The theme for 2023/24 winter and spring has been one of consistent weekend storms. The just-above-average yearly totals spread out so evenly made this an epic year for wildflower blooms at the Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern. We enjoyed a mid-April four-mile hike with our friends Julie and Jill and their doggo Fritz. The nutrient-poor serpentine soils only allow specially-adapted plants to grow in these hills. Several of the larger ephemeral streams were still running well for this time of year, but many of the smaller ones were merely damp under their rocky channels. The dampness made for an explosion of monkey flowers! In total we saw more than 20 species of wildflower!
Be sure to check out Geotripper's great geology summary of the area, then check out our complete photo album from the hike!
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A quick weekend Spring Break trip for us over to Monterey since I don't get Spring Breaks at MJC. It's pretty amazing how much exploring can happen in a weekend! We were also blessed with extremely low tides tp explore Asilomar and Monterey State Beaches. Enjoy the photo albums!
The 2024 MJC Death Valley Trip was all about water, clouds, wildflowers and fairly miraculous weather. Laura and I returned to one of our favorite places on Earth with birthday-boy, Zephyr and 15 of Garry Hayes' awesome students. Outside of an unscheduled trip to Pahrump, the trip was perfect. I brought my packraft and we were all able to float on a resurgent Lake Manly before news got out and it became the Cool Thing to Do in 2024.
500-Megapixel High Resolution Photospheres.
I field-tested some of the capabilities of my new Nodal Ninja MECHA robotic head. Each 360 image is comprised of 31 images taken at 24mm. They were stitched together using PTGui and this rough-draft tour was made using 3D Vista Pro. Please explore the Trona Pinnacles and diamictites from the Kingston Peak formation by dragging the image and be sure to take advantage of the zoom! Gigapixel photospheres are in the works!
Zoomable Panoramas
Here are several hand-held panoramas that you can zoom into for your viewing pleasure. Lake Manly pano consists of ten photos, and Resting Springs Pass panos contain five or six.
A great day hike along the Tuolumne river several miles west of Hetch Hetchy during an anomalously dry and warm January day!
IIt's become somthing of an annual tradition for us to take my mom to Yosemite for an afternoon of strolling around the valley capped with a camp stove soup dinner in Ahwahnee Meadow. This year didn't disappoint!
A great day spent with Garry Hayes (@geotripper) and students along the gold-rich central Motherlode. Stops included Ione clay pits, Kennedy Mine, Chaw'se State Park and a great tour into Black Chasm Caverns.
2023 Version of Garry Hayes' field study of Pinnacles National Park with stops along the San Andreas and Calaveras Faults.
A quick autumn leaf-peeping and tenkara fishing adventure in the eastern sierra, We based out of the Coleville KOA motel and had a great time exploring Slinkard Creek in Slinkard Canyon and then Lobdell Lake in the Sweetwater Range. Now we know for next time that Slinkard Creek lahontan trout require a 3mi hike and that the road through the refuge is actually closed, LOL.lly closed, LOL.
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April 2024
AuthorRyan J Hollister - Geoscience & EnviroSci Educator, Avid hiker, Landscape photographer, WildLink Club Advisor, Central Valley Advocate. |