expected... As we were not sure whether we would make it in one day or need to camp outside, we took our backpack with us. It was incredible hot although the average elevation was about 8500 feet. The heavy backpack with the tent and about 4 litres of water tied to it made going forward not much easier. Additionally, mosquitos were making the hike uncomfortable. While Cindy seemed to have no such problems, they liked me best. I ended up with 40+ mosquito bites. After 3.5 hours we reached the top of Clouds Rest (9926 feet = 3025 m). The view up there was fantastic... Below you can see the east side of Half Dome.

The summit seemed to be a crowded place in terms of animals. Karthik could take two nice shots with his new camera:

The following guy made a real show out of his photo shooting, posing in different positions for a few minutes. Cindy could learn from him!

Ah, I nearly forgot to mention that Cindy was very lazy that day. Perhaps it was also too hot for her, so I had to tie her to my backpack and carry her all the way up...

In the evening we managed to get back to the car at about 8 pm. So on that day we did 14.4 miles and about 3000 feet elevation difference with our backpacks. Instead of staying for another night, we decided to go back by car on the same day.

Los Angeles

2008-07-01T23:42:00.001-07:00

After her tremendous success as a photo model on this blog, Cindy decided that it was now on the time to take a step forward: A casting in the metropolis of film - holywood! As I could see the enormous potential for her career, I went down to Los Angeles to make her dreams come true. My work colleague Aritra was coming with me. On our way down south, we took highway 1, which is a nice road next to the beach. The weather was not so good, as you can see on the picture below, but Karthik promised me that in southern California, the weather will be always good - and he was right... Below you can see Cindy and Aritra watching some surfers, which practiced hard.

The way down took longer than expected, so with a few hour breaks (we visited for example Santa Barbara), we needed about 15 hours. We had a hard time finding a cheap motel at eleven pm, but finally we were successful. We were sleeping near the airport in a pretty cheap hotel - the receptionist wanted us to pay in cash to give us a good price ;-)

On the next day, we first visited the LA city center, which was a bit disappointing, but afterwards it was finally the big hour for Cindy. On the photo below, you can see her just before stepping onto the red carpet to enter Universal Studios Holywood.

Cindy is nine inches tall, which meant that her ticket was pretty cheap ^^ !

After the casting in holywood, we went on for some photo shooting in Beverly Hills...

On our way back, we took a faster route, so we needed "only" six hours on the highway. The land around the highway is often very beatiful, but deserted. Below you can see Cindy, Aritra, and me in front of one of the nice lakes that you encounter when driving on highway 152...

The Hart Tree

2008-06-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

Because I've now been sitting around rather useless the second weekend in a row without any major adventure, I need to fall back to reporting past events. So this post is about the second day all alone in the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. The trip to Alta Peak the day before had been quite hard, so I didn't feel like approaching another high mountain the next day. I took again a campsite, this time near the big van you can see on the picture below. Well, I wished my tent had a climate that was as loud and powerful, which starts up many times during the night...

The next day I decided to do the Hart Tree Trail, which is a modest hike of 8 miles through a forest with huge trees. This time not the trail itself but the drive to the trailhead was a challenge - an extremely narrow unprepared street - I was really lucky that no one came the other direction. After about 1 mile into the trail, I wanted to take a picture of Cindy, and I realized that she wasn't with me! This was when I gave up the thought of a relaxing hike and ran back to the car. I mean, loosing a watch as the day before is one thing, but loosing your personal protection dog... I was relieved when I found Cindy next to the car sitting on a bear container.

The trail went through the forest without much elevation difference. Along the way, there were so many big trees that I became rather used to the sight. Below you can see me and Cindy standing in front of one of them.

The following tree formed a tunnel, the trail went right through it...

Finally I arrived at the Hart Tree, one of the biggest trees in the Sequoia national park. You can see that it is heavily damaged by fire. Cindy found it convenient sitting in the tree...

After 10 miles of hiking, I was ready for my 5 hour drive back to San Jose. To add also some additional cultural experiences, I had dinner at a Mc Donald's. All of the employees were speaking Spanish and it took 15 minutes until I could get my meal despite the fact that I was nearly alone in the restaurant.

Daniela and Alex

2008-06-16T23:45:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, my sister Daniela and her boyfriend Alex visited me in my apartment. Meeting this time was a bit easier than when we tried to meet at the Kings Canyon Visitor Center... The next day, we went to the cinema. Daniela had looked up some highly intellectual film, but we could not find the right cinema, so we had the choice between a standard film or no seeing any film at all. The result was about 2 hours of "You Don't Mess With The Zohan". Check out http://www.youdontmesswiththezohan.com/ to see the official homepage - I think a trailer says more than thousand words, so I don't want to write a lot, just: It's a truly American film...

On the picture above you can see my two visitors sitting on my living room sofa. Cindy did all she could to get on the picture too, clinging intensely to Daniela's hair. What an ill-mannered dog!

