Road Trip

We took the opportunity of the winter break to travel around in California. Below our trip scheme and of course links to some pictures!

Tuesday, Dec. 21 -- We drove down to San Diego with a "short" stop in Pasadena (where we lived for one month two years ago when Go was at Caltech). We had supper at the famous Islands burger restaurant in the paseo of Pasadena.

Wednesday, Dec. 22 -- After visiting the Salk Institute, we walked along La Jolla's cove before going back to San Diego. We stopped at Old San Diego Town: a square of old houses which looks like a false town for tourists (Go was really disappointed)... Still I wanted to go to Heritage Park where old Victorian houses have been moved to avoid destruction. We finished the day in Downtown San Diego, walked around and had dinner in "Little Italy".

Thursday, Dec. 23 -- We visited the San Diego Zoo! They were three magical hours: we saw gorillas, polar bears, pandas, etc. in a wonderful environment.
We arrived at Joshua Tree Park at the end of the afternoon and chose the Ryan campground to set up our tent! Campgrounds in this park are really nice. The weather was quite cold and windy but we managed to eat in front of the fire which kept us warm. During the night, we were awakened by coyote screams...

Friday, Dec. 24 -- While I was still asleep, Go watched the sunrise... After breakfast, we packed our camping gear and searched a while for "Echo Cove" (a climbing spot). We finally found it and Go climbed one route. It was then time to drive to Death Valley which we reached 4 hours later at about 7 pm. The campground was not as nice as the one in Joshua Tree Park... However we had a wonderful Christmas eve: steak and marinated chicken on the barbecue with salad and potatoes, marshmallows as dessert :-)

Saturday, Dec. 25 -- We phoned our parents to wish them a Happy Christmas. It was not so easy to convert dollar bills into quarters but we made it... We drove around in Death Valley and walked a bit in Titus Canyon which is quite impressive. You really have to be nearby to see the entrance!
We decided to quit Death Valley by the Northern entrance and drive through Nevada before heading West to reach Big Pine. The view on the Sierra Nevada was worthwhile but we almost ran out of gas... :-S Three towns were indicated on the map but they turned out to be tiny villages: a couple of houses and no gas station...
We arrived in Lee Vining (near Mono Lake) to discover that this was also a small village and all the restaurants were closed for Christmas! We ate our lunch leftovers in the hotel room.

Sunday, Dec. 26 -- After having a nice breakfast (cereal and French toast) in a real American cafe, we drove to Tioga Pass Gate where the staff of Tioga Pass Resort was waiting for us to take our bags. We met Sharad and Juliane with whom we hiked to Tioga Pass Resort. We discovered a nice resort, a lodge (with a huge stove) surrounded by several cabins. The staff was really nice and the cook really good! Nothing to compare with Swiss huts! We had two hours of great backcountry skiing that afternoon.

Monday, Dec. 27 -- It was snowing and Tim, an American Alpine guide, proposed a "beacon clinic". We learned a lot from him! After lunch, we went for a ski tour but the snow wasn't as nice as the day before and we didn't see much because of the fog.
I played Scrabble after dinner with other hosts and I managed to do quite well even if it was in English ;-)

Tuesday, Dec. 28 -- Last day of the holiday. It didn't stop snowing during the night and the staff advised us to go as soon as possible because of the growing avalanche risk... We skied down to the car with Sharad and Juliane (with a short ride in/on the snowcat to pass the risky sections) and found the car half buried in the snow ;-) I am exaggerating a little but not that much: check the pictures :-)
It was a long drive back to the Bay Area because a lot of passes are closed during winter and you have to go further North. It was snowing or raining all the time but we drove safely back home.

That was it. Hope you are still reading this long post ;-) Happy New Year!

MC

PS: Here's a high resolution version of the "Pele-Mele"

Snow, snow and more snow

It has been a loooong day, but we made it back to our apartment in Mountain View. This morning we were still at about 10,000 feet (3,000m) at the Tioga Pass Resort. As forecasted it had been snowing all night long and it was still snowing in the morning. The staff of the resort advised us to move out as soon as possible because the avalanche danger would increase rapidly. We started on skis then the resort snowcat took us past the dangerous section (Marie-Catherine and Juliane inside the cabin and Sharad and me outside :-S). We skied the last section back down to the car.

We then had to dig out the car, put on the chains, and go. We drove about 150 miles with the chains (we had to go over several passes above 7,000 feet and even 8,000 feet).

Our stay at the Tioga Pass Resort was really nice even if we didn't ski that much. We had the opportunity to take a free "beacon clinic" (i.e. practicing to retrieve an avalanche beacon buried under the snow) with an American Alpine Institute guide!

That's it for tonight!

Go & MC

Joshua Tree (one picture)

Just one nice picture and a very short message.

We are currently in Lee Vining and in 15 minutes we have to be at the end of the road to go to the Tioga Pass Resort. Currently there's not too much snow but apparently there is a storm moving in tonight :-S ... So we don't know if we'll be able to do some backcountry skiing tomorrow, and the people from the Tioga Pass Resort told us we might not be able to get down on Tuesday! We'll see, it should be fun anyway.

