Lyell, Evan, my Dad and I went backpacking in Mineral King last week. Mineral King is on the western edge of Sequoia National Park, and varies in elevation from about 8,500 feet to 11,500 feet. Back in the 1950s and 60s, Disney tried to build a ski resort there, but environmental groups held them off and Mineral King was annexed into Sequoia National Park in 1978.

We drove down there on Sunday, 7/27 and came back on Saturday, 8/2. We camped at the trailhead the first and last nights. Our route took us over Timber Gap to Pinto Lake (Day 1), over Black Rock Pass to Little Five Lakes (Day 2), a layover (Day 3), past Big Five Lakes through Lost Canyon to Columbine Lake (Day 4), and over Sawtooth Pass past Monarch Lake back down to the car (Day 5).

Here's what our trip looked like on a USGS topographical map (here's a good free source of USGS maps).

I brought my handy GPS along for the trip in order to geotag the photos I took. A nice side effect is that I recorded the distance (30.5 miles), total climbing (13,645 feet), total descent (14,061 feet), and maximum elevation (11,679 feet). Nice.

I've included some photos from the trip (there are many more on Flickr) and you can view the photos on a map. Also, in writing about the trip, it was interesting to see all of the other people who have taken a similar trip.

We met up on Sunday with Tom and Doug, two co-workers of my dad, and Doug's son Chet, who works as a hunting guide in Alaska. We took off Monday morning on the trail.

There was late snow this year, so we ran into quite a few creeks and fields of wildflowers.

We stopped on Monday night when we came across a bear box and some nice looking campsites. We couldn't find Pinto Lake and were a little bit unclear on where exactly we were.

The next morning we started up Black Rock Pass, and could clearly see Pinto Lake now that we were above it. I came across a few marmots on the trail and made it up to the top of Black Rock Pass around noon.

From Black Rock we descended into Little Five Lakes and setup camp beneath some trees. Interestingly, a married ranger couple was living out there this summer off of a few thousand pounds of supplies brought in by helicopter. They had a yurt surrounded by an electrical fence powered by solar panels to fend off the bears. Once we setup camp, we had some tasty dinner and passed out for the night.

The next day (Wednesday) we didn't move camp and mainly sat around reading. Doug and my dad did some fishing and Lyell managed to get caught on the wrong end of a fly fishing line. We also caught some nice photos of the sunset over the mountains. The mosquitoes were out in force, and there were typically 10-20 of them on you at any given time.

On Thursday we parted ways with Tom, Doug and Chet, who decided to stay another day at Big Five Lakes. We headed down into Lost Canyon and back up, following a creek to a nice climb to reach Columbine Lake.

We played in the snow a bit, looked at Black Rock Pass from a completely different perspective, and enjoyed the relative dearth of mosquitoes. That night the stars all over the place and the Milk Way was a stripe of milk foam across the sky.

We headed back to base camp the next day (Friday). On the way down we came across a few more marmots and covey. We camped back in the realm of toilets and running water that night and had a blueberry cake to celebrate Lyell's 18th birthday.

I've been fiddling around with EveryTrip, so here's a slideshow that shows the photos overlayed with the map. It's what Flickr should have but doesn't yet.

Mineral King

After our Krakow trip I came into work today and found a letter waiting for me. With some Google translate help I now have physical evidence that the Swiss do in fact live up to their crazy reputation. Life in Switzerland is just a little different than home...

In summary, garbage is handled in a very careful manner here. You need to purchase special bags from the market (where they are stored with the hard liquor and cigarettes) called Zurisacks which is essentially a per-bag tax on garbage, which is a great idea. If you don't use the proper bag or put it out at the wrong time (like we did), the authorities will dig through it looking for personally identifying information. Once they've figured out who you are, they send you a letter to let you know that they're on to you and if you do it again they will be knocking at your door. Did you catch the part about how we are part of the fox/weasel/cat axis of evil? We had heard stories of the garbage police but had never believed them, until now.

I've posted some of the pictures from Krakow. Here are a couple of my favorites. I used to only be able to do HDR on my 350D, but since putting CHDK on my compact camera I've been able to do exposure bracketing and have been playing with HDR quite a bit. I've also been doing a better job at adding the GPS coordinates (using Google Earth and Geotagger), so you can see where they were taken on a map.