Alta Peak

2008-06-09T22:44:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, I wanted to go hiking with Karthik and my sister, but because of some unhappy coincidents, I ended up all alone at 9:30 pm in the Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Park. It was not an easy thing to do to find a campsite and put up a tent in the darkness. Especially as I lack a bit of experience, because of my missing military service. On the picture below, you can see the result ;-)

The next day I decided to try a solo ascent onto Alta Peak (11204 feet). I started from Wolverton (about 7000 feet), below you can see me during breakfast. It was not very relaxing however, because a mountain lion ran through the wood only a hundred feet away.

From about 8000 feet upwards, the trail became more and more difficult to follow. This was where I met a Hungarian group, which also wanted to hike Alta Peak that day. They were glad that I could set some footsteps in the snow, getting the correct direction using the GPS. While going up, I lost the trail regularly. It was like walking a few yards on a trail and then hiking blindly on snow fields or through brushwood trying to find the trail again. One time after loosing the trail, I saw my first wilderness bear. I wished that this was happening some time, but I didn't want this to happen, when I was all alone off the trail in the forest. Well, I wasn't all alone - of course this wicked little fighting dog was with me! This must have been the reason why the bear was afraid, and wasn't keen on meeting us. Instead it ran away, unfortunately the same direction as the trail was going...

As the conditions didn't get better, I was multiple times close to resigning. Hiking additional routes to find the trail was exhausting. From about 9500 to 10500 feet the trail was easier, because there were no more trees and it was on the south side of the mountain. Therefore most of the snow had already melted. But from 10500 feet upwards, it was all a big snow field. The only traces in the snow I found up here were bear traces. The air was getting thinner, so I had a hard time fighting my way up to the top through the snow. Below you can see Cindy lying in the snow, behind her the top of Alta Peak.

After 4 hours I was finally at the top of the 11204 feet mountain. It was a relieving feeling, neither me nor Cindy ever got that high.

Going down was a bit easier, especially at the upper part. I should have brought my skiers with me! At about 10000 feet I met the Hungarian group again and informed them about the conditions on the top. Then it was again a bit like straying through the woods. Now there were however some more footsteps and I had better knowledge of the terrain.

Unfortunately I lost my watch, while hiking down. A branch must have taken it off my wrist. After 7 hours Cindy and I were back at the car, the total length of the trail was about 15 miles with about 4200 feet difference in elevation.

Yosemite Waterfalls

2008-06-04T23:55:00.001-07:00

Last Sunday, Cindy and I spent another day in the Yosemite National Park, but this time rather as a tourist than as a hiker. We visited three impressive waterfalls, the first one is the Yosemite Fall, on the picture below, you can see Cindy sitting in front of the lower part of the waterfall (320 feet height). The upper part of the fall is even higher (1430 feet), but cannot be visited so easily. What you fortunately cannot see on the picture is the high number of people at this place.

The Yosemite Fall can be visited without any need to walk for more than a few minutes. The next waterfall we visited was the Vernal waterfall (317 feet height), which is at the far end of the valley. It is very wet near such a big waterfall, so I needed to spend as little time as possible for taking the photograph.

One could go even to the far upper edge of the fall, but Cindy was so frightened when looking down that we had to move on quickly.

So, we further went on to the Nevada Fall, which is even more impressive (594 feet height). Getting to the top of it was a bit hard, because the path was very steep and the sun was burning down mercilessly.

But at the top we found some snow for cooling and going down was much easier. All in all it was a nice day, especially because this time the weather was as sunny as it is supposed to be in California...

Hetch Hetchy

2008-05-26T19:51:00.000-07:00

So, we just got back from our Yosemite adventure. We went to Hetch Hetchy (4 hour drive from San Jose), which is one of the less known and therefore less crowded parts of Yosemite. We got a wilderness permit for the Rancharia Falls for the next day and therefore were allowed to stay one night at the backpackers campground (4000 feet). As a warm-up, we decided to go up to Smith Peak (7751 feet). So, let me introduce the third one in our company. Karthik (rightmost on the picture below) is my Indian appartment comrade. He also currently works as an intern for Sun Microsystems in the Maxine project.

So we went off with light backpacks, leaving our stuff in the car. However, we needed to put all the food in bear-proof lockers. Well, I'd like to apologize for the weather. As you can see on the picture below, it was not very sunny. On the upper right of the picture you can see the Hetch Hetchy reservoir, which is a source for San Francisco water.

As it started raining more heavily, we moved on quickly and got up to Smith Meadows (6500 feet). In the forest you can see burned trees. Cindy had some problems getting over all the obstacles as you can see on the picture below.

After some additional elevation gains, it started snowing. The trail was not marked and hard to follow, because we seemed to be the first one to get so far on this day on the way to the peak. The Garmin navigation system was not useful either (on the contrary), because the way point coordinates were simply wrong, probably they refer to an old forgotten path. Well, as going up through the wood without a trail was very difficult, we had to resign about 500 feet below the top. Below you can see me and Cindy during a snowball fight.

