Bears around Hawks Peak

We were hiking around Hawks Peak, in Tahoe Donner, when we spotted bear tracks:

They were very large, and also very fresh.  And a dark shadow moving on a tree nearby caught our eye.  The bear!  With three cubs!  Climbing on a tree!

Mother bear had evidently heard us coming, and had sent her three cubs up a tree, to protect them, and was herself climbing the tree.  She was huge, the biggest bear we have seen so far (and we have seen many, from Sequoia Natl Park, to Yosemite).

It’s never a good idea to be around a mother bear with cubs; luckily in this case, the mother had sent her cubs up a tree, and so she was unlikely to attack to protect the cubs unless we came closer.  We promptly backtracked, and while going back, we managed to quickly get a few shots of the bear and her cubs.  They were quite far up the tree; they were excellent climbers.

Bear tracks near Hawks Peak

Bears are really good climbers!

We later heard that a bear spent the winter under a balcony in Tahoe Donner… we wonder whether it was this bear.

How to create top-quality topo maps of your hikes

Some time ago I posted some instructions on how to create on-line topo maps of hikes / excursions, starting from GPX files.  Joseph Elfelt of Gmap4 has recently written to me, announcing the availability of new, and much improved maps.  I checked the new maps out, and the quality and detail is simply stunning!

To get a map, you must first upload the GPX file somewhere (Google Sites works well). Once you have an URL for your GPX file, such as

http://share.jointwork.net/tdr_file_site/tracks/Lola_Montez_One_Way.GPX

then you can generate a high-resolution topographical map of the GPX trail by creating the URL as follows:

http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php?q=http://share.jointwork.net/tdr_file_site/tracks/Lola_Montez_One_Way.GPX&t=t4

The “t=t4″ parameter above selects new very high-definition topographical maps that are simply stunning to look at — better than any other ones I have seen.

If you use and appreciate the service, Joseph tells me that he would appreciate donations, to help with the cost of hosting and serving map quads  (I should add that I have no relation to him, except of being a very happy user of his maps).

This is what Joseph wrote about how these new maps were created (reproduced with permission):

The person behind CalTopo.com is Matt Jacobs and his site is running the ‘civilian’ version of a map tool that he originally wrote to support wilderness search and rescue (SAR) activity. Matt’s desire for the highest quality topographic maps coincided with a massive project by the U.S. Geological Survey to make very high quality scans (660 pixels per inch) of all the topographic maps they had previously published. These scans are online as ordinary PDF files, they are not the new GeoPDF file format.

A vast amount of work was done by Matt to invent a system that would process those new very high quality USGS scans into map ‘tiles’ suitable for display by software (like Gmap4) which uses the Google Maps API (Application Program Interface). These newly created map tiles are hosted on the Amazon servers. There are some blog posts on Matt’s website that provide some insight into the processing steps needed in order to convert the USGS scans into high quality map tiles. 

In late 2011 Matt contacted me and inquired if I would like to display his tiles with Gmap4.  Since the scan quality of these map tiles is significantly better than anything else available and the tiles do not have any watermarks or ads, I quickly agreed. You can compare these map tiles (t4 Topo High) and the user-selected amount of hill shading (Menu ==> Hill shading) to any other online topographic maps and decide for yourself which maps look best.

Ultimately whether or not Gmap4 can continue to display these watermark-free state-of-the-art adjustable-hill-shading topographic maps will be up to you along with the other Gmap4 users.  If you enjoy using Gmap4 and Matt’s best-of-their-kind maps, please consider making a donation that I can share with Matt.

Kudos to Matt and Joseph for making such great maps available to us all!

Lola Montez Moaning

The legend says that in cold winter days, the ghost of Lola Montez can be heard moaning at her namesake lake in the Sierra.  We went to check yesterday, and we clearly heard repeated moans coming from the frozen lake.  We recorded a few of them.  A spectral analysis reveals that Lola had an unsually low voice, with a distinct frequency peak at around 154 Hz.

(Note: you should listen to the recordings using headphones; laptop speakers generally cut off low frequencies.)

You can download the audio here.

Here’s interesting information on frozen-lake sounds.

Coyote sighting!

Coyote in Tahoe Donner. January 2, 2012, 7:29am

Our “animal camera” caught sight of a coyote at 7:29am, Jan 2, 2012!

