Michael Jay Lissner

Desolation Wilderness

2013-06-17T11:41:40-07:00

Z and I went to Desolation Wilderness this weekend in preparation for our thru hike of the Te Araroa trail in November. It was a great trip, and photos are here. If you need permission to see them, let me know.

The route

Our route brought us to Wrights Lake at about 10pm on Friday night. From there, we hiked up to Twin Lakes and found a spot by the south western edge. This was pretty lucky. Getting across the lake’s outlet at midnight when we got there was a pain, especially for me, since I lacked a flashlight.

On Saturday, we hiked halfway to Island Lakes, then south to a east-west ridge that forms one of the edge of Mt. Price. This ridge was stupidly dangerous, hoping from bounder to boulder with no safety net and a giant fall below. In wet or snowy conditions, it’d be impossible, but with some patience we were able to do it without too much trouble. Once traversed the ridge to the east, walking up the southern side of Mt. Price was a cake walk.

After spending some time at the top, where we observed some friendly (but skinny) marmots, we headed east towards Mosquito Pass. Getting down from the top was a hairy mess, with lots of rocky cliffs we had to very carefully pick our way down. Eventually, we made it off the cliffs and into the snow fields, which happily were soft enough to glissade down. We didn’t have ice axes, so if we couldn’t glissade, we would have had to wait for the sun to get higher and melt more snow. The snow here was full of medium-sized sun cups, which Z naturally (and quite properly, given her running shoes) slid around on and hated. I hated them too, but my shoes at least afforded me some traction on them. The snow went down almost to the top of the ridge between Clyd and Aloha lakes, but not quite, and once we got there, we clamored over the rocks for a while until arriving back on trail at Mosquito Pass. From here, we walked along Lake Aloha, to camp at the southern edge. Mozzies were pretty bad here, but bearable.

On Sunday, we woke up, hiked back over Mosquito Pass, and beyond it through a long valley, up and over Rockbound Pass. From there we hiked down, back into the Mosquito zone, and beyond to our the car.

Regrets

I forgot to put new batteries in my flashlight, and the old ones were all but dead.
The deet that we brought was old and didn’t seem to work too well.
Z needs real shoes.
Ice axes would have been safer.

Awesome things

Lake Aloha is amazing but crowded.
The snow was just right, despite it being WAY too early for a trip to the High Sierras.
My legs again were abused: Scratches from the night hike with no flashlight, and sunburns from poor sunscreen application.
The itinerary pushed our muscles without injury (unlike last time).
Z is a natural backpacker and a great hiking partner.

Snow Camping in Sequoia

2009-02-20T19:25:01-08:00

I went snow camping with some friends in Sequoia National Park last weekend, and had a blast as always. We built a quinzhee and went snow shoeing and cross country skiing. The pictures are online if you are interested in seeing them, and per my custom, I brought along a couple of iButtons so that we could record our temperature the entire time.

I set them up to record the temperature every five minutes to an accuracy of 0.1 degree Celsius. I just got a chance to work with the data a bit and I threw together a quick chart. The data are attached, if anybody is interested, but the chart really tells the story better than the 2,400 data points do.

Click for full-size view

Sewing and Peru

2008-08-03T22:57:43-07:00

My girlfriend and I have been getting ready to go to Peru finally, and one thing we had to do was to make some real hats to will keep us warm at night.

I’ve spent some time shopping around for hats, but really, when it comes down to it, there is no finer camping hat than a balaclava. It can be worn on your head Smurf-style; It can be worn all the over your head burglar style; Perhaps you want it below your chin, or maybe above. You can pull the whole hat over your entire head and poke your head through the face hole so it works as a scarf. I ask you what other hat could possibly accomplish all this?

Ah, the balaclava - My favorite piece of gear. After months abuse, they never give up. The ones that I make are always made of 200 weight Malden Mills Polartec fleece, which is the finest fleece in the land. I just take a sheet of it, hold it around my head and start pining. After a good twenty minutes of pinning and stitching, I cut out the face hole, give it a blessing and consider it done.

Yosemite Pictures Posted

2008-02-19T23:07:59-08:00

Just a quick note today to announce that pictures from last weekend are posted in the photo area for those of you that have logins.

It was a fantastic weekend. Some friends and I decided to go to Yosemite to go hiking, show shoeing and camping. All in all, Yosemite remains one of the most beautiful places on earth. The pictures are impressive, but they still can’t tell the whole story. Enjoy.

Install Garmin Topo! in Linux

2008-02-11T22:08:23-08:00

I’m planning a quick trip out to Yosemite for next weekend, and I wanted to print out a couple of maps from Garmin Topo! beforehand. The last time I used Topo! was about four years ago, when I had Windows XP installed. I don’t remember how I installed it then, but that probably means it wasn’t too challenging.

This time, however, I don’t have a computer running Windows except for as a virtual client within Ubuntu, so I figured that would be the best place to begin. I booted up Windows XP, popped in the CD, mounted it within the virtual client, and tried to install. No dice: some error message. I played with it for a while, and I eventually decided that for some reason, it just wasn’t going to work.

My next idea was to try installing Topo! within Ubuntu via Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator). Wine is an application that attempts (and often fails, sometimes works) to allow Windows applications a method of working within Linux. I closed down Windows, opened the install CD within Ubuntu, and double-clicked the Setup.exe file. Amazingly, the Windows Install Shield business popped up, and the installation proceeded with no problems whatsoever.

Once that was done, the only remaining step was to make myself a nice link/alias/launcher. Once it’s installed, the Topo! executable is located at ~/.wine/drive_c/TOPO!/TOPO.EXE, so it’s just a matter of making a link to that, and you’re all done.