Friday, September 24, 2010

San Gabriels Bighorn Sheep

I've hiked in the San Gabriel range for 20 years now, but over the weekend I got my first sighting of some of the range's bighorn sheep. Hiking in the remote East Fork of the San Gabriel River last weekend, I scared up 5 of them in the bottom of the canyon. They fled to safety on the canyon wall above, and I got this photo of a curious ewe looking back at me.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Labor Day Backpacking Trip

Three of us packed up McGee Creek in John Muir Wilderness. We hiked over McGee Pass, climbed Red Slate Mountain (13,100') and camped three nights. One night got down to the 20's, which started the aspens to turn. Watch the movie.
McGee Creek is the valley above Crowley Lake, on the edge of the Long Valley Caldera (a supervolcano that erupted 760,000 years ago, displacing 150 cubic miles of earth and wrecking all the bowling alleys.)