Fathers Day and Summer Solstice in the High Sierras

Dad and I went hiking in Donner Pass on Father's Day. This year, Father's Day was also the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year and the traditional start of Summer.

I cooked us breakfast, then we drove up the mountain to our usual parking spot, but we took the less traveled path and climbed through a couple tunnels under Interstate 80 and up the mountain. Thankfully it was shaded and a breezy day so I wasn't scorched by the weather and brilliant sun. I wore my indiana jones hat, raybans, and good sunscreen and long sleeves, which was a good call because the breeze was icy despite the brilliant sun.

After a short climb up a slope we were in this lovely green meadow. Meadows are what happens to a lake after it gets filled in, btw. Don't you wish you lived somewhere this stunning? 

After a bit more hiking around we came out onto a slope carved by glaciers, all exposed granite and brush eking out a living in what passes for soil in a place where it is covered in snow for 5 months a year. Low temps drastically retard the growth of soil bacteria, which break down sand into clays and other soil materials you need to support life. As a geologist I know all about these processes and I still marvel at its beauty. 

In the winter, these trees would be covered in snow or hounded by the wind screaming through Donner Pass. Only the really tough trees resist the elements, and eventually they fall over, or the bark beetle kills them. 

That distant little lake is one we walked around on the way up the mountain. On the map, the lakes look huge but in reality they just aren't. The maps are flat, and don't show you the hills you're climbing, or how the thin air at 7500 feet elevation slows you down, or even causes altitude sickness, which is a kind if headache which can lead to migraine, brain hemorrhage and eventual death. 

Summit Lake is neither big nor deep. Its more like a pond, and around 200 yards long and 100 yards across. We ate lunch there. 

These large green plants are called Corn Lillies. They are deadly poison, but they live in the wet areas of the high Sierras, like this meadow. As long as you don't try to eat them, they are fine. 

This slope of granite was polished by glaciers and contains enormous boulders dropped by the retreating ice. These flowers are blooming because it is still "spring" up there and winter will come soon enough. The high Sierra still gets some frosts, even in the summer. Donner Pass is about 20 miles from Lake Tahoe, if you weren't aware, and about 60 miles from Reno. It is about 90 minutes from Sacramento, depending on traffic, and 60 minutes from where I live. 

We had a nice hike on Summit Lake Trail at Donner Pass. Boots and half a gallon of water and sunscreen and a big floppy brimmed hat are recommended. Bring your camera for this one. There's so much to photograph up there. Even the creeks that suddenly appear in the cracks of the rock are still running despite the drought. The Sierras are a resilient place. 

Parts Unknown

I have been watching episodes of Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain. It is a foodie travel show, with post-modern narration by chef Bourdain and camera work by CNN, of all things. Some of the places he goes I'm not very interested in, like Libya, but Montreal? That was fascinating. So was Tokyo at night, and Colombia, and I've really enjoyed watching his visit to Spain. It doesn't make me want to go there particularly, but it does save the trouble and the best part about travel, besides new vistas, is the food. I am a foodie, but I cook so I can afford to be. And not everything I see him eat are things I'd want to eat, myself. I'm not terribly excited about eating identifiable organ meat, for instance. And large chunks of black truffle? That's food for snobs, for showing off. Human beings eat food that is both tasty and affordable. I'm way more interested in that steamed bun made with pike meat and served with a cream sauce. And the sausages without the nasty non-meat inside, those looked tasty. That's pretty interesting to see foods worth eating, served in ways I'm reasonably sure I can make for myself. Just no Beaujolais. That is "fresh" wine, unoaked, and tastes like rocket fuel. Beaujolais will get you drunk, but gives a fierce hangover and is only drunk by tourists who don't know better. No wine before its time!

Once more, I appreciate the collection of cookbooks at my library. Those plus the ebullient praise of Bourdain for the cheerful chefs showing off, I like that.

Tahoe

Went bicycling along the Truckee River on Sunday. Nice weather, very sunny and bright, not too crowded along the trail mainly because Lake Tahoe is low, about 10 feet low.

Lake Tahoe, 10 feet low from Drought

Since the rafting company runs when the lake is high enough to time the water releases for Reno with their hours of operation, and the lake isn't high enough, the rafting company is shut down this summer. This is sad, and irritating since the news claimed that the rains last month had refilled the lake. Liars. This is a couple feet lower than it was last summer, btw. 

So the river is pretty low too, more like a stream, but there's some water moving through. Without the rafters, there's less attention. I noticed that Squaw Valley (not Olympic Valley, Google Earth) is running its summer program. They had teenagers on bicycles and running, because training for triathlons is a good move at the altitude of Lake Tahoe. You are short of air, so you adapt and when you come back to sea level you go extra fast. 

Everybody with a convertible is running them with the top down right now. Especially in the morning. The upside of hot places is you can own a convertible and use it in the morning, or after sunset, and its very nice then. Its not great at noon, but people get used to the heat in California or they move somewhere else. I exercise in the mornings, myself, though today I walked closer to noon and boy was it hot when I wasn't in the shade. Shade and breeze make it bearable, but only just. It is 93'F and pretty close to as hot as it will get today. 

I am glad that El Nino is going to throw more weather into America again. This is another hurricane that is shattering in Mexico, off of Acapulco. It is expected to add to the flooding in Texas. The storms will also bring tornadoes into the Midwest, again, and more thunderstorms and wildfires into the Rockies, because that's what weather does. Its got nothing to do with people. We just get to witness it. Meh. 

