What it might have looked like had we taken a picture

I was graciously invited by Doug Vannier, a local podcaster and fellow San Diego hiker, to be a guest on his comedy podcast, 347 Steps. We had been emailing back and forth for a while, talking about potential dates and hikes.

Since they record on weekday evenings, it’s hard for me to get away. And timing a hike together just didn’t seem to jive. Finally, we were able to get me out to Northpark, where the studio is located.

When I arrived, I met Thom, whose garage is the studio for the podcast. I also met his adorable kids and pet praying mantises (the spelling is correct, I checked it), who were munching on crickets. I should clarify: the mantises were eating crickets; the kids were not.

We hung out a bit and they let me open a bottle of wine, which turned out to be pretty good, and we proceeded to head out into the garage to set up their professional “sound-proof” recording studio, which consists of a fold-up table, some mics, and a four track.

Then I met Lee, who is training for Half Dome for a wedding. We did the podcast in sections, stopping to record each section and chatting in between. It was hard to remember what part of the conversation was recorded or not, since I felt we just chatted away. The guys were curious about hiking and asked me many questions on and off-mic.

The 347 Steps guys are funny and friendly. They’ve spent a lot of time creating a podcast that doesn’t really net them any money, and they’ve been doing it a long time. My episode is 174. Yes, it’s been around for that long.

It was a fun and  interesting experience and I felt like I made some new friends. Doug and I will definitely go hiking in the future.

347 Steps in iTunes

Question for you: If I started a podcast, say perhaps an hour a month, about San Diego outdoors events, organizations, recounting hiking experiences, local athletes, with the PD and me, would you be interesting in listening to it?

Granite Summit of Long Valley Peak

Long Valley Peak
Elevation: 4,833′
Total Mileage: ~5

Trailhead Map (32.81667, -116.53275)

I was initially planning on hiking Palomar Mountain on this day, but, at the 11th hour, literally, I decided on something with a little less distance and gain. Besides, it’s a long drive to Palomar and I wanted to get in more hiking time.

I had seen Long Valley Peak from my hike to Corte Madera and Los Pinos Lookout and other hikes. It looked massive and challenging. It appeared to be capped with granite and surrounded by brush. Not the easiest place to get up.

The PD and I are training for a hiking trip to Colorado, so we wanted to get some distance in. We drove to the trailhead that is right next to the Interstate 8 freeway. I knew my car could probably drive to within half a mile to the summit of Long Valley Peak, but I wanted the hiking experience and training, so we parked there and got out.

Myself, taking a photo on a windy peak

Last week, a day after I hiked Boucher Hill, I passed the two year mark. It’s been two years since I saw the San Diego Sierra Club’s List and decided I wanted to hike them all and write a guidebook about it. It’s been two years since I hiked Iron Mountain for the first time, excited at my newly-found fitness, running the entire way down.

I had hoped to be farther along that I am. But in other ways, I am exactly where I want to be. I’ve been asked by many what I plan to do after I complete all 100 peaks. Most of the time my answer is, “There are a lot more than 100 peaks in San Diego.” But in other ways, I have loftier goals.

This site nets me no money. I hope to change that somehow, not by endless advertising, but offering my readers something of value. Something useful. I am not sure in what shape, besides my book, that it will be, but it’s bound to be something.

Barn in Daley Ranch

Be on the lookout for some changes to the site to be coming up over the next several weeks. What is live now is a new Peak List, which is a sortable table that indicates whether or not a peak is in the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter Hundred Peaks Section (HPS), the San Diego Sierra Club’s One Hundred Peaks List (SDC) or whether or not I’ve created a Google Earth trail map for that particular hike.

I intend to have maps for all the hikes, so that column will go away once I am up to date.

The next minor thing is that I’ve numbered the icons on my Peaks Map to correspond with the Peak Numbers.