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We visited Chapaize, France for a few days in the beginning of May. We stayed with Fred-Ami, a friend of my research advisor, and had a great time touring the countryside and eating really, really well. I posted some photos and videos from the trip in the usual place. We visited a few of the nearby towns: Taze, Cluny, Cormatin, and St. Gengoux too. Apparently a group from Taze sings at Memorial Church at Stanford once a month or so.

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I posted photos from a visit to the University of Neuchatel, a hike to Uetliberg, and the Zurich Zoo. We're in Krakow, Poland right now for Cassie's work after a very long but scenic drive and the first all-nighter that we've pulled in awhile. Things that I already like here are the fire-sale prices and sweet, sweet Hungarian goulash.

You should read Oscar's hilarious story about the Beijing Airport.

I posted photos from Amsterdam. We went there after London for Cassie to attend ApacheCon '08. It's a very crowded, flat city and I don't think I'd want to live there, but it was beautiful and lots of fun for the five days that we stayed.

We've been living in Zurich for about 10 days so far and it's awesome. Cassie's work is about a 25 minute walk and mine is about 5, which is really nice compared to home. So far the weather's been a little chilly but not too bad. There was a little bit of snow one day last week, which was awesome.

Last weekend we went to Leukerbad. Public transportation here runs like clockwork. We took a big train, little train and bus and all of them left within 30 seconds of their scheduled times. Also, they allow plenty of time for transfers, which means that you won't get stuck in the middle of nowhere but also having a book handy is key. Speaking of which, the people we're renting from left an absolutely hilarious book called Xenophobe's Guide to the Swiss, and I'm tempted to get the California edition to see what's said.In Leukerbad we rode a cable car up to the Gemmi pass and rode sleds up there for a few hours. After that we sat in the way overcrowded hot springs for awhile to warm up, before eating some awesome Hawaiian style rösti with pineapple and cheese on top. The next day I went snowboarding on Torrenthorn, which is about 9800 feet. I forgot my snowboarding pants so instead went in my fleece pajama bottoms (the cheapest pants were 200-300 CHF!) which actually worked pretty nicely.

It was the first time I've used T-bar lifts, and I managed to eat it the first time. Using it on a snowboard was tricky because you need to stick it between your legs so that you can go up the hill facing sideways. I saw a few snowboarders fall off part way up and then need to scurry out of the way before they were run over by the next people. Craziness. Overall pretty cool though.

Probably most importantly, I just uploaded some photos.

It's official, Cassie and I are moving to Switzerland! Well, not quite, but at least for a few months. I received an NSF grant to study abroad and will be working on some very cool stuff at the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab under Brad Nelson starting in January. Maybe we'll even visit the real Matterhorn. Not bad for a first trip to Europe.

January 6 -15, 2006

Friday

We left our house in Oakland at 9:15 and took a 10 min walk to the Rockridge BART station. Unfortunately we just missed a train so we had to wait until 9:45 for the next one to the airport. Little did we know that it takes more than an hour to get to SFO, so we didn't arrive there until after 11pm. After remembering that all airlines are not as cool as Southwest we waited in line for an hour to get our boarding passes. A lady and her husband were in front of us in line who were going on an anniversary trip and they were both pretty drunk, so at least we had some entertainment. An hour later we checked in, got on TACA flight 561 and were off to Costa Rica.

Saturday

Flying all night was good in that we had a full day ahead of us once we got there. Unfortunately, we had a full day ahead of us. We got some restless sleep and saw lots of interesting lights outside of the airplane window, and when we arrived in Costa Rica at 10am (8 hours of travel + 2 hour time difference) we were exhausted. We made our first of many exchanges from dollars to colones and stepped out of the airport to a mob of taxi drivers. After standing there for a while digging through our books we realized that a bus wouldn't be coming for awhile and that we should take one. So, we haggled one down to $12 and drove off to the first place we were staying, a hostel called Costa Rica Backpackers. The hostel is on the southeast side of town near a bunch of tall court buildings. It's much quieter and less crowded than downtown San Jose.

