My personal food pyramid

I modified a paleo food pyramid to reflect what I actually eat. I suppose the sweet potatoes are missing from the picture. I actually don't eat that much of nuts or fruit, either, but you get the idea. It really works to eat this way. I feel great, I've lost weight, my mental outlook is amazing, inflammation and pain left over from hiking the PCT is gone. I don't think I have ever felt as healthy as I do now. The key to it is the bottom layer of the pyramid. It's actually the most important.

Static cling in my hair

I think I fixed the static cling problem I've been having with my hair. Either that or the weather has improved. I'm not totally sure. My hair is really long, to my tailbone for the longest fairy-tale strands. I wear a lot of nylon, mostly my down jacket or fleece jacket being the main sources of it. This plus winter plus having fine dry hair means the static cling has been a huge problem. This is what seems to work: After I wash my hair, I squirt some oil into my hand. I have some old Neutragena massage oil, but jojoba or coconut or other oil would probably work just as well or maybe even better. The trouble with coconut oil is it's solid at this time of year so it's hard to use. The oil is in a pump bottle like you would use for lotion. I give myself about 3/4 a pump. I run this through my wet hair concentrating on the lower 2/3 of my hair and more toward the ends. Then I wrap my hair in a towel while I get dressed. Then I comb it like usual. I even use a nasty plastic comb. If I could find a good wooden or bone one (at a store, I don't want to buy a comb online) I would use that instead. It doesn't make my hair oily at all. It makes it nice and soft. I've also been giving my hair a bit of spray-on detangler for good measure. I was using that alone and it did nothing at all to control the static cling by itself so it's probably not needed at all. It wasn't until I started using the oil that the static cling got under control. Also, I've tried putting the oil on dry hair and slightly damp hair, but I really get the best results--"best" meaning that it doesn't look oily--when my hair is wet. Even with the oil in my hair, my hair stays clean for many days. I don't put the oil anywhere near my scalp, so it's not like it would have much effect anyway. I can go 4 days between washing, maybe more, since my diet change (low in carbs and high in animal fat) and the onset of winter. Sometimes my hair looks a little bad near my temples and I'll just wash right there and not the rest of it. With such long hair, it's good not to have so much cold wet hair when it's winter. I don't blow dry my hair. I'm not a girly-girl. I don't wear make-up. I rarely wear a dress. I wear no jewelry except for a ring. I don't even like babies. But hair is my one vanity.

Santa brought me a toy

I got an ipod touch for Christmas. I'm not a gadget person, but I absolutely love this gadget. I don't even have any music on it. The reason I have no music on it is because my computer is "too" old and it won't let me update itunes to a new enough version. I hate Apple for that. Planned obsolescence irritates me greatly. My computer works fine and I have no desire for a new one. So forget the stinkin' music. My ipod does so many other things that are great without being a music playing device. It's got an instrument tuner so I can tune my fiddle at the jam session. It's got a concertina that I can play when I'm just doodling around. I can record tunes at the jam session so I can learn them later. Take notes, make shopping lists, whatever. Send mail, surf the net. Take pictures and upload them to flickr. I downloaded the Kindle, but I have no kindle books yet. A friend was showing me an Audubon app that helps you identify birds. I may get that. Those are the kinds of things I do with it, but it can do just about everything I'd ever want to do. I love this little thing.

Death Valley

We went to Death Valley for 4 days. We drove in via Baker on Monday. We didn't quite make it into the park so we camped on the side of the road outside of Shoshone. We drove up in The Man's SUV. We had some 4-inch pieces of foam for sleeping. We just put all our stuff in the front seats, laid out the foam and slept. It was so comfortable. More comfortable than at home. Crow is totally right. While I don't think the two of us could go with a sub-compact car, having a regular car big enough to sleep in is the best way to do it. Much more stealthy than something larger and plenty comfortable.

The following morning we drove into the park and saw the sights in the southern part of Death Valley. It was so beautiful. We stopped at everything to take lots of pictures and walk around. We got a campsite in the Furnace Creek area and then did a hike in Golden Canyon up to the spire that you see when you look at Zabriske point. It's called "Manly Peak." It was so golden and beautiful at the end of the day. By the time we finished our hike, it was past sunset and hard to see the way.