What’s to come:

• Creating information pages for all the agencies associated with the areas that contain each peak.
• Creating links or portfolio views to Flickr Sets for each trip report, so that higher res pics can be seen.
• Cleaning up older, more sparse, trip reports and making sure there are links to the trailhead and maps. I will also add any new pictures I’ve taken since I’ve been there.
• Working on my backlog of gear reviews, non-profit organization summaries, list of parks and recreation areas throughout the county
• Creating a list and map of my non-San Diego Peaks, and hikes, such as my trips to Mount Whitney, Ka’ala Peak on Oahu, San Jacinto Peak, and other peaks I’ve summited over the years.
• Creating a Tips Page, for hiking and camping tips. I’ve learned a lot and have made a lot of mistakes that others can avoid.
• Fleshing out my About page, containing more information about what I am doing, where I got my peak list, and what I consider a peak.

I am hoping to be summiting more peaks over the next few weeks, so these trip reports will be on the way, as well.

The weather has finally heated up and I hope you are all getting some time on the trails. As always, I love to get comments, even on really old posts.

As some of you know, it’s hard for me to find time to hit all the peaks quickly, as my schedule is pretty dynamic. I often am not sure I am going to be hiking until the night before. Hopefully that will change soon.

I hope to see you on the trail!

-Derek

Gut Check's King of the Hill Series

Since the start of the New Year, I started up my exercise routine. Rather than a weekly hike (ideally), and an occasional 3-mile jog from my house, I started working out again with the incredible people at Gut Check Fitness.

This has required me to get up early (5:15AM) to the point that I can no longer sleep in on weekends. While my body has been feeling stronger, and often sore, I realized this weekend that there’s a lot left to do.

I participated in Gut Check Fitness’ King of the Hill Series race, the first of which ran up and down Woodson Mountain from Lake Poway. I had an arbitrary goal of two hours, which I met, but along the way, I didn’t feel as strong as I should have. Also, I bonked in the last half mile of the race. It didn’t help that the last stretch was a steep uphill to the finish line, coupled with 10 burpee pushups before the final climb. I felt dizzy and nauseous, something I don’t often feel when being active.

I am happy that I finished the race and I wasn’t dead last. Understandably, I just re-started my new fitness regimen, but my performance really let me know that I could be doing a lot more. And I was doing a lot more before I hurt my back a year and a half ago. The pain still nags me and it really flared up while ascending Woodson Mountain this weekend. The downhill was easier, but I still ran out of steam near the end.

The PD, atop Ant Benchmark

Many of you have asked on numerous occasions, “Who is the PD?” I’ve decided to dedicate this blog post just to him. Some of it might be true. Or not.

Sophia on the trail

Tomorrow, I am going to be participating in my first triathlon in 8 years. It’s only a sprint, but it is still a triathlon. I would like to say that the training has been keeping me away from hiking, but it has been life that’s been doing it. This summer, I started a new job, went hiking to Mount Whitney, took the family to Yosemite, and now I’m doing this triathlon. I’ve gotten some San Diego hiking in, but not to the level that I was doing it before.

On one hand, I am really excited about this triathlon tomorrow. On the other hand, I am happy to have it done. I want to clear my weekends for hiking, now that the weather will start to cool down. I want to camp in Anza Borrego and bag multiple peaks over a weekend.

There’s a lot of things I’d like to do, but there’s only so many hours in a day. And when it comes down to it, I like to spend it with my family. My daughter won’t always be two years old and my time with my wife and daughter are precious. It will be a while before the little one will be old enough to bushwhack desert peaks with me.

So every day, I balance work, family, and my overwhelming desire to get out hiking. And I am having a blast doing it.

More blog posts to come, soon. I promise.

Ocotillo on the way to Villager Peak

Every year around this time, people start wanting to know if the wildflowers in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park have started blooming yet. After all, much of the park is about a 2-hour drive from most of the county and people want to know if the drive for a day-trip will be fruitful.

From what I understand, the bloom is about to be upon us. We are expecting some more rain in the park on Saturday, but the weather report indicated that Sunday, February 28th will be beautiful.

The bloom is starting right now, with a great amount in the coming week or so and should last in various forms until April. Reserve your lodging as soon as possible, since March tends to be the park’s busiest month.