We checked in, got ourselves a private room for $22 a night and dropped off our stuff. By that time we were starving so we walked to central San Jose and came across the Mercado Central. This place had really good cheap food. Joey had arroz con mariscones (rice and seafood), and Cassie has arroz con pollo (rice and chicken) for only about $6. We each had a bottle of water with lunch and managed to drink only bottled water the entire trip. It isn't so much that the water is bad there, but you never know how your body is going to react to brand new types of bacteria that don't need to wrestle with the fluorinated water at home.

After lunch we wandered around San Jose for an hour or two and got a feel for the layout until we were tired. Then we sat on a bench on Avenida Central for about 20 minutes and listened to a guy offer "te-le-foi-cas" which Cassie translated to "te-le-phone-cards" which was actually close to what he meant, "telefonicas", telephone cards. We wandered over to the Teatro Nacional and tried to tell them we wanted to see a show but they laughed at us and told us to come back in March. By then we were pretty tired, so we went back to the hostel and took a nap.

When we woke up it was dark, raining and time to eat again. We walked around the neighborhood, saw a movie theatre that was playing "King Kong" and "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (which had both come out at home just a few weeks earlier, which was impressive), and eventually came across a pizzeria. We split pizza con pollo and fettucine alfredo con jamon (ham) for about $16. Then we went back to bed.

Sunday

Our plan was to wake up super early and go to Volcan Irazu but the bus to go there was an hour and a half, and you only got to be at the Volcan for 2 hours... so Saturday night we decided to go to the ruins in Cartago instead. So we set Joey's cellphone as our alarm for 9am figuring that was pretty reasonable. Then in the morning we hit the snooze a couple times and finally got out of bed at 10am. After a shower and packing up a backpack we thought we were ready to go at 11. Unfortunately, we forgot about a little thing called time difference and it was actually 1pm.

So we decided to go to Cartago anyway because it has buses running to and from San Jose all day. We stopped at a Musanni pastry shop on the way to the bus stop and picked up some breakfast and we caught a bus to Cartago for $1 for both of us around 1:30. When we got off the bus in what we hoped was Cartago we had no idea where we were. We wandered around for a while trying to find either the ruins or the basillica, got some bad directions, and finally ended up catching a taxi to the basillica. The church was beautiful and we sat inside for a while to get out of the rain but what we really wanted to see were the ruins.

We knew they were on the east side of town and relatively close to the basillica so we set out walking east. By this time it was raining pretty hard. So we were walking along a sidewalk that headed nowhere in the rain for a good 30min. At that point we realized we didn't know where we were going and the ruins didn't seem to be close by. So we turned around and headed back to the church to get out of the rain. While we were inside we opened up the guidebook and realized that we couldn't get into the ruins anyway (or something like that?) so we decided just to head back to San Jose.

We caught another $1 bus back to San Jose and ate Hamburgers and Fries for lunch. Then we headed back to the hotel and had Imperial beers in their restuarant while doing Sudoku and watching Anaconda with a bunch of the other hostel guests. And then it was time for bed.

Monday

We finally managed to get up early on Monday and were out the door by 5:30am. Our plan was to make it to the Rain Forest Tram which is about 1 1/2 hours from San Jose. So we walked over to Gran Terminal del Caribe to catch a bus to Gualipes. We got there at about 6:20 bought tickets, and managed to just miss the 6:30 bus (which we didn't know existed, so it wasn't so bad). Joey ate 2 flautas for breakfast and Cassie had a pizza and then we played Sudoku while waiting for the next bus at 7:00. By 8:30 we had made it to the Rain Forest Tram and we got off the bus to buy our tickets.

They told us to wait a while for the truck that would take us down to the main area, so we sat and waited and saw this huge bus pull up. Out of the bus pours all these middle-aged tourists in bright clothing, laden with cameras, and talking loudly in English. Then they all started getting on the truck, so we decided we could blend in and hopped on too. The truck took us down to the main area and we hopped off with the rest if of the tourists. Then this guide came up to us and started speaking in Spanish, we say Hola and Bueno, and Joey says Si, and I ask him what he said yes to. Joey had no idea so we stood around for a while and the finally the guide comes back and says "hey, are you coming?". So, we follow him to this video showing area and watch about how they constructed the Rain Forest Tram in such a way that they didn't hurt any of the plants or animals.

