Hikes

My most recent hikes seem to get documented in my hiking photo archive long before (or if) they get a more formal treatment on this site. The most-recent events are a solo hike in Joshua Tree NP, a day hike with friends in Carrizo NM, a weekend "take the dog" ramble in Sequoia National Park and Forest, and an overnight to snowbound Mosquito Lakes near Mineral King.

When I'm out hiking, I typically will use my SPOT tracker; you can check to see if I'm out and about, or have been recently.

I'm experimenting with Twitter; see my Twitter page for updates.

My most-recent major hike was in the summer of 2008 to Gardiner Basin in Kings Canyon National Park.

I solo-hiked the John Muir Trail non-stop and unresupplied, from July 4-14, 2007; read my Muir Trail narrative. Every photo I took (yikes, almost 500!) is at my photo archive of the trip.

For conditioning and gear testing, I did some training hikes April-June 2007 in preparation for a planned hike along the John Muir Trail. The three final hikes were to the Hockett Plateau, Roaring River, and a loop out of Mineral King with Kaweah Gap at the northern end. Perhaps one day I'll do trip narratives, but as of now I've posted photos with annotative comments.

Read about my February 2007 hike returning to Pinto Basin in Joshua Tree National Park.

My summer Hike in 2006 was to Laurel Basin in Sequoia National Park; among other events, I scattered some of my father's ashes and then returned home to find out if I had cancer.

I started this web site by documenting a hike in Joshua Tree National Park in late April 2006 where I flirted with heatstroke. I am a bit wiser now.

"Hike by yourself? What, are you CRAZY?" Perhaps not; check out my perspective and that of others.

Atop Peak 12362, Sept. 2005, southern Sierra Nevada. Kaweah Peaks in background on right. Click on the photo for a larger version.

Photos

Various photos are in my archives, with plans to post them to my SmugMug photo archive "...sometime after tomorrow."

Stories

A story snippet from "No License Required", in progress.

Lots more in the archives; I'll be putting various bits here as time goes on. As my friend Bill says, "Everything takes forever."

Other (Gossamer) Stuff

Yes, I was the pilot of the Gossamer Condor and Gossamer Albatross pedal-powered aircraft, flying both of them to prize-winning flights in the 1970s. Below you'll find a few Gossamer aircraft resources.

Various Gossamer Aircraft photos are at Don Monroe's page.

Gossamer Gathering 2007 photos.

A fairly large PDF (836 KB) detailing the flight of the Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel in 1979, by Ron Moulton et al. The file does not seem to display all pages from within some browsers, but downloading it and then reading it with a PDF viewer seems to work OK.

An excellent resource for human-powered flight information is at the Royal Aeronautical Society's website. The dark-blue box toward the top of the page contains links to many interesting topics.

Wonder how many human-powered aircraft I've flown? Find out the answer! (another ~800KB PDF.)

Here's a recent presentation to the JPL Bike Club that I gave about human powered flight on March 20th 2008.

The White Dwarf pedal-powered blimp which we built for Gallagher in 1984 was eventually sold to some folks in Oregon who flew it for several years before the envelope finally failed a yearly over-pressure test.

And finally, I can recommend a truly remarkable on-line resource: a detailed history of human-powered flight, complete with many, many photos.

Other (other) Stuff

My Wikipedia entry.

"Martian" bio at ZipCodeMars (last updated June 2007.)

I attended the SpaceOps 2008 conference, for which I was the lead author of a paper; you may view the first page for free. You may view a photo of our poster as well.