AHHHHHH, AH THE BEAUTY! (The Rainforest, the Tropical Rainforest)

After encouragement from radiantsun and mrgoodluckbear, I joined Hike the Geek yesterday morning for a hike in the Santa Monica mountains. It was a fun group, I had a great time, and I intend to do it again. And yes, ojouchan, I'm going to make you come at least once.

The hike started in TreePeople Park (part of Coldwater Canyon Park), and we headed east to a little residential cul-de-sac, Iredell Lane. But we were right back into wilderness, this time taking the "Rainforest Trail" into Fryman Canyon Park. The trail is so named because a portion of it goes by a creek where there's lots of trees and shade. It's true that kind of foliage is rare in the Santa Monica mountains, but I agree with one hiker who thought it was a bit of an exaggeration. But for all that, it was a very nice trail. Nicely kept free of poison oak, which loomed on the edges.

Along the way, I stopped everyone to look for two geocaches. One we found. The other wasn't there to be found. Apparently I messed up my filters again when I was setting up my GPS and I loaded up a bunch of coordinates for caches that no longer exist. Apologies to everyone, and thanks for your help in searching for the nonexistent. It was an interesting spot, though.

There were a lot of interesting people, but the atmosphere was incredibly relaxed. Everyone seemed interested and interesting, but there wasn't a pressure to socially perform, like there is even in relaxed situations like quiet parties. I got to spend some time talking with a bunch of the folks there, and enjoyed all of the conversation.

But by the end, I was well on my way to becoming the group shlimazel. On our way back, I whacked my head against a low overhanging tree. Since I was looking down at the time and wearing a hat, the thing never even came into my view. Then, during a rest, I managed to flick water into my eye, which caused me to choke on the water I'd been trying to drink, and I ended up motionless with my eyes closed trying to figure out which problem to deal with first.

After the hike, a subset of the hikers went to Casa Vega for brunch/lunch/dinner. It's always nice to stop in there, although after so much time outside, we all had difficulty adjusting to the intense darkness that is CV's interior.

Now that I've slept and gone to work and come back, I'm finally able to look at all the information from my GPS. Given the proclaimed geekiness of the group, I was surprised to be the only one carrying that kind of technology. According to my track log, the highest elevation we reached was 1145 feet, and the lowest was 830. I think the low number is a result of some bad readings when under trees. For the most part, I think it looks like -200, +200, -200, +100, -100, +200. The two end points of the hike were at roughly the same level, since they were both on the ridge of Mulholland Drive.

Having finally gotten home, I've plugged all the information into Google Earth to take a look at where we were. Since I was there, I thought I'd spruce the thing up as a digital record of the hike. And then I saved it to a handy KMZ file. Unfortunately, my webhosting seems to have disappeared, so I don't have anywhere to put it at the moment. If you can host it, let me know; it's only like 4K. Or, Radiantsun, if you know how to get it onto HTG's website despite not being a picture, that'd be fine too. Thanks to thatbox who reminded me that Google, like Dorothy's shoes, held the power for me to do what I wanted the whole time.
Here's the file. Open it in Google Earth and let me know how it works.

SunNYTX: 17:??. I had the same reaction Coach. MonNYTX: 3:45.

Another Wake-Up Song.

I like the music that plays on KCRW between ten and eleven p.m. when I'm waking up. Yesterday, I came to hearing this song (YouTube link). The band is called Soko, and there's not much English information about them yet. But they've got an EP available on iTunes and eMusic.