Finally the wonderful movie ended and our guide came back. Then we realized that he had singled us out from all the crazy tourist people and we were going to get to take the tram by ourseleves. The actual tram was really pretty cool. Our guide Guillermo was about our age and talked about all the plants and we actually learned a lot about the rain forest.

When it was over he asked us if we wanted to take the walking tour, we said yes, so the 3 of us walked around on some paths and he told us some more crazy rain forest things.

After we were done, we hopped back on the truck to the begining of the park. Then all we had to do was hail our bus from the side of the road. Fortunately, I think they expect foreigners to be waiting by the side of the road near the park, and as soon as the bus driver saw us he pulled right over. When we got on the bus it was pretty full so we ended up standing in the aisle near the front for the entire 1 1/2 hour trip. What made it so memorable is that our bus driver was pretty crazy and was driving down the winding mountain roads at about 70 mph.

When we finally got back to San Jose we were hungry again so we went back to the Mercado Central where Cassie got Arroz con Pollo again and Joey ordered a Ceviche and a Tamale (which he didn't like at all). Then we grabbed 2 copas de helados from a little shop in the Mercado that the book recommended and they were delicious. We even got cookie straws to drink from.

After all that excitement we were pretty tired again so it was off to the hostel for another nap. When we woke up with hung out in the hostel's common area in some hammock chairs and then ate at their restaurant. Cassie had Spaghetti Carbonara and Joey had Chicken Curry. Instead of Anaconda, that night they had some prerecorded electic tape that played over and over again. We proceeded to watch that tape until we got tired and headed off to bed.

Tuesday

Because it was going to take 4 1/2 hours to get to La Fortuna we wanted to get an early start on our day. So we woke up 5:30 and got out the door and to the bus terminal at 6:30. Unfortunately the next bus for La Fortuna wasn’t going to leave until 8:45, which is what the guidebook had said, but we were just hoping it might be wrong like it was the day before.

So our first attempt at killing some time was to eat breakfast. So we went to the resturant next door to the terminal and ordered gallo pinto con carne en salsa for Joey, and gallo pinto con huevos for Cassie. At the time, we didn’t quite know what gallo pinto was, and Cassie wasn’t quite prepared for the rice and beans that showed up. So, she proceeded to pick through hers for a while to try to uncontaminate the rice.

Even after all that work spent eating it was still only about 7:15 and the ticket window wasn’t even open. So we bought some pastries for the bus ride and stood in line for an hour. Finally, the ticket window opened we bought 2 fares for La Fortuna and we hopped on the bus.

The bus ride was uneventful except for the fact that it kept getting hotter the closer we got to our destination. By the time we actually got to La Fortuna it was extremely hot and humid. When we got off the bus all we wanted to do was get out of the heat and drop our bags off at our hotel. So we started the trek out of town and down a dirt road to Cabinas La Rivera. (The family that runs the place was very nice but this hotel was by far the worst one we stayed at for the money.)

When we got there we checked in, and they handed us a bunch of brochures. We got to our room, dumped off all of our stuff and then tried to figure out what we wanted to do. After a while we decided that one of the tourist things on one of the brochures they gave us didn't look so bad. So we signed up for the night hike and hot springs trip for $35 each. Considering that admission to the hot springs was $25, the price was pretty reasonable.

So by 3pm a tourist bus came down to our hotel to pick us up and it gathered 8 other people before taking us to a trail near volcano. The trail was pretty nice and the rain forest was beautiful but the people we were with were so loud that it’s no wonder we didn't see many animals. The guide we had was pretty useless because he said all the same stuff as last one but not as well, but we still had fun. Near the end of the walk Joey even spotted a monkey, and Cassie got it on tape. Then we ended the trail near a lookout point for the volcano, saw some lava flowing down the side, got in tourist van again and we went to other side of the volcano to get a better view. Then we saw more crazy lava and tried to get some on tape but by that time it was too dark.

After all the lava viewing was over we hopped back into the tourist van and they dropped us off at the Baldi Hot Springs. The springs were really nice; the water was very warm and relaxing and the place was pretty empty, so we even got one of the pools to ourselves for a while.

