Ever since I came across John Summerson’s ‘The Complete Guide To Climbing (By Bike) In California’ I’ve been dreaming of riding up all the accessible big mountains in California. Whitney Portal, Onion Valley Road, Horseshoe Meadows, White Mountain, Mt. Baldy (a Tour of California classic) the list goes on and on. I bought the first…

St.John in US Virgin Islands has to offer some of the most spectacular beaches with amazing marine life. It is a beach lover’s paradise. The pristine clear waters make snorkeling here an amazing experience. We spent most of our days in St.John snorkeling at Trunk, Maho, Haulover bays to name a few. St.John also has…

Channel Islands form an eight island archipelago off the coast of Los Angeles. Like most Angelenos I was only aware of Catalina Island, Santa Catalina to be more precise, which is visible from most beach cities in Greater Los Angeles metropolitan area and a popular tourist destination. I came to know about the Channel Islands…

Queenstown hill is a short hike over looking the town. As we didn’t take the Gondola ride to Bob’s Peak, we decided to hike the hill instead. The elevation gain was as high and views would be similar. We would only miss out on the luge ride down. Having already hiked a fair amount on…

I hadn’t heard about Doubtful Sound until about 3-4 days prior to visiting it. To be fair, I hadn’t heard about Milford Sound which is an immensely popular tourist destination until I started researching our New Zealand trip. We had planned/booked majority of our New Zealand activities from Los Angeles itself. After tramping Routeburn Track we would…

I wanted to do at least one of the nine Great Walks on our New Zealand trip (there will be ten once the Paparoa Track opens in 2019). We had a couple of restrictions, the track had to be on the South Island, doable as an overnight tramp. Routeburn Track is 32km long and it…

On our Air New Zealand flight to Auckland from Los Angeles I came across a video blog Living a Kiwi Life. The flight entertainment system had a few episodes, one of them being Rob Roy Glacier near Wanaka. I had planned to hike Roy’s Peak in Wanaka, sounded like the same hike. I was out on…

The Mueller Hut hike featured prominently in all the blogs, travel sites I looked up when I was researching our trip to New Zealand. I was following an excellent itinerary from the blog In a far away land for our road trip around South Island. It would be our first hike in New Zealand, our…

Little lakes valley is perhaps one my favourite places in the Eastern Sierras. The first time I visited was to climb Bear Creek Spire. I had Little lakes valley back country permits for June 18-19 2016. We had been to Mt.Tyndall the prior weekend so our plan was just to camp by Ruby lake on…

Corinne got 4 permits for Mt.Williamson & Mt.Tyndall to strike the two off her California 14ers list. They were for 10-12 June 2016. I gladly joined and Tomas took the other spot. Evelina fell sick and couldn’t come so it was just the three of us. We were contemplating what gear to carry. Reading trip…

I had visited Yosemite on four prior occasions but all of them had been restricted just to the valley with the occasional drive to either the Mariposa or Tuolumne groves. Every trip had been mostly in a tourist capacity apart from the hike up Half Dome via the cable route. This trip would be different,…

The weather forecast for the Sierras was looking splitter. Clear skies and warm weather. We were still over a week out from our trip. Surely the weather would hold right? At the turn of the week it was already looking dicey. A storm system was moving through the Sierras, Thursday onwards the forecast was for…

10,000 ft elevation gain in a day, the holy grail. Just those statistics had me stoked. I had been hoping to bag those numbers for a few years. Bad water to Telescope Peak: starting elevation -200 ft, ending elevation 11,043 ft. There is no maintained trail. I mean just starting a hike below sea level…

A proven way to gain weight is to hike the Grand Canyon Rimto Rim in a day. As absurd as that sounds, it was the case for me. Disclaimer: Might not quite work for everyone. Early on this year Corinne had been super stoked about doing GC R2R, influenced by the semi-rad post . I…

Dark clouds were looming on the horizon. Their intent was clear, wash all the lands beneath as they floated from one mountain to the next. I was looking at the first few moves on the first pitch then looking back over my shoulder, they were a little more closer. Should we wait it out? Are…

After learning my lesson last year with regards to scoring back country permits, I was prepared for this season. I like to plan out my trips in advance and don’t like the uncertainty of walk up permits. To kick off the High Sierra season the plan was to climb Venusian Blind (5.7) at Temple Crag.…