We knew there were many coyotes around (they were howling at the Moon behind our house during the Thanksgivings weekend), but this is the first photo of them we were able to get.

Added many new hikes and mountain-bike rides

We added many new hike and mountain-bike ride descriptions.   For each ride or hike, we give a map, and length and elevation data; we plan to add more complete hike and ride descriptions in due time.  Most of the hikes and rides are suitable for families, and we hope that the map and GPS data we provide will be sufficient for you to form an idea of their difficulty and length.  All of the rides and hikes are quite beautiful – we hope you will enjoy them.

My favorite GPS: Garmin 62s

I have had three or four GPSs so far.  The early ones I owned were completely useless for hiking: they told me where I was only when I already knew.  When I was on a mountainside, above the treeline, the GPS would tell me where I was (in lat / long, not on a map).  And of course I knew already! — I just had to look around, pick up some reference points and compare with my map.  When I was in some deep forest under a snowstorm, then the GPS would lose reception. Not that I would ever rely only on a GPS for getting back to the trailhead, but still.

After much investigation, I finally found a GPS I truly like: the Garmin 62s.  I won’t do a review of it — there are many already to be found on the web.  Here is what I like about it:

• You can load on it your own maps, and there are very many maps available for free at GpsFileDepot.
• Bright, easy to read screen.
• Batteries last easily over one day.  I had the 62s on from dawn to sunset attached to a backpack strap in temperatures constantly below -10C (and occasionally, below -18C), with wind, and the batteries (Eneloop rechargeables) lasted perfectly.
• Fast to use, even with gloves.  When you want to mark a location, you just need to hit “mark”, then “enter”.  This marks the spot with a number — but that’s fine with me: when I hike / ski I typically don’t want to fiddle too much with a GPS; I leave the finessing of place-mark names for when I am back home in front of the fire.
• Never loses reception, not even in a deep forest in a valley, under a snowstorm.
• Very easy to carry.  I put it in its slip case, and attach it to my left backpack shoulder strap.  Out of the way, yet very easy to read at a glance.

I tried (at an REI Store) the Garmin Oregon 450/550, but I think that for my style, they would be too slow to operate. I prefer the 62s, where you can very quickly scroll, change display information, or mark a location with a few quick button-presses. Buttons are much better in bad weather, when you might be wearing gloves (I use my GPS a lot while cross-country skiing). I think I would also prefer the 62s to a Garmin Montana. Essentially, the Oregon / Montana are very nice for good-weather geocaching or ambling about, but for fast use in any weather, the 62s is better.

Garmin also sells the Garmin 62st, which compared with the 62s, comes with a 100k topo map of the US pre-installed.  I advise against the 62st.  The 100k topo is only marginally useful for hiking.  All that the Garmin maps give you, over the free maps available at GpsFileDepot, is the terrain shading.  The terrain shading is very nice on a PC; on Garmin GPSs it is displayed too dark, to the point of making the map difficult to read.  When using Garmin maps on my GPS, I have found it best to switch off the display of terrain shading, at which point the Garmin maps are no better than the ones you can get at GpsFileDepot (I like this one in particular for California).  Thus, my advice is to get the Garmin 62s, and to use its larger available memory to load maps from GpsFileDepot.

How to get free topo maps

When I first arrived in California many years ago, it was difficult to find good topographical maps.  Sure, you could buy maps of Yosemite or Sequoia National Parks (at 1:62,000 scale or somesuch), but if you wanted to buy a map of a random place where you thought it would be fun to hike, you were mostly out of luck.  The local REI might have had some maps, but without complications or preordering, it wasn’t easy.

Now, instead, it is maps nirvana.  You can have free topo maps of most places in the US on your Mac / PC!  Here is how.

Head over to Garmin, and download their excellent Garmin Basecamp software.  Install also  Garmin MapInstall and MapManager (here is a link for the Mac version).  Then, head over to GPS File Depot, and download free maps.  The ones I prefer are those by John_M; for the Western US in particular I recommend this one.

You can install the maps on your Mac (or Windows box, I guess), and use them from Garmin Basecamp.  It is simply wonderful.  Of course, Google Earth is also very good to explore places, but I find the ability to view and print topo maps invaluable for hiking.  And perhaps it’s just me, but I still get more information out of a good topo map than out of Google Earth, when it comes to hiking.