After awhile we ate dinner there because we were starving and we split fettucine alfredo and fajitas con carne en salsa. Then we hopped back in the springs for a while, went back on tourist bus, and had them drop us off in town near a liquor store. We went in and bought some new and exciting alcohol: a 6 pack of Ron con Cola, Rock Ice con Limon, and Bavaria Light.

Then we walked back to hotel and proceeded to drink. The Ron con Cola (rum and coke) was fantastic and the Rock Ice con Limon was the worst thing we have ever tasted. Bavaria Light was good except its alcohol percentage is really low.

Wednesday

Slept in till 8:30 and ate free breakfast at the hotel where we saw a bunch of birds and a lizard eating pieces of watermelon. Then we went back to bed and woke up around 12. At that point we got ready and started our hike to the La Fortuna waterfall. However, before we got out of town we decided we needed to eat again and had lunch at a little restaurant. Cassie had penne pomodoro and Joey had a hamburger and fries. Then we were ready to resume our hike. The guidebook said it would only take about 45 minutes to get there so we thought it would be a pretty nice walk.

Along the way we saw this dog and pet it a little because it was so friendly. Little did we know it was going to follow us all the way to the waterfall.

By the time we actually got to our destination we had walked for 2 hours, much longer than 45 minutes, and it was already 4pm. So we bought our tickets and walked down to the waterfall on a crazy path. After cooling off for a while and taking a lot of pictures, Cassie waded in the water around the waterfall, and Joey touched it and then it was time to start back up the crazy path. By the time we got out of the park it was already 5pm and we still had the walk back in to town. This time most of the path was downhill but it still took us 1hr 15min and it was pretty dark by the time we reached our room.

After a quick change of clothes we went back to the center of town and found a place to eat for dinner. We sat down in a restaurant that was playing some futbol playoffs and Joey ate a casado while Cassie ate fettucine alfredo. We walked around a little longer and then headed back to our room for some more drinking. Joey fell asleep pretty early, but Cassie stayed up and solved logic puzzles while drinking.

Thursday

Woke up early for our taxi-boat-tax ride to Monteverde had free breakfast at the Rivera again. We saw some more birds and thanked the family before we got on another tourist van. This time we went around to many other hotels gathering people into the van before we got dropped off at the boat. The boat ride took about 40 minutes and was beautiful and very relaxing. After we got off we borded another tourist van and began the long ride to Monteverde. This trip wouldn’t have been so bad except for the fact that we had to take dirt roads the entire way which is extremely bumpy after about 2 hours.

We finally got to our new hotel, the La Colina Lodge, and checked in. This place was really nice but the couple running the place always made us feel like we were intruding on their private lives whenever we asked them for anything. We did have a really nice balcony though.

After we got to the lodge we immediately got a taxi to Santa Elena so we could go to Selvatura to zip line through the rainforest. That part of the trip was incredible. The views were amazing and gliding through all of the trees was just awesome. Joey also got to go on the did this tarzan swing thing which he loved. We basically just had a great time.

When we got back to Santa Elena, we decided we didn’t want to take any more cars because the roads were all so bad. So, we decided to walk to dinner and we found this good pizza place where Joey got a casado and Cassie ate a salami pizza.

Then we decided to walk the rest of the way to lodge because we were nice and full and happy, but we didn’t realize quite how far away we were. We walked forever, but we did come across a good pastry shop, Stella’s, and we bought some stuff to eat for the next day. We finally got to the lodge and decided we needed water and more alcohol. However, we were told that the closest market was in Santa Elena. So, we got a taxi back to Santa Elena, bought Smirnoff Ice in a can, which isn't the girly stuff we have in the US, it is actually vodka mixed with sprite tasting stuff, and some Imperial and water.

We had the taxi guys wait for us, and got back to the lodge, sat out on our balcony, and drank for a long time.

