The Eagle’s Nest was a surprise birthday present for Hitler built with Nazi party money. A mountaintop stone retreat built 6,000 feet up, accessible by a gold-plated elevator. It was one of the crown jewels of his empire. And the man was afraid of heights.” – Major Dick Winters, 101st airborne division. Keep reading…
Last month Anna-Lisa and I spent a week and a half in Costa Rica. It’s become habit for us to get out of the valley in November and head somewhere warm as a sort of summer encore before the long winter. This time around the trip also marked our 15 year wedding anniversary so we decided to go a bit more all-out than we usually do and splurge on a pair of nice hotels in two very different areas of the country. When it’s just the two of us, even in a tropical climate we try to get outside every day for some physical activity to try to offset the big dinners and Mai Tais. Not to mention it’s just a fun way to explore new areas. This trip was no different and we did a pretty good job of checking out as many trails as we could in the ten days we were there. Read more…
I reached the trailhead from Big Pine in early afternoon, stowed my extra food in one of the bear boxes, and made the hike on the trail from the backpacker lot. This trail is more scenic than hiking the road, but I can’t think that it is necessarily any faster, as you have to gain maybe a couple hundred feet as the path winds across the hillside, only to drop it all to reach the creek, where the trail splits. On my way out, I took the road. Read more…
After a successful ski of Rainier the day prior, Dylan, Nolan and I packed up and motored down to Trout Lake, a small town between Hood River to the south and the Mt. Adams Wilderness area to the north. With near-perfect weather continuing to hold throughout the weekend and two more climbing days before our flight home, we knew we had a great shot of skiing Mt. Adams and potentially even Mt. Hood. Read more…