The website that I always check is the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association (ABDNHA). They regularly update their observations of the wildflower bloom situation and include recent pictures and descriptions, as well as current locations of blooming flowers.

Another resource is the Wildflower Telephone Hotline at 760-767-4684.

If you head out there, be prepared for wide weather and temperature fluctuations, lots of wind, bring plenty of water, and make sure your vehicle is sufficiently fueled, for the service stations can be few and far between.

I am not sure if I am going to be able to get out there for the peak of the blooming, but I hope you do.

Update 02/25/2010: The Anza-Borrego Desert State Park page updated their information about the Wildflowers and included a map. Scroll to the bottom and click on the PDF, or you can get it below:

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Wildflower Map (PDF – 1.71MB)

The site was down for a few days while I upgraded my hosting plan through my host, Aplus.net. Through a comedy of errors on both our parts, the entire site got wiped out, since WordPress relies on a database to manage all the posts.

However, due to the dilligence and regular backups at Aplus.net, everything got sorted out. I had to repost my Lawson and Gaskill Peaks trip report and I lost some comments.

Which is a shame. Because the comments on my posts really motivate me to do better at this.

This quest for 100 peaks and book-writing has been challenging. I’ve had to refine my gear selection, and learn about a lot of things, including:

- Social Media and all the platforms available (Twitter, Flickr, Panoramio, Picasaweb, Facebook, Vimeo, YouTube, etc.)
- Shooting and editing photos and video (Well, I knew how to do this already, but now I shoot more video than I used to).
- Being a spokesperson and advocate for the outdoors, encouraging people to get outside and enjoy the wilderness.
- Promoting stewardship of the lands that we enjoy.
- Helping local and out-of-town people maximize their outdoors experience in San Diego.
- WordPress ins and outs, including blog, photo, video, html, javascript, css, rss, plugin, widget, subscription, categories, post tags, SEO optimization, affiliate accounts, and database management.
- How to attract and manage followers and offer people a way to follow my posts.
- Follow and research local and worldwide outdoors news and trends.

And the list goes on. In addition to all of this, there is the fun part: actually researching trails and peaks, and getting outside and hiking them. Having a small child makes getting outside more difficult than it used to be, but where there is a will, there is a way. I am hoping to be a role model for her and stoke her interest in the outdoors.

In the coming months, I am aiming to include a lot more trip reports, but also highlight local land conservation trusts and volunteer programs, as well as adding park profiles to the San Diego Parks page. I am aiming for this site to be the place to go for San Diego Outdoors information. I will also be posting retro trip reports from past world-wide trips, more gear reviews, and general San Diego Outdoor News.

If you are ever hoping to see something specific here, please let me know and I will do my best to get it here. Once again, your comments are most welcome and thank you for reading.

If you’d ever like to support me in some way, head on over to My Gear page and see if there is something you’d like. In addition, I also have some 100 Peaks items on my Cafepress page that would help defray some of the costs of this endeavor.

Another thank you to the folks at Aplus.net for coming through for me. They host websites at a really reasonable price and their service and support has been great over the years. Tell them Derek at 100peaks.com sent you.

I hope to see you on the trail!

-Derek

The view from Black Mountain

On New Years Day, like most people, I tend to reflect upon the past year and on the year ahead and this year was no different. Another tradition is to get outside. In previous years, I hiked Woodson Mountain, went fishing at Lake Poway, and in 2009 I took a day trip to the snow in Idyllwild.

This year, we went to Hilltop Community Park in Rancho Penasquitos. It is a park that I have been going to lately because my daughter likes to play there. While there, I decided to make a quick trip up Black Mountain with the PD and TN.

I had a bit of the flu a couple of days leading up to New Years Day, but I felt  fine this day. The weather was incredible, compared to the rest of the country. I was happy to encounter a lot of people on the trail, and changed my usual “hello” to “Happy New Year.” I was so impressed by a woman who was obviously training for something intense by running up and down Black Mountain 3 times for a total of around 20 miles that I applauded her as she lapped me a second time.