Well, our shoes were pretty wet by now anyway, so we were glad when we reached the backpackers campground. We set up our tent and then realized that our gas cooker was leaking, so about half of our food was useless as it required boiled water. So we decided to feed ourselfs from peanuts and energy bars only.

The next day we went off with good cheer, but heay backpacks, and wet shoes. We went for a few miles when it started raining again.

After 6 miles we reached the lower part of the Rancharia falls. There we saw some good campsites, but despite the rain we decided to try to go on to Tilltill Valley.

However, the path turned out to be difficult (see the picture below for a sample). When some other hikers told us that Tilltill valley was rather flooded with water, we made a turn and went back to the Rancharia falls to set up our tent there.

As it rained without break we had to set up our tent in pretty wet conditions. We were also quite exhausted from 6 hour non-stop hiking with heavy backpacks, so we were glad when we could get inside our small (and at least partly dry) home as you can see on the picture below.

The night was cold even in the tent, because the outside temperature was at about 30 F. You don't care about style, when you wake up after a night in the wilderness, so please take my apologizes for the picture below.

The backpack felt quite heavy on the last day, perhaps because all the clothes and the tent were quite wet. We went on quickly and reached our car (6,5 miles) in 2,5 hours. Driving home was not easy, because of all kinds of Memorial day delays. Fortunately, we made a stop at a restaurant, where I nearly managed to eat a medium size American pizza ;-)

Hiking

2008-05-24T00:56:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow morning we (Cindy, Karthik and I) will start a 3-day hike in Yosemite National Park. We will go backpacking starting at Hetch Hetchy. The first night we will probably spend near Lake Vernon, the second one near Laurel Lake. Below you can see Cindy during the preparation for the trip, equipped with some useful stuff: Gloves, a swiss knife, a sunblocker, a rain hat, and of course some dollars.

Hills

2008-05-20T19:17:00.000-07:00

San Francisco is a city built on hills. They built the streets just straight as if there were no hills, which makes some of them really steep. Below you can see a picture of such a street, unfortunately the steepness is far more impressive in reality. In Austria it would be impossible to build such streets, because they would be unusable in winter. As all streets and all crossroads look pretty much the same, one can get easily lost. But wait... Cindy?? Where the fuck is Cindy?

Bay to Breakers

2008-05-18T20:29:00.000-07:00

40.000 people running or walking through San Francisco 12 kilometers from San Francisco Bay to the North Pacific Ocean. Somewhere between life ball and a running event... Unfortunately, pets were not allowed, so Cindy had to stay at home, you can see her however proudly wearing my starting number 35002. The run was difficult as it meant finding your way through a moving human labyrinth from start to finish. Additionally, the course went up and down the hills of San Francisco. I finished in 1:04:04 resulting in place 1889 out of 22439 people who managed to reach the end of the race. Probably, I will post race photos when they are available. Today I also got a taste of the public transport system - it was completely overloaded, so we needed to go the 12 kilometers back afoot...

Sun

2008-05-13T20:34:00.001-07:00

Going to work by car in the bay area is something that makes you happy being able to begin your work... Today was my second workday, however, I am still just in the middle of setting up my workplace and getting instructed. Cindy insisted to come to work too, however, she thinks that what I'm doing is really boring and spends most of the time sleeping beyond my monitor as you can see on the picture below... So she is no real help here. I even must smuggle her through the entrance as she does not have a valid employee identification card, which everybody must wear at all times!

McDonald's

2008-05-12T20:55:00.000-07:00

The first thing to do on a Sunday morning in America? Go and find a McDonald's! My first tentative attempts to reach something similar to a restaurant afoot soon revealed their hopelessness. Reluctantly, I went to my car - still the blind flight of last night in mind. 10 miles later I realized that being in a big city does not automatically mean to find anything helpful for getting a breakfast. But finally I was lucky again and spotted the rescueing M-sign. Cindy was eased too, as you can see on the picture below...

Afterwards, I decided that a street map could have some benefits. Personal memo: Do not ask supermarket vendors for street maps, they do not like this. Chinese gas station employees however immediately offer any kind of general purpose help. They even provide you with their phone number. Cindy was really relieved that we were now at least in possession of a map...

Lost

2008-05-11T16:15:00.000-07:00

Driving by night in a never-used car in an unknown country without a street map to a never-visited location is challenging. Especially after a 12-hour flight. And it becomes a real challenge if you suddenly lose orientation. Lost in the streets of San Jose. This is how 34.6 miles became 55.7 miles. I cannot explain how I got back onto the 237 after I left the 101, but somehow I did it.

After 22 h of driving, running and flying, I reached my appartment and entered all the necessary number combinations. Finally I could stretch out on the bed and eat the welcome cookies, see the picture above. As you might notice, I'm not alone: beside me lies Cindy, my borrowed travel mate. Obviously the hand luggage box wasn't a good sleeping place either as she seems to be exhausted too. So, we went to sleep immediately. Ah - one vital question remaining - do we share a bed? Unfortunately there was no other way, but I can assure you that we both do not want to extend our relationship beyond friendship and our current focus on offspring is rather low. So, good night!