Friday

Free breakfast at La Colina Lodge. Listened to George Ferguson while eating banana pancakes. Went to the Cheesefactory tour at 9am for an hour. (You don't need reservations) Went home and took a nap then gave dirty laundry to hotel people to wash. Headed to the Monteverde Cloud Forest at around noon. Walked there, hiked around for about 4 hours, stood directly on the Continental Divide and saw the Nicoya Bay about 30 miles away. Cleared up right when we got there and then became cloudy again; good timing. Saw lots of insects, birds, crazy trees, chicken looking things crossing the walkway.

Walked super far to the second italian food restaurant because the first one was closed until 5:30. Had hawaiian pizza and spaghetti carbonera. Went home, finally got our clean clothes at around 10.

Saturday

Went to the Cheese Factory bus stop at 5:30, a guy told us to catch the bus to downtown Santa Elena and then barely managed to catch the 6am bus to Puntarenas, got there around 9am.

When we arrived, we decided we were tired of buses and that we weren't going go to Jaco which was our original plan and instead we were just going to stay in Puntarenas. So we began a long walk down the main road to Hotel Tioga a place we had looked up in the guidebook. This was definitely the most expensive hotel we had stayed at but it had air conditioning and a pool which was all that mattered at the time.

So we checked in went to our room and cooled off by watching Care Bears in Spanish, and then headed downstairs for a quick swim in the pool. After we had conquered the heat we decided we were hungry so we walked along the beach until we found this place that looked good. They had a big menu on the wall so we figured out what we wanted and went up to the counter and started to place our order. At the time but one of the waitresses kept trying to give us a menu and we kept saying "Si, si". Finally we finished telling the person at the counter what we wanted and we went and sat down at a table to wait for our food.

Later, we realized that the person at the counter was actually the chef and that the waitress was trying to tell us to sit down with the menus and that you weren't supposed to go up to the counter at all. Americans. Geeze. Anyway the food was pretty good, Joey had a crazy fruit juice drink and arroz con shrimp while Cassie had a vanilla milkshake and a hamburger.

After we were full we continued our walk down the main street that lined the beach. There were all sorts of vendors selling food and clothing and we bought Joey an Imperial t-shirt (the main Costa Rican beer) and really cheap sandals for both of us. By then we were tired again so we went back to the hotel and took a nap after playing some Sudoku.

When we woke up we went out to one of the hotel's balconies for some pictures and drinking before heading down to the beach. Then Joey swam in the ocean for a while and we wandered around until it was time for dinner. We ats at the first restaurant that didn't have extremely lous music and had fries with beef and onions for Joey and marinated chicken strips for Cassie.

Then we went back to hotel to drink and celebrate our last night in Costa Rica by finishing our alcohol and watching Anonymous Rex, a classic movie.

Sunday

We woke up around 7:30 and ate breakfast at the hotel, eggs, rolls, and gallo pinto for Joey, and eggs, rolls, and fruit for Cassie. Then we packed up all of our stuff for the last time and checked out. After a 20 minute walk to the bus station we bought tickets for a bus back to San Jose. The plan was to take the first bus to San Jose for about 1 1/2 hours, then eat lunch in Mercado Central, hang out until it was time to go to the airport, and then catch a taxi to the airport.

However, while Joey was looking out of the window on the bus, he realized we were at the airport already, so we got off the bus early and skipped the whole middle part of our trek. This was great, except for the fact that we were at the airport 6 hours before our flight left.

So we paid the aiport tax, stood in line and asked if they had any earlier flights... and they didn't, so we still had 5 hours to go in the airport. We ate quality airport food for lunch from Burger King and Papa Johns, bought an overpriced David Sedaris book from one of the shops, and took turns reading and playing sudoku for the rest of the time.

Then, after our waiting was finally up we boarded the plane, just to have another 7 1/2 hours of time to kill until we got back home.

When the plane landed we still had to catch the BART back home, and it was already 11:25. So we got to customs as fast as possible, picked the wrong line, and waited while we had people who had been out of the country for 6 months and green cards at one time in front of us. Then we made another quick walk to the exit of the baggage claim area. At that point the two security guards looked at us really strangely for not having any baggage debated over something between themselves, but they finally decided to let us go without any trouble.

After some more running around to find the BART, we finally got there, bought tickets, and got on the train just in time. Then it was just one transfer and 1 1/2 hours later and we were home at last.

Here's a backpacking list that I originally got from my dad.