A journal of explorations and adventures.
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Around this time of year in 2006, a friend in college showed me absenter.org, a website showcasing one man’s pursuits with photography. The latest post titled “Volume” captured a beautiful effect created by rough Lake Michigan waves crashing against a Chicago pier. The man behind the site turned out to be a Chicago-based designer named Naz Hamid. Henceforth, I followed his photography, designs, mixed tapes, and general pursuits, taken by his nostalgic style and eye (and ear) for composition.
Three years later, he and his wife moved to San Francisco, and two years after that I incidentally did the same. I had never met Naz, but I emailed him point-blank when I moved to the city, seeing if he’d be up for meeting for coffee after admiring his work for so long. Coffee turned into lunch at Citizen’s Band, his favorite restaurant in San Francisco. We kept in touch, realized we had a shared love for biking, his deeply rooted and mine newly found, and casual rides together turned into a weekly routine.
I set a resolution for myself this year to photograph portraits of people with whom I spend time, so when Naz asked me to shoot some portraits of him for his upcoming feature in Offscreen Magazine, I of course said yes. Offscreen prefers photos of an individual’s professional and private life that shed light on personality, which of course meant cycling for Naz. In addition to his familiar settings of Sightglass and his neighborhood, we spent a beautiful Friday morning in March riding up and around Twin Peaks. We looped around the figure eight road, carried our bikes to the north and south summits, and I sent Naz coasting down the curve set against a backdrop of the city. Capturing portraits of a cyclist with an SLR while riding yourself isn’t straightforward, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
Nearly seven years to the day of encountering absenter.org, I’m little else but grateful to have a meaningful friendship that has blossomed and matured with such serendipity.
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At the end of June last year, my friend Adam proposed a group of friends get together for a morning bike ride around the Marin Headlands before work. Adam and I gave it a go the next morning. We met at 7 a.m. at the corner of Baker and Fell where the Golden Gate Panhandle begins and climbed Hawk Hill just across the Golden Gate Bridge before work.
Shortly thereafter, the ride became a routine with a rotating crew of 7 or so friends, and now every Wednesday morning at 6:45a, we gather at the same spot to tackle a 20-30 mile ride before we head into the tech mines. Adam started an email with the subject “Roll Call” to determine who would be joining for the ride the next morning and eventually we all came to know the cycling club as that.
This past Sunday, we went on an inaugural weekend ride that we’ll be adding to our weekly routine. Ever since first riding down the west side of Hawk Hill via Conzelman Road, at its steepest a -20% grade, and doing the full Headlands loop, I’ve wanted to capture the experience, and on this ride, I finally brought my new GoPro Hero3 to do so. What you see above is as close as I can come to sharing the thrill of the ride.
(Source: vimeo.com)
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Before moving to California, I never had Martin Luther King, Jr. Day or President’s Day off from work, but now I do. I didn’t think much about making good on their time last year as I wasn’t accustomed to the holidays, but in California, a three-day weekend can be so much more.
Adamant to spend this time meaningfully, I planned ahead this year. A group of friends and I converged on Big Sur from four corners of California to stay in a coastal cliff house just south of the Bixby Canyon Bridge for President’s Day. The weather left us—three of whom hail from Michigan—in awe of what February can be: 70º, clear skies, and calm ocean air.
The house is tucked away down from Highway 1, wedged into the Santa Lucia Mountains with views that almost feel illegal. We spent hours on end staring into the ocean, hugging the curves of Hwy 1, and roaming the beaches of Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park.
Nearly two years here and I still don’t quite know how to reconcile the embarrassment of riches that is California.
(Source: Flickr / wcouch)
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Our alarms cried out in the otherwise silent Stanislaus National Forest at four in the morning on the second to last Saturday morning of September. We reluctantly slipped our sleeping bags off, and packed our bags back into the car. Twelve hours prior, we were sitting in traffic trying to escape San Francisco. We arrived at Hardin Flats around 9:30p after some dinner and groceries, and were fast asleep by 10p.
Adam bellowed across our site, “It’s time guys, let’s do this.” Today, he, Joey, Avery, Seth, and I would hike to the top of Yosemite’s famed Half Dome.
Half Dome is one of the most treasured and challenging hikes in any National Park. The trail from end to end is about 16 miles long, and you scale nearly a mile of vertical distance from Yosemite’s valley floor at ~4,000 ft to its summit at ~8,920 ft. The last 400 ft to the top are set at a sheer 45° angle on raw granite above the tree line, aided only by metal poles drilled into the rock with braided cable threaded through. An average of two people a year die on this portion of the climb.
We drove into the park, and eventually hit the trail by 6:15a, before the sun had risen. We clipped along at a good pace along Mist Trail, where you see Vernal and Nevada Falls, though neither were as fervent or wet as promised due to a considerably dry summer. As we made our way past the waterfalls, into Little Yosemite Valley and up the backside of the mountain, we were all kind of in awe at the sheer scale of everything. It was at once magnificent and … surreal. In a way, it felt like a theme park, the grandiosity was so unbelievable that it actually felt fake. Your diminishing water supply, the thinning air, and the sun’s strengthened grip will all convince you otherwise though.
Around 11a we reached the most challenging part of the ascent: the granite staircase up the subdome and the 45° angle braided cables to the final summit. Since acquiring the permits to attempt this portion of the hike in April, I both eagerly and anxiously looked forward to this part of the hike, but as soon as you’re face to face with the rock, you’d be hard-pressed to not have your hands immediately become cold and clammy. The granite staircase up the subdome is literally a set of large, man-made angular wedges in the granite—sometimes with the jackhammer marks still evident—that switch back and forth up. No one tells you about this part of the hike. There’s nothing to hold on to, the path is narrow, and the tree line is below you, so it’s only you and the tricks your mind will play. At a certain point, the stairs disappear, and you’re left completing the subdome by just climbing the raw inclined granite. At 6’3” and an uneasy center of gravity, I stayed closer to the surface.
