My fitness has somewhat suffered since I moved to California (I sit in cars too often ;-). So for my first hiking day on this extended WE near Bishop, I put something not too strenuous on my want-to-climb list. It should also help to acclimatise to the altitude for the main course on the next day. Today I wanted to climb Hurd Peak...

During my hike to Hawkins - and Pickett Peak, I saw a very interesting looking mountain somewhat south of me. At home I checked out udeuschle and found out that my newly declared goal was Reynolds Peak. After checking Bob Burds pages, I knew it would be an interesting scramble, in particular the last part all the way to the top....

After my "long" hike to Freel Peak a little less than a year ago, I knew I "had" to come back to also bag the close-by Jobs Peak and Jobs Sister. In addition I also still wanted to try the southern access to the 3 highest CA mountains around Lake Tahoe from Horse Meadow. When I saw the report from the "Mountainhiker" to...

continued... I didn't sleep much in my tent that night. Not because I wasn't tired, just because the wind was shaking my tent all night long. A few times I was afraid that it might not hold up against it. At around 5 AM I decided it didn't make sense any more to keep laying awake in my sleeping bag but get up and do something....

On their short visit in California Omega3 and partner stopped by at our house and "oh surprise", the next day we planned to go on a hike together. Unfortunately the Sierra Nevada got hit by the first winter storm of the season on the weekend before they arrived. However, judging from webcams and the word from a friend's relative...

Two days ago while hiking in this area I spotted Red Lake Peak on the other side of Carson Pass from the top of Round Top and it's inviting snow free south flank. At home I checked the map to find possibilities which could be combined with this peak. A logical choice would have been to traverse from Carson to Luther Pass bagging...

Last week a storm brought about 10 inches of snow to the Tahoe region. So I was hoping to finally get my skis broken in for the season. In order to make sure an attempt to do a ski tour wouldn't fail this time, I planned to start at an elevation of almost 8000ft and in addition choose north facing slopes for my tour. Waterhouse...

"Twin Peaks" is probably known best as the fictional Washington town from the famous American television serial drama of the same name. A lot of people probably also heard about San Francisco's "Twin Peaks", the two hills near the geographic center of the city. I doubt a whole lot of people know the "Twin Peaks" in the Tahoe area,...

Today I had rather ambitious plans: almost 20 miles of distance and 4000 ft altitude gain. Depending on the snow situation some of the hike would have had to be done on snowshoes as well. The plan was to walk from Donner Pass to Tinker Knob & back and on the way to Tinker Knob bag the 4 peaks which are somewhat on the way...

When I saw the peak of Sierra Buttes last year it was immediately added to my Sierra goals. When looking up some non-standard routes to it's top I couldn't really find any useful information. However, judging from the US topo map there should be plenty of "interesting options" to get to the highest point. Most people who visit...

This was already my third attempt to get to the top of Tinker Knob. Even though there are no real technical difficulties to get to the highest point of Tinker Knob, I managed to miss this goal twice already. One attempt failed last December when I started at Goose Meadows Campground (on 89). The idea was to walk up the ridge on...

Rain and snow was forecasted for the Sierra Nevada mountains on this day, so I decided to visit the coastal range where the weather was promised to be sunny. I didn't have a lot of time to prepare this hike so I picked one of Bob Burds collection. There he nicely describes how to climb the 5 summits of Mount Konocti. Since I'm not...

Memorial Day Weekend was coming up and we had plans to visit friends in San Luis Obispo (aka SLO). Besides hanging out with friends, camping, soaking in the hot springs, going to the beach, etc., I also wanted to check out some mountains in the region. I found out that between SLO and Morro Bay there's a chain of nine volcanic...

My Swiss hiking projects typically didn't have the same starting and end point, because I was almost exclusively traveling with public transportation and I would often choose to end my hike at a different train station or bus stop than the beginning of my hike. Here in California public transportation is basically non-existent, in...

Today's plan was a tour at the south end of Hope Valley. 3 Peaks which can easily be combined in an day: The Nipple, Jeff Davis Peak and Markleeville Peak. However, in order to get to the very top of Jeff Davis Peak, I would have had to be a little braver (or would have needed a partner with a rope), because the scramble on the...

North Peak is a very attractive and high mountain on the boundary between the Inyo National Forest and Yosemite National Park. I already tried to climb it once, but failed already early in the morning due to extremely strong winds. The peak offers several different routes from easy to difficult and is climbed quite frequently in...

My announcement to come back to Fallen Leaf Lake and climb Angora Peak and Indian Rock didn't take very long to happen. I hiked up to Angora Peak from the south end of Fallen Leaf Lake, via hiking path and later the not very distinct northeast ridge, followed the connecting ridge to Indian Rock and Echo Peak and dropped down to...

Even though I've visited Black Butte already (see here), I had the urge to go up there again. Since I didn't have all day for my hike on this day, but I still wanted to do some fishing at Caples Lake, I thought that I could try a different approach for this interesting little gem. My goal was to try to climb the peak from north or...

During my outing to Reynolds Peak, I had originally planned to also climb Raymond Peak. Due to some early fall snow, the north sides of the mountains were still covered in snow and I had to give up my trial then. Today I wanted to make up leeway for this missed peak but use a different approach from northwest instead. I park...

Mount Tamalpais (or Mount Tam how the locals call it) is a very popular mountain north of San Francisco. I climbed it once already in a rather long hike, all the way from Stinson Beach. Some friends who live in the Bay Area know that I like to hike and asked me to "guide" a tour up there. Due to the various hiking experience...