Sky's Blog

It has been my plan to make several trips into the Yosemite wilderness this summer in order to visit some places I’ve never seen before. Most tourists have seen Yosemite “Valley” and many have seen Tuolumne Meadows. Access to the wilderness areas is controlled by a “permitting” process that limits the number of people who may enter on a wilderness trailhead each day. There are a couple dozen trailheads, and they have quotas of one to two dozen camper-hikers per day per trailhead. Once you’re into the wilderness area, you can pretty much go where you desire, as long as you have the energy and the food. (continue reading…)

Since the age of 6, when I visited Estes Park, Colorado, whenever I see any geographical feature more than say 100 meters above me, I climb it. (Provided it’s not a technical climb.) If I can get there without hanging by my fingertips, I go.

Summits On The Air [SOTA] is an organization that operates mostly in Europe and the US, which encourages amateur radio operation from mountain peaks. In many areas these are really just large hills, but here the western mountains of the US, we have many hundreds of peaks that are truly mountains and not just high spots. (continue reading…)

danah boyd explores the question does work/life balance exist? in a recent Apophenia blog post. (I’ve entitled this article “*/* balance” because “*” [pronounced "star"] in programming terms means “fill-in-whatever-you-want,” so “star/star” balance might stand for work:life balance, or work:fun balance or work:family or whatever your particular thing is. Her blog post was triggered by this New York Times article In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop. You might also call the article, as they suggest, Death by Blogging.

I have always contended that my method in life was to avoid “work” in favor of something that I enjoy doing. And for me, enjoying means not only that I’m happy, but that I make some sizeable contribution to the welfare of humanity at the same time. So when I label something work, I am referring to something that I really don’t want to do, but have to do for some reason.

And people have always said to me “you’re always working.” But, I actually don’t do very much that I’d classify as work by my definition. I’m fanatically dedicated to what I do, but it’s more often not really work.

So let me say more about balance… (continue reading…)

Yosemite — “Half Dome” — July 2007

Ah, the halcyon days of summer end in a few days (northern hemisphere) and now it’s time to chronicle all the fun we had. As I mentioned briefly in late July, we trekked about 65 miles (100+ km, with heavy packs) from Yosemite Valley down into Ansel Adams Wilderness where we spent the better part of two days, and then back over Red Peak Pass, which we had attempted unsuccessfully twice before (2003 and 2006 – bailed out because of too much snow remaining all summer long).

My neice, Merri, is down under (Australia, for a university semester) and being a suburban girl (Fairfax County VA) she is experiencing for the first time the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef, uncrowded beaches and scuba diving. How many of you are city folk? My annual summer treks into the Yosemite Wilderness help keep me fit and sane, and I would think that any city folk would want to do this too.

Rather than treat you to paragraph after paragraph of text, why not just look at the photos and accompanying commentary?

The Crew — July 2007 — That sun is really bright!