Once on top of the subdome, only the cables lie ahead. As you approach them, you can only see them from one head-on view, collapsing the elevation into what appears to be a completely vertical climb. My hands became colder and clammier yet. I put on the leather gloves that are nearly a requirement—it’s foolsplay to attempt the cables without a pair—and began the climb. Prior to 2010, you could climb the cables without a permit, but so would nearly 1,200 others in a single day. Since then, the National Park Service has invoked a lottery to distribute 350 permits issued per day, which greatly eases the traffic on the cables. While harrowing—I could hardly force myself to look anywhere but at the granite my feet were touching—the cables are manageable, and to finish them and reach the summit is a tremendously satisfying sensation.
The top of Half Dome is massive. It feels like a miniature faraway planet, a surface familiar and foreign all at once. And the views are utterly striking. To the east, Tenaya Canyon, a deceptively beautiful canyon that is otherwise known as the Bermuda Triangle of Yosemite for all of the mysterious disapperances and deaths of hikers who attempt exploration there. Almost due east in the canyon is Cloud’s Rest (9,930 ft), a stunning mountain that tempts Half Dome hikers as their next trek. To the west, Yosemite Valley, El Capitan in the distance. At nearly 9,000 feet you’re closer to the clouds, too; planes flying overhead sound louder and almost feel like they’re taunting you.
We hit the summit around 12:15p and spent almost an hour and a half on it. Rest was welcome, as was a roll of celebratory summer sausage. We walked from edge to edge, and wiggled our way into the nook beneath “the diving board” where you can look east to Tenaya Canyon. In the angled photo above of the summit and valley floor, you can see the diving board, the outermost point, the shadowy nook just beneath it, and at the bottom of the photo, a belay and technical climber on the vertical face of the dome. This served as a good reminder that far more extreme things happen on this mountain than what you just did.
At this point, you think the rest of the hike is easy, but it’s only half over and while the first half requires physical strength, the latter half imparts physical stress. The cables were an order of magnitude easier to go down, and the granite staircase still asks you to go slowly. At this point, it became clear the arc of our hike was following, step for step, the arc of the sun. By the time we were passing through Little Yosemite Valley again, Golden Hour was upon us and when we opted for the switchbacks of John Muir Trail instead of the steps along the waterfalls, the valley was awash in a beautiful haze, and Half Dome, Mt. Broderick, and Liberty Cap were dipped in warm light. The rest of the hike all kind of blurred together, our feet and knees were aching, and we were ready to finish. We eventually arrived back at our car by 8p. Motivated to linger in a hot shower and sleep in our own beds, we decided to drive back to the city right then. By 12:30a Sunday morning we were back in San Francisco, and we couldn’t decide if beginning and ending the adventure in under 36 hours was utterly insane or exhilarating, but it was probably both.
This hike had been lingering in my head all summer, as something I was both extremely excited and considerably nervous to do. Hitting the summit instilled a sense of personal pride I hadn’t felt in a long time. And completing the hike is worth more than the sum of its parts. Should you ever find yourself in the company of others who would like to forge the adventure, I’d strongly recommend it.
For the full set of photos, see Flickr.
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On the eastern edge of California, nested between Lake Tahoe and Yosemite National Park about 6,850 feet up in the Sierra Nevada lies Utica Reservoir. The alpine lake was constructed by the Utica Mining Company in 1905 to generate water and electricity for nearby towns in the wake of the California Gold Rush. The lake, located in Stanislaus National Forest studded with granite islands, erect evergreens, and sweeping views of distant peaks, provides a humble setting for immersing yourself in wilderness. There are no cabins or designated camp sites in this area, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, and motors aren’t allowed in the water. Instead, you canoe out to one of the islands and claim it as your own.
My co-worker Julie grew up in the South Bay and visited Utica often growing up, so together with her dog Lola and my friend Adam, we took an 18 foot Wenonah canoe out from the beach landing and pitched camp on one of the largest islands in the center of the lake. The afternoon was spent wading in the water, swimming to neighboring islands, and basking on the warm granite in the sun. Despite the 100º temperatures in Central Valley, at nearly 7,000 feet up, the air was a dry yet comfortable 90º. The sun set in the evening, we cracked open some beer and wine, and cooked sausages over the fire. We meandered over to the cresting rocks on the south end of the island after dinner and stared to the sky as its darkness subsumed us. A fuzzy mix of alcohol, quietness, 70º air, and shooting Peresid meteors encouraged us to forgo our tents and lay our sleeping bags out on the rock to sleep with the sight of the floating Milky Way above.
The next morning we awoke at sunrise, Lola antsy for daylight. We took the canoe out to the northern end of the lake, spotting and following a group of sea otters, and holding Lola back from jumping the canoe in pursuit of a paddling of ducks. The sun was already heating the area. We brought the canoe back ashore and swam out to a shallow rock Adam spotted the day before, lingering on it as if we had obtained some religious power to sit on water. We returned to the island again, and ate half a watermelon.
With a several hour drive ahead, we packed up camp, broke down the tents we never used, and canoed back to the beach. We returned the canoe back to the rental shop in Arnold and drifted down out of the mountains again into the sweltering Central Valley heat. Passing through Diablo Range and coming out from the Altamonte Pass Wind Farm, we could see Sutro Tower in the distance. It was cold, there was fog, we knew we were home, but we already wanted to go back.
(Source: Flickr / wcouch)
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