eh?

Most of the winter dropped off the face of the earth.

Around Christmas time, I did manage to start going to the gym again, about 6x/week, but that got derailed about two weeks before my candidacy – still, I’m still seeing the benefits from that, and have been doing that again, but it will shortly be derailed by my soon-to-happen travels.

But I’ve gone hiking a few times, which is cool.

In December, I went up to the Bay Area with Jenny Hu, and we went on an ~4 mile hike in Muir Woods, with Leo and Ankur and Jenny’s friend Esther.

Echo Cliffs , in the Santa Monica mountains, with Vera and Joe and Erin. This hike was actually pretty short, maybe only 3 miles roundtrip, I would guess, but it was totally sweet to get out. So we began on the trail…

Just over the rise of a hill, we could see our goal (the cliffs are on the lower part, the top part is an awesome balanced rock that we didn’t get to, but that you can also climb). It is also worth noting that the level of greenness is actually incredibly high for this part of the country, due to the spectacular rains we have had this winter. We were pretty psyched for that.

So we go along, and then we clamber down a streambed, quite steep, filled with pointy plants, and eventually reach the climbers route along the base of the cliff. Apparently we also did quite a good job in missing the much easier trail that goes more along the bottom of the canyon, with spurs up to each of the climbing walls.

The climbing walls are pretty popular, note the chalk marks over everything:

Eventually we got to where we were going, Easy Street. This was Joe’s first chance to practice lead climbing with his own gear, so he wanted to make sure it was a really easy pitch (5.6). The first part was the only part they did (I played on the rocks a bit, as I did bring my shoes, but I don’t have a harness, so didn’t actually ascend). This is Joe climbing up:

I also took a couple flower photos, cause they were right there:

Then we pretty much went back

with Vera and Joe and Erin.

I then went hiking again the following weekend, up Mt Disappointment in the San Gabriels, again with Joe and Vera, but I don’t have those photos up. At rough guess, that hike was 6 miles, maybe a bit less. The trail total listed doesn’t match the trail *segments* listed for total length, and we ended up on fire road for quite a bit of time when we didn’t need to, which was a fair bit longer than the trail would have been. Anyway, I will post those when I have them.

I wanted to go hiking again this weekend with Joe (as my new hiking poles should be arriving this weekend, but I’m just a bit too hosed with everything. So I hope the weather will allow me to get some outdoor time in when I’m in Edinburgh and Boston, but if not, I’m going camping the weekend after I get back. Sweetness!

Edited to add :

Climbing up Mt Disappointment