In the morning we went to see Zabriske Point at sunrise and then hike down into it to meet up with where we had been the evening before. After breakfast we drove out to see Mosaic Canyon and then Ubehebe Crater. Then we didn't know what to do with the rest of the day so we drove out to see the Racetrack. The road was really washboardy. The Man hit a rock and punctured his tire. He put on the spare but it was really low of air. There was a vehicle parked next to ours that looked like it had a lot of survival gear. The man (and his wife) who owned it had some compressed air so he filled our tire. We thanked him for saving our lives.

We examined the map and thought maybe if we continued forward instead of backtracking it would be shorter to get to a gas station. Big mistake. We took one look at Lippencot Pass road and I wanted to turn back but The Man went for it. It was the scariest road I've ever been on. We were sure we would die a couple of times. Our SUV isn't very small and we're not experienced off-roaders. The man and woman, whose names were Tom and Kari, saw us and would wait to make sure we'd make it through the scary stuff. After a while we all got out and talked for a while. We thanked them again for saving our lives and keeping an eye out for us. We told them we'd buy them dinner if we survived.

After many hours of struggling on difficult dirt roads we made it to Panamint Springs and bought them dinner. Then we camped there in their site. In the morning The Man woke up and asked me if he was alive or if this was a dream and he was lying in a ditch on the side of that road. No, we were alive.

We drove home in the morning after exchanging phone numbers with Tom and Kari. We drove west on highway 190. It was so beautiful out in the desert with the Joshua trees and the stark, bleak landscape. The desert is so beautiful in winter. I wish I lived there in winter. We crested a pass and there before us was the whole Sierra Nevada range. Mt. Whitney and a wall of mountains south and north of it. There was hardly any snow. It was gorgeous.

Once we dropped into Owens Valley we stopped to take pictures of the Sierras. Then we began the long drive south along the edge of the mountains. It's like a rolling back of the PCT now every time I do it. I tried to imagine where the trail was behind that wall of granite, what part of it was behind there. I could see Jenkins peak but not the trail, but I could imagine it and remember what it felt like to look down into the valley from the trail. I could see the road heading up to Bird Spring Pass where the water cache was. We stopped for lunch in Mojave and could see the windmills I walked through. To the south stretched the San Gabriels and I could imagine the whole trail through there. I could see the ski lifts of Wrightwood. The area of Cajon Pass dropped below the horizon and it looked like you would have to walk 50 miles of flat desert to get between the mountains of Big Bear to the mountains around Wrightwood.

As we drove down highway 14, I could see the PCT up near the Mill Creak ranger station. I could see the PCT as it paralleled the highway and went below it into the Vasquez Rocks. As we rounded the mountains into Santa Clarita I watched the Liebres and imagined myself hiking there. The Liebres connected into the mountains of the Sespe Wilderness, where I did my own little connector hike from Santa Barbara to the PCT. I could see the trail to Santa Paula Peak where I've hiked with the Sierra Club. I could see the Topatopa bluffs where we had a Christmas potluck hike just a few weeks ago. My life is written in the great mountains of Southern California. So many memories. Home.

We picked up our birds at the boarder on the way home. We were grateful to have survived our trip. I was so excited about how comfortable it was to sleep in the back of the SUV I started imagining what it would be like to live that way in my later years. Give up having a permanent residence and just live off Social Security visiting the desert in winter, the PCT in spring, summer and fall, driving around to see beautiful places and just living that way.

Mushroom season has begun

Last weekend I did my annual Ultimate Hike. We hike 17.5 miles and do a mile of elevation gain. The profile doesn't just go up to a summit and back down. Instead we go up and down all day, with worse hills toward the end. It's a brutal hike for people who like brutal hikes. Everyone who came had a great time and we did the hike in record time without rushing. We started at 8am and were home by 4pm.

Yesterday I attended the annual Topatopa potluck hike. We hike 7 miles with 4700 feet elevation gain to the edge of the Topatopa bluffs. The hike gets steeper and steeper toward the summit. At the top we have a potluck. Then we hike 7 miles back to the car.

On last weekend's Ultimate hike I noticed some chanterelle mushrooms on the side of the trail. I picked them all and took them home. Yesterday, while I was hiking to the Topatopa bluffs, The Man was out visiting our mushroom tree. He came home with a plastic grocery bag full of big chanterelles. Tonight we ate enormous plates of mushrooms for dinner.

Tomorrow it is supposed to rain. Our mushroom tree will get more mushrooms. Mushroom season has begun!

