On a recent hike around Shoreline, caught a view of Google HQ from the weeds:
Of course the Google-plex has its share of parking lots, but maybe more interesting is the alternate transportation. Over the hill lounge the shuttle buses, waiting to take the Googlers home.
Further down the bay are the NASA blimp hangers, in process of restoration by Google execs in exchange for parking spots for their personal jets.
This year’s Beaver Creek trip was tamer than usual as I am recovering from injury. In fact, it wound up being as much swimming as skiing:
So rather than ski the mega-steeps, I got to photograph them from afar. Here is The Brink – the steep run on the top right – a favorite from last year.
Its was tough (sarc): 11 inches of new snow on my birthday and I had to ski green groomers. At least the cake was good!
I’d forgotten how steep the runs are at Beaver Creek.
Its tough to give you a good perspective, except to say that some folks go off The Brink with a parachute!
Winter fun in Summit County Colorado! As we watched from the living room window over the course of a week, Lake Dillon froze. (We also got out for a little skiing.)
Woke up to a beautiful morning on a day that’s predicted to get hot. Nice to ride by Crystal Springs reservoir where it is often more than five degrees cooler than the surrounding areas.
Henry Coe State Park is a rare and precious combination of wild lands on the doorstep of a major metropolitan area. Its been one of my favorite places since a backpacking trip deep in the park when a rottweiler-sized cat came down to the stream across from camp to get a drink…and ran once it realized people were about. Watching the big cat drink was a wonderful sight to behold — and not one I’d particularly expect to see at park headquarters.
Unfortunately, our access to Henry Coe State Park is threatened by the CA budget crisis withdrawing funding for state parks. I’m not only concerned about not being able to use Coe — I’m also worried that a closed park is less likely to be preserved as it becomes an easier target for development.
SOS is an organization committed to keeping our state parks open. They have called for a show of support for the parks in the form of visiting a state park sometime on the weekend of June 20-21, 2009 and taking photos of ourselves with banners for a video they are producing.
I plan to be at Henry Coe State Park Headquarters to take the photos and I want you to join in. Everyone is welcome for the photo.
Henry Coe State Park HQ is off 101 near Morgan Hill, 60mins from Redwood City. Click for general directions. Click for google map The HQ has restrooms and drinking water available.
If you want to be photographed with a sign, you can print your favorite of the signs on the SOS Weekend page. If enough people RSVP by Thursday 6/18 to say they’ll be there, I’ll have a larger banner made up.
If you would like to coordinate carpools, feel free to leave comments on this post. Please understand that this website is open to the public and I won’t necessarily know everyone who comments. I’m already in a carpool down and will meet y’all there.
We do plan to hike after the photos. If you’d like to hike too, please bring water, decent shoes, snack/lunch and your sense of personal responsibility. This isn’t an organized event, but I’m happy to have new friends and acquaintances share the trail.
Hope to see you Saturday!
(Henry Coe photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nkinkade/)
Gorgeous spring day for a hike up Windy Hill. Here’s a couple nice shots.
Great 7 mile hike yesterday up to Eagle Rock in Little Basin for Sempervirens.
Thanks to Emmanuelle for leading the way.
Check out Rick’s awesome photos by clicking here.
Here’s a few shots I took along the way:
Joe spotted Venus in daylight.
As you can see from the logo on the signs at the entry, Little Basin used to be Hewlett-Packard’s corporate retreat. They sold it to Sempervirens and POST, who must foot the bill until California can afford the gift of Little Basin as an extension of Big Basin state park. Meanwhile, its open to HP, Sempervirens and POST.
The thing I like best about hiking with Sempervirens is all the neat people I meet. If you would like to join us on a hike, click here. Please consider joining in the preservation of these very special redwood forests.
Here’s a few photos from my last ski trip of the season. Spring break in Heavenly started out with a huge storm on Sunday Mach 22. It dumped over 18″ of powder. I was too busy skiing to take photos. Not much visibility that day anyway. The good snow did last through the week, but was about skiied off by the time I got around to pulling my camera out. The clear skies made for spectacular views of the lake.
Trying out the new QuickPress feature in WordPress 2.7.1. by uploading some favorite ski pics from the last trip. These two were taken on the Dipper Line run under the Dipper Express chair at Heavenly ski resort in South Lake Tahoe. The bottom one is a view of the very calm lake from the top of the Nevada side of the resort.
Updated 04/03/09: Turns out that leaving the pics unsized wrecked the formating with some browsers. Should be fixed now.