Have to go now!

See you,

Go & MC

Short post from San Diego

Hi !

We are currently in San Diego! Yesterday we drove about 520 miles all the way down from Mountain View with a short stop in Ventura and Pasadena (Los Angeles). This morning after having breakfast on Pacific Beach, we visited the Salk Institute: a biological research center founded by Doctor Salk (developper of the polio vaccine). As stated on their website "The Salk Institute campus [designed by Louis Kahn] represents a unique blend of form and function". We have been impressed by its original architecture...
We then walked around in the Old San Diego city and in downtown. Tomorrow we will go to the zoo before driving to Joshua Tree Park: we'll camp there for one night. The day after we'll camp in Death Valley before going to the Tioga Pass (Yosemite) where we'll do some backcountry skiing.

More when we will have another Internet connection ;-)

Happy Christmas to everyone!

Go & MC

Mountain Biking in the Bay Area

This WE, we went back to Santa Cruz for another mountain bike ride! On Friday night, we browsed the mountain bike guide Go received from Bruno for his birthday (once more thanks a lot Bruno, it's maybe the guide we used most since we arrived). In the index we searched for a "good winter ride", as it had been raining a lot last week... We found the "Forest of Nisene, Out-and-Back" near Santa Cruz. At the end of the ride's description, the guide reads: "If you can't stand out-and-backs," --yep, that's us-- "don't mind riding the road (12 miles)," --nope, that's okay-- "have strong stamina," --we'll do what we can-- "try this beautiful 30-mile loop: From Aptos Creek Road head west on Soquel Drive [...] Enjoy 13 miles of downhill on Aptos Creek Fire Road back to the start." After these last few words, we were totally convinced by the ride (even if it was much longer than the rides we had done previously).

So on Saturday morning we loaded the bikes and drove to Santa Cruz. While it was cloudy in Mountain View, the sky was perfectly blue on the other side of the hills! After dropping Gaetanelle in Santa Cruz we drove the last few miles until Aptos, parked the car, reassembled the bikes... and "top, c'est parti!" ;-)

I won't tell you the whole ride in details (maybe next time)... only a few facts:
it was a beautiful day -- the temperature was about 20 degrees Celsius -- the ride was long and hard: 48.5km, 1000m of positive denivelee (with one 700m continuous climb) -- the 20km downhill section was lot's fun (but it seemed like it would never arrive, as the climb went on and on) -- we made it ;-) (with an average speed of 15km/h, not too bad).

We'll try to upload the pictures we took (only a few) and edit a short movie pretty soon.

Go

Yole in California: The Movie ;-)

I finally managed to finish editing the little movie of Yole's stay here! It's certainly not the best quality out there but when you know it was filmed using the movie mode on a tiny digital camera (Canon Ixus S30, not a "real" video camera)... I think one can say those little things are getting pretty good!

To make the movie as small as possible while conserving a good quality, I used the DivX compression software. So you'll need to install the DivX "codec" first (download for Mac OS X or Windows 2K/XP). If you could see the previous movie (Election Night), then it is already installed.

There are three versions each at a different resolution... Choose one depending on the time you're prepared to wait:

Low (320x240, 22MB)
Medium (480x360, 40MB)
High (640x480, 106MB)

Click with right button (Mac users will translate this to their own language) and choose "save link as" to save the file on your disk ;-)

Goeric

Skiing at Lake Tahoe

During the Thanksgiving break, we went to Lake Tahoe. It was a "last minute" decision: we found a hotel with a ski package on Wednesday afternoon. After preparing the luggage and our ski gear, we left at about 11am on Thursday. The traffic conditions were relatively bad... of course. We entered Lake Tahoe from the South and drove up along the lake until just before Tahoe City. As forecasted the weather was not very good, but we had already some nice views on the Lake. It was already late in the afternoon when we arrived at the "Granlibakken Resort". We then had a hard time finding an open restaurant on Thanksgiving night. But in the end, we found a nice place in Squaw Village.

On Friday, the sun was shining and we went skiing in Squaw Valley (where the 1960 Olympic Games took place). The snow was really good even if it had been raining the day before. The resort is quite different from what we are used to in the Alps: it's actually a pretty small domain (the highest elevation is 2500m). We were astonished by the fact that some chairlifts don't have a security bar! But we felt quite at home in the Swiss made Funispace ;-)

A snow storm moved in on Saturday morning: when we woke up it was snowing heavily. By the time we finished breakfast there was already 15cm of fresh snow. We walked to Tahoe City to buy chains for the car. Quite an expedition ;-) : we thought it would be more fun to cut through the woods instead of following the main road... It was indeed very funny but only until we had to cross the Truckee river. As Go made it to the other side with a surprise bath in the middle (only up to the thighs), we decided to follow the river (each on his side of the river) until the next bridge: flooootch, floootch, floootch...

On Sunday the sun was shining again but it was cold and windy. We had a very nice skiing day on perfect snow.

The trip back however was not so perfect :-S. We left Squaw Valley at 4pm and arrived in Mountain View 6 hours later...

Goeric and Marie-Catherine