Hike to Haddock Camp

I've been wanting to thru-hike the Gene Marshall Piedra Blanca National Recreation Trail. The trail is 18 miles long but I have never seen the whole thing. I had hoped to do the whole thing this week but it turned out I was only able to do an overnighter. There was a lot of snow.

We started the hike from Reyes Creek campground and hoped to get to Pine Mountain Lodge. That would make it a completion of the trail as a section hike for me. We only made it to Haddock Campsite, about 8 miles. There was a lot of snow and we wallowed in it most of the day.

Here is our camp at Haddock Camp. This is the first time I ever pitched a tent on snow. It was very cold.

It was hard to find wood because of all the snow so our fire didn't last as long as I would have liked. We tried to dry our socks and warm up before bed.

It was hard to sleep because it was so cold. I brought two quilts so I had enough down on top of me but I didn't have enough padding beneath me. The cold seeped in from below and I struggled to stay warm. We tried to cuddle up together and share body heat. Here we are in the morning hiking back. We postholed up to our shins in some places but it wasn't too bad.

I have to add that the 2nd quilt I brought, a Jacks R Better wearable quilt, is the bomb. In the morning I stuck my head through the headhole while it was still warm and then wore it around camp as we drank coffee and put things away. I highly recommend such a great piece of gear. I was skeptical at first, but it was pure luxury and so sensible.

Finding the trail in the snow had been easy. We just followed the bear. Here is a picture of Trailhacker following my foot prints, the bear prints are the larger ones to his left and heading off in another direction are deer prints. The deer and bears seem to follow the trail, even the switchbacks, perfectly, so rather than search for trail in the snow we just followed the bear the whole way.

Hike to La Cumbre Peak

Today I hiked to La Cumbre Peak via Tunnel Trail. I don't think many people have any idea what hiking is like in Santa Barbara. Hopefully this set of pictures gives a little peak into it. Tunnel Trail is about a 10 minute drive from downtown. We are so lucky. It's not even the only trail so close to town, either. There are several other trailheads this close and the trailhead for Tunnel Trail leads to several trails, loops and destinations.

Here's the view looking down into downtown from about 1/3 of the way up the trail. You can see the ocean, too. The trail-like squiggly line is a dirt road that you can also hike that has nice views.


Looking at Arlington Peak. There is a trail that goes up the spine of the ridge to the top. It's one of the more strenuous hikes locally.


Arlington and Cathedral peaks from behind. Cathedral Peak is the little notch sticking up. Most locals call Arlington Peak Cathedral Peak as a sort of short-hand. Cathedral Peak is then often called "The Thumb." There's a cave at the base on the front side of Cathedral Peak called the Horse Cave. Urban legend is that horses were stolen and hidden in there. I don't think it's quite big enough to store horses. Maybe one horse can fit in the cave.


We've reached the top of Tunnel Trail. Now we can see the wilderness behind Santa Barbara. The wilderness back there is incredibly remote and rugged. Trails get swallowed by the chaparral. You often have to hike with not just a GPS or map and compass, but also with a saw, loppers and heavy leather gloves. It is lonely back there on those trails. Often I will not see other people. Often the only tracks on the trail belong to bears and lions.


We hiked along East Camino Cielo Road for a mile or so to La Cumbre Peak. This is another view of the wilderness behind Santa Barbara, looking toward Mission Pine where The Man and I hope to take a backpack trip in a few days, weather permitting.

From the tops of the mountain ranges on the horizon, you can stand and look at the Pacific Ocean and Channel Islands in one direction and look at the snowy peaks of the High Sierra around Langly and Whitney in the other. When we camp at Mission Pine Spring, we will sit out on the edge of a rocky cliff and watch cars way off in the distance driving over the Cold Spring arch bridge as the sun sets. You feel so close but at the same time, so very far away, isolated and alone.


The view of Arlington/Cathedral Peaks and downtown Santa Barbara from La Cumbre Peak. It was about 5.5 miles to get up here and about 3200' elevation gain. I live near the base of that small hill on the horizon against the ocean, near the notch in the hill, on the downtown side of the hill. That hill is called "The Mesa."


Arlington and La Cumbre peak on the way down. I always like this view of the notch in the mountains. The mountains are all sedimentary layers and where there is a layer of shale between the sandstone, there's a notch. The layers are all upside-down, meaning the bottom is to the left and the top of the layers is to the right. They can tell that from embedded fossil shells. There was a fire here in 2009 which is why the scrub is somewhat barren. It used to be more green with chamise and scrub oak. There's a lot of morning glory choking everything.