Off on a solo 3-nite hike.

[Vaughn]

Just got to load the 4x5 holders and I'll head to bed. I'll have a not too early start...I'll finish packing and leave the house by noon. Get to the trailhead and have lunch by 2pm. Hit the trail and hike (in a slow relaxed manner) most of remaining daylight to where I'll spend three nights...hang out and photograph.

Some recent rain to clean things up and make the creek crossings a little more interesting...but should all be mellow.

I am taking a dozen holders loaded with Kodak Professional Copy Film (4125) and play with that along the creek and under the redwoods. Decided to go light and not take the 5x7. Even got fancy freeze-dried dinners. Got new Teva sandals, and also got a new-to-me backpack (lightly used by my brother), so I'll see how it works out...I want to test it before a longer hike in early July.

Photo from my last trip -- I'd better get busy!

[Tin Can]

Happy image hunting!

I prefer solo

anywhere


I meet more critters

[John Layton]

Taking your Gowland Pocket View? I'll be pressing mine into lots of service again in the upcoming months. Even though my 5x7 DIY plywood camera is almost as light, the rest of the 5x7 gear still weighs me down noticeably more in total...and its truly getting to the point, when regarding hiking any distance with gear (especially when overnight stuff is included) - that weight is absolutely everything!

At any rate...have a great hike!

[Erik Larsen]

Enjoy the solitude Vaughn! My feet would go on strike if hiking in sandals. Looking forward to the photos.

[domaz]

Enjoy the solitude Vaughn! My feet would go on strike if hiking in sandals. Looking forward to the photos.

We once ran into some backpackers heading down from a very steep pass in the Olympic mountains, about 5000 feet of elevation loss- pretty much the biggest elevation drop on a trail I've ever encountered. One of the hikers was doing it in bare feet- he said he preferred to use the natural "micro-sensors" of his feet during descents. To each their own I guess...

[Erik Larsen]

We once ran into some backpackers heading down from a very steep pass in the Olympic mountains, about 5000 feet of elevation loss- pretty much the biggest elevation drop on a trail I've ever encountered. One of the hikers was doing it in bare feet- he said he preferred to use the natural "micro-sensors" of his feet during descents. To each their own I guess...

My feet have gotten tender as I age. I remember as a kid running around barefoot on gravel roads and on asphalt roads in the summer without even noticing any discomfort. I wince at the thought today.

[Bernice Loui]

Safe Journeys Vaughn.

Bernice

[Drew Wiley]

Well, bare feet were standard for the Indians who routinely crossed the high rocky passes for millennia before engineered trails. Even deerskin moccasins wouldn't have lasted fifteen minutes on some of that terrain. As a child, I had to run about a mile to the tiny store either on asphalt, during air temps often above 110F, with shade trees far and few in between, or else through thorny weeds on the hillside. I'd buy an ice cream bar from their little refrigerator, and hope it didn't outright melt before I finished eating it; it seldom did.

But I'm having a bit of difficulty comprehending what Vaughn means by a "solo trip". Did he actually plan to go by himself, or was that just a default because nobody else could stand his karaoke "solo". ... "Home, home, on the ranger station, where the deer and the cantaloupe play"... (well, that's how I thought the words went when I was little)....

[Paul Ron]

enjoy the stroll... i hike like im going to the electric chair. I enjoy seeing everything along the trail instead of looking down at my shoes.

[John Layton]

Drew...I cannot believe I am saying this - but doing karaoke (likely just once) is actually on my bucket list! (but deer...playing with cantaloupe :confused:)

[Drew Wiley]

Although pronghorn antelope were abundant and hunted in Indian days, they were extinct in that area by my childhood, so I didn't know what that term meant. I did know "cantaloupe", since we grew and ate a lot of them, but the deer got to them too, so I made that association. And although we were surrounded by rangeland, one of the nearest neighbors up on the hill was the ranger station. It's really fun remembering my own word associations as a preschooler. Perhaps the funniest was hearing in Sunday School the hymn, "Bringing in the Thieves". I couldn't figure out what Church and Police work had in common.

[Michael R]

Solo 3-nite hike sounds like the title of the next true crime youtube mystery I watch. Either that or one of those asmr off-grid videos.

[John Kasaian]

Safe travels!
It sounds like a fun trip Vaughn.

[Vaughn]

"Rollin', rollin', rollin', keep them cantalopes rollin'...french fries!"

Back safe and as sound (mentally?) as I ever get these days. Did not hit the trail until about about 5pm. Saw no one after leaving the trailhead until I was hiking back up the trail 4 days late. Saw one boot print up the creek -- I believe a biologist/hydrologist type person had hiked in the previous week to install a couple of stream monitors (temp recorders).

More water in the creek than I than imagined...made the many creek crossings interesting. Sometimes hip-deep and moving fast...had myself a good alder pole to keep me upright. And since I was heading up the creek, it a bit tiring working against the current. High water kept me from hiking up as far as originally planned...hung out in an incredible place where a side creek comes into Redwood Creek. Being solo, 68, and tired, I saw no good reason to push myself by getting a little further up the creek where the crossings get narrower and the water faster. Getting swept down creek and getting my camera stuff wet would just ruin my day and make for a lousy night.

A light touch of rain the second night (great moon the other nights). By the time I hiked out yesterday, the creek had dropped almost a foot, slowed down a bunch, and hiking out with the flow was pretty easy.

We'll see what I get photographically. Exposed 16 sheets of film...might get zero...should have tested the film before taking it out in the wilds -- unopened box of 100 sheets of 4125 (dated 10/1999). I have forgotten when and where I got it and how long it has been in my fridge! I'll load some a few in the Jobo 3006 drum tonight and see what I got. I was expecting over-cast weather for most of the time -- got far more sunshine. I had brought the Kodak copy film to boost contrast...

Too bad my little digital camera died. The rhododendrons are at their peak, flowers covering the trail...

[Tin Can]

Glad you had fun!

[Deyoung]

Sounds like a great trip.

[Hugo Zhang]

What an adventure!

[Bernice Loui]

Earlier this year, the Coastside hill where covered with yellow mustard plants.

228028


BTW, carbon prints made by Vaughn are gorgeous,
Bernice




The rhododendrons are at their peak, flowers covering the trail...

[Drew Wiley]

Huge swaths of yellow daisies and native large beautiful dandelions all over the coastal hills now. I was out on Olema Ridge this past Wed, and it was quite a challenge waiting for breaks in the wind; but that is pretty much to be expected in June. I did manage one color 4X5 shot and one b&w one. Nice cloud formations that afternoon. We have huge fields of mustards on this side of the Bay much earlier in the season. But the only wildflower shot I printed so far this year involved some very intricate tracery of goldfields on a bare drought-afflicted clay hillside in the southern Coast Range around Avenal. I'm after the complex interplay of neutrals with just the right amount of added intricate "spice', and not any kind of postcardish theme. Less is more.

[Vaughn]

For fun and future reference, I checked out the recorded water flow of Redwood Creek.

The early morning of the day I started my hike the creek was at 12.7' and 800 cfs, but by the time I hiked down to the creek and started hiking up it, it was down to 12.5' and 650 cfs. From that info, I am very glad I did not get an earlier start that day! The day before it was up to 1100 cfs and there would have been no way I'd be able to cross and get up the creek.

The hike out was at 11.9' and only 375 cfs. Good info for me for my next adventure up there!

For reference major peak flows (max floods) are around 50,000 cfs...summertime it can be below 100 cfs.