Farewell dear Pat, farewell summer...looking forward to fall, winter and the adventures they hold! 

Fall's here, time to ride! With Highroller still sidelined with a bum neck, Chainsaw and Allison took it on themselves to represent on a four hour tour...believe this view is from near Mt. Alto on N Switz

Allison dropping into the Gulch with nary a Boulder horde in sight

Chainsaw drops thru the aspens.

Perfect fall day for a highcountry spin...

Hey! I thought we agreed we were never never going to talk about this! -Swabby

What in the world are we gonna do with these? 

Perfect weekend for leaf-peepers so the dog and I took the assbackwards tour of the Chalet back 40 walking the elk trails along the border with Roosevelt Nat Forest...beautiful!

Worlds of moss taking over the back 40 as the cool moist September draws to a close. I love moss!

Gnome-grotto

Yep, fall's here all right. Time to get all rightous on Pat's Equinox Sacrificial ass and recognize all the good things the spring and summer have brought and set ourselves up for goodness next year when our winter planning bears fruit once again...

Igniting hirm majesty the gathered drunkards had to take a big step back from the heat wave...

Long live Pat!

fall classic

don't bother heading to Breck for the Fall Classic this weekend, this is what the course looks like today:



Anyone want to ride this weekend, below 6000 feet, that is? Call me!

Garden Booty

I stopped by the garden last night and noticed that we had a frost. All the squash plants were dead, so I went looking for any blue pumpkins. Here is one of the two I found. I harvested this one, then picked all the chili peppers and tomatoes that were ripe. Looks like we are going to have a chili fest next week. The pumpkin was so heavy I could barely open carry it with my bag of chilis. 

So I weighed the sucker! 15lbs, not bad.

and I saved this Harlequin bug for MOA. 

Day 1 Saturday 9/9

Flying on United's Ted, will give you a Tedache. Thankfully we had advil and a Wild Oats right near the airport. After a long over due lunch, we drove to Lake Tahoe, then over this pass. Nice view! 

On our way to Mammoth, we passed Mono Lake. "Mono Lake is a majestic body of water covering about 65 square miles. It is an ancient lake, over 1 million years old -- one of the oldest lakes in North America. It has no outlet. Throughout its long existence, salts and minerals have washed into the lake from Eastern Sierra streams. Freshwater evaporating from the lake each year has left the salts and minerals behind so that the lake is now about 2 1/2 times as salty and 80 times as alkaline as the ocean." 

Sun setting in Mamoth 

Good Morning!

Monday. After sleeping up at Lone Pine Lake, elevation 9800, its time to make a plan for the day. 

The weather was beautiful. Shall we hike up to the summit? 16 miles round trip.

Hmmm, this down is going to hurt on the way back to camp. 

Getting up higher now, over 12,000. The trail is like this the rest of the way to the summit, just rocks, rock steps, more rocks. 

Finally a view of the summit! I thought it would be cool up here, but the sun was baking! 

Summit

Here I am on top of the highest peak in the lower 48 states. The lowest area of the US, Death Valley, is about 130 miles to the southeast. 

The Whitney Portal Store Burger

After hiking down from camp, we had a little lunch.

Oh man does this food taste good! We heard about the burgers on the trail from a number of people, so we had to see what they were talking about. Yum!

Tuesday afternoon

Cheers we made it back to the park where it all started. Notice Jim has a beer in EACH hand. 

Yosemite

Wednesday we had a lazy morning in Mammoth and then hit Tioga pass into Yosemite for a peak at Half Dome and some sights. Then it was back to Reno for the night. 

Always

wear