Nevada Rambler

Visiting family in southeast Kansas. This is a photo at Big Hill Lake.

Hike from the Alpine Meadows ski area to Five Lakes and then to Whiskey Creek via the Pacific Crest Trail, in the Granite Chief Wilderness Area.

Track and profile

Album

12.40 mi (5.34 mi uphill, 5.24 mi downhill, 1.62 mi flat)
2250 ft total ascent – 15.5 % uphill grade, 19.3 % downhill grade
9:09:32 total time (6:42:51 moving, 2:26:41 stopped)
0:32:28 pace (1.8 mph average speed, 10.9 mph max speed)
28.420 difficulty, 48.498 effort

View to Pyramid Lake from Painted Hills

M. and I enjoyed a desert hike in the Painted Hills area west of Pyramid Lake. Access road off the Winnemucca Ranch Road north of the Pyramid Highway (NV 445) requires 4WD/high clearance. Wonderful area with colorful rock formations and mining ruins. A bit hot today, though, until the wind picked up.

• Track and profile
• Photo album (check out the bat photos!)

Statistics:
5.57 mi (2.53 mi uphill, 2.60 mi downhill, 0.39 mi flat)
~1400 ft total ascent – 12.4 % uphill grade, 15.4 % downhill grade
3:58:36 total time (3:32:59 moving, 0:25:37 stopped)
0:38:13 pace (1.6 mph average speed, 3.4 mph max speed)
10.704 difficulty, 16.444 effort

A nice day playing tourist in the nation’s capital. Spent the cloudy, rainy morning at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, including an amazing 3D IMAX movie “Aliens of the Deep” about exotic deep sea life in extreme environments, then some time at the National Gallery of Art. Saw “An Inconvenient Truth” at the E Street Theatre, featuring Al “I used to be the next President of the United States” Gore. After that the weather had turned sunny, breezy, and not so humid, so I took a walking tour of the major monuments on the Mall. Photo Album

On the way back to DC, drove via the Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park. The woods and road are nice, but not spectacular on the standard of Western national parks. I took time for one short hike (0.3 mile) to Bearfence Rocks, an outcropping of Greenstone Lava with a hazy view. Nice hike, though the humidity was so high I was sweating up a storm by the top and was happy to get back to the air conditioned car.

Photo album

Oh, yeah, I stopped by the Iwo Jima monument on the way to the airport.