Posts Tagged ‘hiking’
Posted on August 5, 2018, 11:28 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Shenandoah National Park is a long and skinny park. The Skyline Drive runs its entire length of 105 miles. For most of it, the road is never more than a few miles from the park’s boundary on both sides. For this reason, besides the Appalachian Trail that closely parallels the Skyline Drive, there are few […]
Posted on May 28, 2018, 8:29 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
North of highway 20, the character of Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument changes. Elevations rise, conifer forest dominate, and roads are all unpaved. Snow Mountain, the highest point in the monument, offered an unexpected adventure that reminded me of higher and further mountain ranges. Getting to the trailhead is half the adventure Berryessa Snow Mountain […]
Posted on May 21, 2018, 11:31 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument was established in 2015 to protect more than a hundred miles at the heart of North California’s Inner Coast Range. Although its southern tip is located only one hour from the San Francisco Bay Area, for most people, Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument is more mysterious than the Sierra Nevada. […]
Posted on April 15, 2018, 7:20 pm, by QT Luong, under
Recollections.
By the fall of 1993, I still didn’t own a car. Back then, the same UC Berkeley student group that I joined for my first trip to Yosemite organized a yearly outing to Death Valley during the Thanksgiving school break. I didn’t know what the place was about, but I had known its name since […]
Posted on March 11, 2018, 11:50 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
San Gabriel Mountains National Monument is recent, been having designated by President Obama in October 2014. This, combined with its relatively large size (346,177 acres or 541 square miles), has made it a target for the Trump administration’s “review” of national monuments. However, the San Gabriel Mountains are long-established recreation grounds for the second largest […]
Posted on March 4, 2018, 9:00 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Instead of its utilitarian name, Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument could also be have been called Sand to Snow National Monument because it spans a similar range of elevations, from the desert floor to the top of San Jacinto Peak, which culminates at 10,834 feet. Although San Jacinto Peak is lower than […]
Posted on February 25, 2018, 10:15 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Sand to Snow National Monument owes its name to the striking elevation difference between the Sonoran Desert floor (about 1,000 feet) and 11,500-foot San Gorgonio Mountain, Southern California’s highest peak. That gradient makes Sand to Snow possibly the most botanically diverse national monument in America. Unlike Mojave Trails and Castle Mountains, no roads penetrate its […]
Posted on February 18, 2018, 11:35 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
If I was to sum up my impressions of Castle Mountains National Monument in one word, it would be “primitive”. See what I managed to discover and photograph in one day of exploring this beautiful desert area that manages to make the Mojave National Preserve appear civilized, without the benefit of any detailed information nor […]
Posted on February 10, 2018, 4:30 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Protecting a huge 2,500 square miles (1.6 million acres), Mojave Trails National Monument is the largest of the three California desert national monuments established by President Barack Obama in February 2016, and also the second largest national monument in the contiguous U.S. or the largest if you count the reduction in size of Grand Staircase […]
Posted on October 27, 2017, 11:17 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Easily missed, but aptly named Fairyland Point offers quiet, a great view, and the trailhead for one of the best hikes under the rim of Bryce Canyon National Park. On the way to the renown viewpoints over the Bryce Amphitheater such as Sunrise Point, Sunset Point, and Inspiration Point, most visitors miss a turnoff in […]
