Day Hike from Carr Lake

From Prinzing Lake - June 2008

Michael and I took another hike in the Sierra Nevada mountains near us yesterday, only this time we took our golden retriever, Georgie. Georgie absolutely loved it! He pranced down the trail, he jumped in every lake or stream he could find, he sniffed burrowing mammal holes, and he jumped over logs and scaled granite rock outcroppings with ease. By the end of the day, though, he looked as tired as I felt, and he wore a layer off of his front paw pads.

We hiked 13.5 miles total yesterday, according to my GPS track. The GPS came in handy, because we took a couple wrong turns, and we were able to find our way back to our intended trail. It's still early in the season and the trail maintenance crews haven't been out with their chain saws yet to clear all the large fallen trees from this last winter, and in some places the trail was obscured. At one point, though, we simply took the wrong trail and didn't figure that out until we'd already gone a mile or two down the trail. I should have been paying closer attention to the GPS... :)

We started at Carr Lake and hiked by a number of other lakes (Feeley, Delany, Island, Round, Long, Milk), up across Sand Ridge, and ended up at one of our favorite lakes, which we're calling "Prinzing Lake". It's an unnamed lake in the Five Lakes Basin, which actually has six or more lakes in it (as we can see from the ridge at Glacier Lake). We've been hiking there almost every summer since 2002, and it's a delightful spot. The photo above shows a section of the lake, with the ridge that surrounds Glacier Lake in the distance. The photo album from the day shows the other lakes and points of interest along the way. I like the way I can tag the photos in Picasa Web with the location where the photo was taken. Now if my camera could just talk to my GPS to get the actual coordinates automatically (and precisely) and include them in the image meta-data, wouldn't that be great? Maybe someday...

The weather was strange yesterday. In Roseville, it got up to about 103F. On the trail, the temperature was probably in the low 80's, we hiked across patches of snow, and at one point, the sky was blue in front of us, the sun was shining brightly, and it was raining huge drops on us. A few thunder clouds blew through, and by the end of the day we even got caught in a heavy hail storm that dropped quarter-inch ice balls on us. Georgie hates the thunder, and it made him want to burrow (he started digging furiously). At least all the rain and melting snow bring out the wild flowers!

Jawbone 2 Bluetooth Earbud

I've been using a new Bluetooth wireless earbud with my cell phone for about a week now, and it's simply fantastic. It's the second-generation Jawbone from Aliph, and it has an improved background noise cancellation technology that they're calling Noise Assassin. Since I've never been on the receiving end of a call from someone using one of these, I can't really critique the noise cancellation feature, but the demos on their web site are pretty impressive. It uses a little sensor where the device touches your cheek to identify your voice so that it can remove ambient noise from the signal.

This is an incredibly well-designed product, both in its technology and in general fit and finish. It's small, stylish, comfortable, and effective. I've worn it for the better part of a day (even when not on calls), and almost forgotten that it's there. I put Jawbone in the category of "really well designed products", along with Apple. The folks at CNET gave it an Editor's Choice award. The only negative thing I can find about the product is it's price. It's $130, and even at this price, they're having a hard time meeting the demand. Highly recommended.

Beacroft Trail - North Fork of the American River

From Beacroft Trail 2008

Michael and I took our first backpacking trip of the season last weekend. We hiked down the Beacroft Trail to the North Fork of the American River in the Tahoe National Forest. The Foresthill Ranger District has a nice collection of trail maps for the area.

This hike is very similar to the Italian Bar Trail that we took last summer. Both trails are classified by the Forest Service as "Most Difficult" because you descend (and later ascend) about 0.6 miles vertically in 2.2 miles. It's very steep; it takes about one hour to hike down, and about two hours to hike up. The trail is beautiful, but I think I actually liked the Italian Bar Trail a little better -- it has a gold mine and a lot of old mining gear scattered around. That being said, we found an excellent camp site along the river and enjoyed a beautiful weekend there!

My new Garmin Colorado 400t GPS came in very handy. The trail was unclear near the start, and we found ourselves bush-whacking at one point. With the GPS and its topographical map, we were able to find our way back to the trail. It was also very nice to be able to chart our path and get time, distance, speed, and elevation data along the way. Definitely a nice tool to have on the trail!