Making a Dream Reality: Hiking the Grand Canyon - Day 2

Saturday, May 22nd greeted us with a grey sky. It had not rained over night and it was cold, but we had slept well in our wonderful down sleeping bags. However, it did not take long for the first droplets to start falling out of the sky again as soon as we got out of the tents. After a yummy oatmeal breakfast we quickly packed up our gear and continued our hike on the North Kaibab Trail towards the south-southwest.

About 1.5 miles from the campground we took a side trail to Ribbon Falls, a beautiful little waterfall.

Ribbon Falls - hidden behind vegetation

The thick moss blanket on the rock underneath the waterfall proves that the water is running all year round. The little pond in front of it certainly provides a nice opportunity to cool sore feet in case it is hot outside.

There they are!

Resting near Ribbon Falls

To get back onto the North Kaibab Trail there is a shortcut that would have saved us half a mile. However, it crosses through a creek which can be knee-deep at this time of the year. At 100 F/38 C, I would have grabbed my Teva sandals, tucked up my pant legs and would not have hesitated to walk through the water. But our current circumstances were a little different, so we took the regular trail.

We took frequent breaks to eat some salty snacks, drink water, set down the backpacks and to stretch our legs. Eddie had brought "Glide", an anti-blister balm to treat hot spots in order to prevent blisters. Luckily, this was the only medical treatment that several of us required those four days.

Elliott treating his feet with blister prevention balm.

Eddie and Andrew peeking over the canyon map. 

Later that morning, the weather cleared up quite nicely for a while. We kept walking south-southwest for another few miles. The canyon walls started to close in on us and we got to an area called "The Box". In this section of the canyon the 1.4-1.7 billion years old black Vishnu Schist heats up a lot in the sun and it can feel like walking through an oven. It is therefore recommended to get past this area before noon. We however did not have to worry about that.

Crossing Bright Angel Creek,
shortly after Phantom Canyon.

After a total of 7.2 miles (11.6km) that day and a descent of 1,600 ft (488m) we reached the Bright Angel Campground around noon. Eddie treated us with some yummy avocado-bacon wraps and later we enjoyed a beer at Phantom Ranch, near the campground. It had started to rain again but by that time it seemed that we had gotten used to it. The rain did not prevent us from doing a nice stroll over to the Colorado River. As it got dark, we grabbed our headlamps and did a relaxing hike on the river trail which connects the South Kaibab Trail and  Bright Angel Trail on the south side of the Colorado River and runs between the Kaibab (Black) and Bright Angel (Silver) Bridges. Too many clouds though for seeing a starry sky!

Making a Dream Reality: Hiking the Grand Canyon - Day 1

Hiking through the Grand Canyon - this was one of those dreams or items of my bucket list since we first visited this breathtaking location in 2004. I wanted to walk all the way down to the Colorado River, "listen" to the silence of this remote place, absorb its magic atmosphere and hopefully experience a stunning starry sky at night.

The most popular trails that connect both rims are the 14 miles long North Kaibab Trail with its trailhead at the North Rim (8,241 feet elevation) and those two South Rim trails: the Bright Angel Trail (9.5 miles) and the South Kaibab Trail (7 miles). For a map and additional data click here.

Our preference was to hike from the North Rim to the Colorado River in two days and then back out again in two days via the Bright Angel Trail. However, making this reality was easier said than done. In 2012, we were very close, had everything scheduled for doing the hike in June and every little detail worked out, but ... had to cancel last minute due to a family emergency. In May 2014, we applied for the backcountry permits again which are required for any overnight stay in the canyon, but got denied. And again in October, but got denied again. Finally, we decided to sign up for a guided tour in May 2015 with the Wildland Trekking Company. And bingo! Got the permits for the Memorial Day weekend!

On Thursday, May 21st, we flew into Arizona to met with our guide Eddie (the guy with the yellow hat) and the three others of our group: Andrew from Sacramento and Elliott and Yuri from Chicago. Early Friday morning we then got shuttled to the North Kaibab Trailhead.

North Kaibab Trailhead: Final distribution and packing of gear

Unfortunately, the weather was not in our favor: rain and thunderstorms in the forecast. And indeed, we had light snow at the North Rim and got rain showers as soon as we hit the trail!

Ready to take off!

In nice weather, the Coconino Overlook at 0.75 miles from the rim gives a beautiful view into Roaring Springs Canyon. Well, not so this time.

Pouring rain and thunderstorm!

Heading towards "Hell's Kitchen' and the Redwall Bridge at 2.7 miles.

With the ongoing rain the trail became muddy, slippery and harder to walk. Gosh, what if this would go on like this?! For three more days hiking and camping in the rain?

Guido and Eddie, not too excited about the weather.

After 6.8 miles (10.9km) and 4,161 feet (1268m) drop in elevation we reached Cottonwood Campground for our first night in the canyon. While we quickly set up our tents in the rain, the ranger greeted us with "Oh, you guys are lucky. Usually, it's 100 F and people are vomiting!"

