Archive for December 10th, 2009

On a sunny late morning in mid September, I set off towards Bishop’s Peak in San Luis Obispo, which is a decent-sized hill/mountain/whatever featuring a number of trails up, down, and around.  Most start off pretty steeply, then either fall off or, if you’re headed to the peak, almost 1800 feet higher in elevation from the trailhead, just keep going up.

I have not done a lot of steep, sustained hikes lately so I went with a more flat route.  Starting from the Patricia Lane trailhead, I went along Felsman Loop.  This is a bit of up and down, but we’re talking mostly 30 feet from trough to crest so not too hard at all.  Due to time, I cut the loop basically in half by going across the Shady Grove trail, then back down, splitting off to the left when I reached the Cattle Pond to get back to the trailhead.  The pond, by the way, is a dry indentation in the ground.  I wonder when was the last time any cattle actually congregated there.

It’s an easy hike other than the inclines.  Part of the beginning of the loop is even paved, though right after you swing around the Water Tank it feels like you’re trying to circumvent security or something – you’re on a 1′ wide trail that falls off the hill quite steeply to one side, and hugs the fencing on the other.  But indeed it is the trail.

It’s a fairly exposed trail so bring sunscreen and/or a hat, though there are patches of trees that provide some shade.  Overall a nice hike, and one I wish I could have devoted more time to.  I did the loop – Felsman>Shady Grove>Felsman in about 1.5 hours, stopping for pictures along the way.

Giant iceberg heading towards Australia – CNN.com.

This is pretty bonkers.  Not only is the satellite photo that shows the iceberg…kind of boggling, but check out these quotes:

“We pulled out the binoculars that we use for work on the seals and, sure enough, it was a huge floating island of ice

So…they could see it with plain binoculars.  I’m trying to imagine something big enough that I could see that way, that was an iceberg, and not an oil tanker or some other giant ship.  This thing is bigger than Manhattan.

Three years earlier, another family of icebergs led to a small tourist boom when they drifted along the east coast of New Zealands South Island.

Of all the reasons to go to New Zealand…