Friday, February 1, 2008

Afternoon Hike

I took off from work early yesterday to make up for some of the overtime accrued over the weekend. Instead of heading home and vegging out for the afternoon, I decided to go for a hike to Quartz Mountain (a.k.a. White Spar)

 

There was a few inches of snow on the ground. Wherever there wasn't snow there was plenty of mud to sink my feet into. 5.25 miles round trip, and I got back on the road right as the sun was setting. A great way to spend a winter afternoon!

 

Near the beginning of the trail. Lots of animal tracks, no human tracks (other than behind me):

 

A view from the top of the spar, looking into the area that was destroyed by bark beatles and later by fire:

 

And once you get to the top: a nice treat of fruit leather! It looks like leather, and definitely feels like you are chewing on leather, but the taste is good!

 

A picture of the lumbar pack that accompanies me on every hike I take (it gets stowed inside my bigger pack if it is a longer hike). Other than the camera hanging on there, its all survival goodies inside:

 

 

Once I got back to my truck there was a little 2 wheel drive Isuzu Amigo that got stuck trying to go up a very icy hill, and ended up sideways in the middle of the road. So who was in the vehicle? 6 teenage girls... with no sweatshirts, no water, and very view pairs of real shoes. So I helped get their little vehicle pointed in the right direction and made sure that they got back to town without incident. On the road to Chino this was the view:

 

I need to take more afternoons off!

PHOTOSET

6 comments:

Mike said...

Gorgeous photos Tom. And yeah, I agree that you need to take more afternoons off. Hell, everybody does.

TomboCheck said...

Thanks Mike! It's disgusting how many pictures I take when out on a hike, and how few meet my standards to post to my flickr account. I probably took 50-60 photos yesterday afternoon and only 8 passed QC. I think I need to start lowering my standards. :)

Linda G. said...

Great post Tombo! I love both pictures and words.
Those girls were lucky you were there to help them out!
I've been having a really good time catching up on your previous posts as well:)

Linda G. said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Linda G. said...

Darn! I hit the post button twice!

TomboCheck said...

Thanks SOLB!
Me and DaNece did the same hike yesterday, but with with our big packs (we are trying to get used to carrying weight so we can start backpacking in spring). It was absolutely gorgeous, though there were lots more foot prints this time around. :)