To close the day, Eddie prepared some hot tea/coffee and stir-fried veggies with rice for us. Even a simple meal can taste like heaven! 

San Diego - blue hour experiments

In addition to strolling through San Diego and visiting the zoo there was one more thing that we had planned to do in San Diego: experimenting with the blue hour and taking some night shots.

The first question was "Will we be allowed to carry the tripod in our hand luggage?" Or would we have to check it in which we really did not want to do. There are mixed answers in online discussions. Some people always check in their tripods because otherwise their carry-on would get too heavy with all the camera gear they bring. Others check in the legs of the tripod and carry the head in their hand luggage. Then, we read on the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) webpage that tripods - as part of photographic equipment - may be transported as carry-on as long as they fit in the overhead bin or underneath the airplane seat in front of us. Alright, there we go. And at least for these Virgin America flights from SFO to SAN and back we did not encounter any trouble.

The following four pictures are taken by Guido, obviously. He had to keep himself busy while I had engrossed the tripod.

Setting up the equipment

This part of the marina looked like a good location for some pretty sunset shots. So I thought. Well, I was wrong. At least on my pictures it looks like the sun simply disappeared behind the boats. That was it. I did not keep any of the sunset pics I had taken from this point. Lesson learned: it's important to have an unblocked view to the horizon where the sun sets in order to capture some nice reflections of the sunlight on the water.

Still hoping for a decent sunset shot 

But was all the waiting and "freezing my butt off" for nothing? Guido, who had taken some amazing blue hour shots of the San Francisco City Hall a few weeks ago, urged me to be patient. And indeed, about 45 min after the sun had disappeared we experienced some very beautiful colors by the remaining light.

f/8.0, ISO 200, 14sec exposure

A bit later the indirect lightning of the promenade gave it a totally different tone.

f/8.0, ISO 200, 80sec exposure

Following Frankie's recommendation on "15 best spots to photograph San Diego",  we explored the Crosby Street Park to get some night shots of the Coronado bridge. Well, the scenery must have changed somewhat since he had been there. The military ship on his shots was still there, but now hidden behind some ugly tug boats. Alright, after playing with the tripod placement here and there on the pier we managed to find a set up that we found decent. And again, I was glad to be fully equipped with gloves, scarf, hood, three layers of clothing and warm boots.

f/20, ISO 200, 60sec exposure

San Diego - Zoo time

In general, I'm not really a fan of zoos. I rather want the animals to be in their wild, natural habitat instead of being locked-in and serving for human entertainment. Zoos will always argue that they help to preserve the planet's fauna and that due to their educational activities humans might better understand and appreciate the other living creatures.

Well, long story short, we decided to visit the San Diego Zoo at New Year's. This zoo is well-known across the nation and some even say it is one of the most beautiful zoos in the U.S. What I like about this zoo is that its 40 ha area is indeed set up in a comparably natural looking way with many small trails meandering through various "themes", AKA different continents and their inhabitants. The "Northern Frontier" also educates about climate change, the effects of polar ice shrinkage on polar bears and what each of us can do to limit our carbon foot print. (Not sure though whether the latter part of this exhibit receives sufficient attention!)

Ursus maritimus shortly after he had lunch

These two Mountain Lions also live near the "Polar Bear Plunge"

"Elephant Odyssey" and "Urban Jungle" (Afrika)

Rhino's New Year's cleaning?

White-breasted cormorants

Allen's Swamp Monkey

Homo Sapiens Sapiens and one of her favorite activities

Inhabitants of the Outback, Asia, South America, India

This Koala reminded me of the stuffed animal I had as a kid. It is one of - I believe - nine inhabitants of "Koalafornia" which opened in May 2013. Each of the Koalas have their own home tree including three heaters. They were not easy to spot, hidden behind leaves and branches. According to the Australian Koala Foundation's website that contains many more interesting facts about these nocturnal marsupials, they sleep up to 20 hours per day to preserve energy for better digesting their toxic, fibrous, low-nutrition diet.

Bactrian camel - not quite as handsome but certainly full of character

Guanako - too much champagne for New Year's?

Ganges-gavial crocodile, photo with courtesy of Guido 

San Diego, CA - Or where to say 'Good-Bye' to the year 2014

Which location is relatively close to Sunnyvale, CA (AKA not more than 1.5 flight hours away), has a high chance of nice weather at this time of the year, is not super expensive and offers interesting things to do?

The answer to all these questions for us was San Diego, CA and we decided to spend the last days of 2014 including New Year's there. We met our good old local friend Diogo and his wife Kathy for dinner one night and the next day we visited the tip of the Point Loma peninsula with Diogo. This is also a beautiful place for whale watching between December and March.

Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese explorer, was the first European who set foot at Point Loma in 1542. Today large parts of the area are utilized by the U.S. Navy.

San Diego skyline and Cabrillo National Monument

Old Point Loma Lighthouse

We had a very relaxing time just walking around and absorbing the city's impressions.

