Hiking in Pinnacles National Park leads to many great views such as this panorama taken from the center of the park. The climb up here has some interesting steps carved in the rock along the way, and once you complete those you can look back on the trail that got you here in the center of the frame.
This steep set of stairs on the high and narrow trail in Pinnacles National Park is a good reminder to keep on climbing up and up in the new year!
I started off the new year with a great hike at a place that is close to home but new to me, Pinnacles National Park. An afternoon hike led us from green valleys to high peaks, through talus caves and right over these rock pinnacles where it looked like there couldn’t possibly be a trail at all. A great adventure to start a new year!
I was expecting a view of San Francisco from here, but I wasn’t expecting the dramatic layer of fog below me. It really separated the elevations, and completely blocked out the ocean for most of this hike.
November sometimes means watching the landscape go from green to white. Here, the rain allows what was brown to turn to green. I hiked Mount Tamalpais to get my fill of the lush foliage that grows in the canyons.
The trail on the left was the start of a very long but very rewarding day of hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back. It might look like daylight in this picture, but the sun had just come up on the other side of the ridge to reveal this view.
I just wanted to go for a hike on a nice spring day, but this trail looked like it wanted to take me all the way up into the sky.
The hike to Lake Margaret is a great way to escape the heat of the valley. I extended the hike by taking the short scamper to a peak above the lake to get this panorama. The sun shining down through the clouds made the Tahoe sky come alive. It is always worth the extra effort for the view from the top!
I started the descent into the Grand Canyon in near total darkness. That wasn’t much fun, but it did mean that I was able to see the sunrise from many angles on the way down!
I recently hiked the Grand Canyon and spent some time in the Southwest, so this blog may have that kind of vibe going on for awhile. After watching the sun set facing the other direction, I went back to this spot. The light seemed flat at first, but also really brought out some of the colors and removed all the shadows that previously darkened many of the details.