Summer School

So I'm in a hurry to finish my Library technology degree in order to enter Masters degree program at San Jose State University. You do that in order to become a proper Librarian. As a male person in a field dominated by sexist women and angry lesbians, this is a serious challenge. Fortunately, they got more volunteers at the local library so won't need me on Tuesdays anymore. I was covering for some vacations for the last few weeks, but they're back now. So I can focus on my summer classes, which require a lot of reading. Thankfully, because of blogging, I've gotten quite good at composing essays, which is the main trouble for most students of online classes.

The 24 hours at LeMans is today, starting at noon French time and running until noon Sunday. It is in the dark right now. The prototype hybrids are amazingly quick. They race about 5-6 classes of cars at LeMans. It is amusing to note that the track itself, in the town of LeMans, is called Le Circuit de la Sarthe, which was NOT named for Jean Paul Sartre, famous existentialist philosopher. The race is very interesting, but it is a serious endurance race and its more intense than I can maintain interest for more than an hour at a time.

I continue to be genuinely amazed at the quality of Terry Pratchett's writing. I wish I could write like that, without actually copying him. I suspect what I need to do is look up American humorists like Samuel Clemens and include them in my books rather than the English ones that Pratchett uses. Pratchett was also able to take advantage of the various and sundry accents which grew over 2000 years of invasions and occupations of Britain. The USA only has about 500 years of invasions and we don't have enough stable populations, stuck in one place, to develop accents. The last century has lost most of them, thanks to radio, telephone, and television. This is unfortunate, since it turns out that making people live close together makes us want to kill each other, not sing Kum Bay Yah. Who knew?

We are having ribs for dinner tonight. I have baked a cake, and will be making cornbread after the ribs are done in a couple hours. The ribs are NOT precooked ones, so you have to wrap them in foil and cook slow for 2-3 hours, which is really a bare minimum. It is going to stick in our teeth. Good news is that I got Mirror Pond Pale Ale from Deschutes Brewery near Bend Oregon, a pale ale which in California we would not feel wrong to call an IPA, or India Pale Ale. It is tasty, though.

I have been thinking that when I start writing actual prose for Jeff's Luck, which is the working title for my novel about Jefferson State, I plan to include mention of Narrativium, something invented by Pratchett 30 years ago. It explains why certain cliche things happen so they can be mocked.

Oh, and its 98'F here.

Rain

So it was super hot a couple days ago. 100'F. Summer, ya know?

Yesterday we had 30 mph winds all afternoon, up out of the Valley, from the Southwest.

Last night, right around the time I was ready to head off to bed, it started raining. The rain came from a Tropical Storm named Blanca, which formed off of Baja California (Mexico) and broke up, spinning off its energy into storms that surged into California and Arizona, before curving up through Nevada and then came down from the East, despite the wind that had been blowing from the West. Picture that. It rained all night. It has rained all day, though the rain, such as it is, is very light. Its more like its dripping. I went for a walk this morning and didn't get wet, that's how far apart the drops are.

As I predicted, this is El Nino weather. I expect there will be more storms like this. El Nino makes it easier for Tropical Storms to form by warming the waters north of the Equator. Those storms shatter as they move up the coast towards me, and then they surge as a Monsoon into Arizona and the Mojave desert down south of me. I expect a lot more of these storms this summer. And I expect the rains this Fall to start early, in late August, and dump 100 inches, because that's what happens in historic droughts here in California. Every time. You can count on it.

Indifference and Summer Heat

You may have noticed that I didn't post much over the last six months. I've been busy with my schoolwork. Its been a lovely spring, and I've hiked up to four times a day. Wonderful exercise. The lovely weather would peak around 75'F every day. You can go around in short sleeves, and a wool overshirt in the morning is fine. Or it was.

Last week ended with the high schools all graduating. They hold this early in the morning because summers here are HOT. This week the weather shifted into Top Gear and it was 100'F yesterday. The low temp overnight is 72'F. That's not very chilly. Miserable, really, but there's upsides. You can get up before dawn and its 72'F, which means you can go for a walk with shorts, sandals, Hawaiian shirt, and its all good.

Some of my neighbors have motor scooters. They are riding them too. Around here a 150-cc is a good idea. A 49-cc just makes noise while moving at a walking pace when they come to a hill. In the road, that gets you run over, or at least honked at. More rich people buy scooters. Poor people buy used cars, can't fix them, suffer with the costs of low MPG fuel. Nice weather for riding, though.

There is a tropical storm off the Mexican coast that ripped itself apart, as they do, and its sending its weather up here. Its sweaty out. 40% humidity. Big thunderstorms just off of Santa Cruz, coming this way. The kind that cause a thousand lightning strikes and nail the dry forests with enough energy to make big fires. Its no fun trying to put those out in the midst of more of that weather. But its something that happens. As I'd expected, hurricanes are bringing summer thunderstorms, and that's what happens in an El Nino year. El Nino, which long predates humans burning anything. So not caused by us, and proof that global warming is a scam. Oh well. People are gullible and religious. I will continue to enjoy these mornings.

Top Gear Season 17, Episode 5: Driving a Lotus F1 Car

A wonderful piece about how unnerving it is to drive an ultralight, ultrapowerful, extreme tires, F1 car.