Coronado Bridge and some kind of arts

Making fun of myself

Musician at Balboa Park

Many things we saw were simply entertaining, fun or just strange, some were concerning. I had looked up some statistics about homelessness in the U.S. when I travelled through the nation in fall 2014. Our visit to San Diego reminded me of the data I had come across as we walked by homeless people near the Metropolitan Transit Station, Chicano Park below the highway bridges and dozens of tents set up along National Ave.

Chicano Park below the bridge

The sun is out. And so am I.

The day started foggy, but with no rain in the forecast and a new pair of gloves sitting here and waiting for their first ride I really had to get out on my bike again. Hwy 84, one of my favorite routes in the area and perfect for a warm-up brought me to the beautiful pacific coast and indeed, the sun was out for most of the ride.

At Bean Hollow State Beach

At this time of the year the California State Beaches along Hwy 1 are pretty much deserted and parking is free of charge. Only a few people were out there, walking their dogs, sightseeing and taking pictures of the stunning scenery.

Along Hwy 1 heading south the fog became thick again for a few miles but had been eaten up by the sun shortly before Santa Cruz. We had ridden past the Tannery Arts Center in Santa Cruz many times before and I had spotted a specific piece of art in the past but never stopped to take a closer look. Well, now was a good time to check it out further. There was construction going on for the arts center's new theater and in order to get closer to that cow and to take a picture I had to enter the hard hat area - risking my life, almost. ;-)

Back at my bike I found it got invaded by members of the Boisea trivittata species. The Boxelder bugs were sunbathing on black/warm spots of my bike. Well, most parts of my bike are actually black... They mainly sat on the seat, top case and tires. Alright, macro photography time: setting the camera to manual focus mode, selecting the closest focus point of the lens and using my body to move back and forth to get the subject into focus, getting down to the level of the bug and focusing on its eyes. And being aware that one needs to take many, many shots to maybe (!) get a decent one. Even at an aperture of f/11 not much of the bug's body was in focus, just the head and some parts of its legs. Will try an even smaller aperture next time to  increase the depth of field some more.

As mentioned earlier, testing my new BMW GS Dry Gloves was another reason for getting out today. Since we have not yet figured out what kind of hand guards to install on the R, my hands are fully exposed to the wind. For most of the year, the Held Evo Thrux 2221 work perfectly for me and heated grips do the rest when it gets a bit cooler. But for this time of the year I wanted something less permeable to wind.

The BMW GS Dry Gloves claim to be water- and windproof, come with SuperFabric (which combines goatskin leather and abrasion resistant fabric) and GORE-TEX X-TRAFIT, a breathable three-layer laminate. In today's condition with temperatures in the high 50th/low 60th (14-16 deg Celsius) and high humidity I usually have the heated grips on. Not so today which is a good sign. The only thing I am not sure yet is their breathability. I need to challenge them some more in lower temperatures but so far I like the gloves a lot.

One hundred eighty seven kilos

No, this is not Guido's and my body weight combined. It is the amount of fruit that our citrus tree presented us with this season. The tree had been planted by the former owner of the house. Therefore, we don't know exactly what kind of mandarine variety it is - maybe tangerines or mandarine oranges? They are easy to peal, seedless and juicy with a well-balanced taste. For simplicity, let's call them mandarines.

We are very thankful for the tree's productivity and since we don't want to waste any of these yummy mandarines and do share only involuntarily with the squirrels, what do we do with 187 kilos?

Choice #1 and most obvious: eating as many as possible for the last few weeks. Choice #2: Sharing the delight with friends, family and co-workers. And another great option: marmalade!

The German cooking website www.chefkoch.de provided me with the original idea and since then I experimented with various additional ingredients.

Right from the tree, still wet from the rain and dirty

I had best gelling results with Dr. Oetker Gelfix Super 3:1 which I either import from Germany or order through Amazon. Two packages (50 gram) of the 3:1 product make a fruity and less sugary marmalade and require 2 kilo of fruit, plus 700 gram of sugar. An important ingredient of the marmalade is the mandarine peel. As our mandarines are grown organic, no need to worry about pesticides even on the peel. Half of the mandarines are washed, peeled and the peel cut in smaller pieces while the other half gets peeled and the peel goes to compost.

Cleaned, partially peeled and ready for further preparation

Mandarines fully cleaned and peel cut in small slices

Adding 100ml of orange liqueur is one nice variation of the recipe. Instead of orange liqueur, Campari is another option which slightly intensifies the typical bitter taste of the marmalade and adds to its beautiful orange color.

Ready for firing up the stove

Thanks to the gelling powder the pureed fruit and sliced peel requires a cooking time of only 3-4 minutes and can then be distributed into jars which were sterilized in the oven at 100 deg C.

Voila, the finished product!

I have experimented with adding other fruit such as pine apple, persimmon or pomegranate for a less tart and milder taste. Adding cinnamon makes a more Christmassy version. The most adventurous variety I made so far also had persimmons, cranberries and red wine. Come by and try some if you like! Next: I will give making some mandarine liqueur a try! :-)