Ralston Peak is a popular mountain in the Desolation Wilderness which is typically and often climbed from the trailhead close to Highway 50 near Camp Sacramento. However, my goal was to climb it via East Ridge from Echo Lake and also bag Becker Peak and Talking Mountain on the way up. For my way down I planned to take the...

Signal Peak wasn't exactly the prime peak on my todo list. I didn't expect too much of this mountain with little prominence, close to the highway, telecommunication installations on top and no apparent 'interesting' route to it's peak. However, my current fitness level and some minor health issues kind of forced me to look for an...

The two main conclusions from my hike a few days ago were: "There is plenty of snow on the Northern slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains for a ski tour and I need to improve my fitness" helped me decide on what to do on this day: A ski tour with only little altitude gain on the northern slopes of Round Top. Since I hiked Round...

After a very long break from "real" mountains, I wanted to find out how bad my fitness was. During the past 8 months I did almost nothing which would have helped my fitness. Working "as a contractor" and not really doing any cardio exercise made me wonder how much altitude gain was still possible for me. In order to find out, I...

The Santa Ynez Mountain Range near Santa Barbara is one of the very few east-west oriented mountain range in the United States, almost all other ranges are north-south oriented. This mountain range is also known for its hot springs, most of them very primitive and not commercialized (see for example this one). One exception was...

Tomales Point Trail is a very popular hike from Pierce Point Ranch to the northern most tip of the Point Reyes Peninsula. It offers spectacular coastal views toTomales Bay, Bodega Bay, and the Pacific Ocean. It is also a prime wildlife viewing trail. Lots of seals, gulls, pelicans, cormorants, interesting flora and you'll most...

While visiting a friend in Santa Barbara we decided to climb the close-by Gaviota Peak. Besides the marvelous view from the top of this mountain, the main attraction is the natural hot springs on the way to the peak. The hike itself is very easy and mostly follows a gravel fire road. We start our hike at the Gaviota Hot Springs...

For some peaks you need several trials in order to make it to the top. For me, Needle Peak falls into this category, it was on my goals as "plan for the day" 4 times. The 3 failures were never due to technical difficulties on the mountain. On this day, I finally made it. The first time Needle Peak was on the goal list was here,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

My main goal for the day was Needle Peak. Well, I saw Needle Peak today, but didn't even get close to it. The reason for not reaching my goal on this day was a mix of unexpected rain and disappointment/frustration about a prime example of how nature can be destroyed by the installation of ski lifts. The name of the mountain I...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...