After 15 years of resistance I have finally acquired a mobile phone. Of course it could not be one of those el-cheapo throwaways sensible people own. It had to be an iPhone because, well, Steve Jobs sends secret messages to…
Monthly Archives: July 2008
Final Hikes column: Pescadero Creek County Park
by tom • July 21, 2008 • 1 Comment
This’ll be the last one I do for the San Jose Mercury News. Tucked into a remote section of the Santa Cruz Mountains south of La Honda, the park is one of three grouped nearby. The other two – Sam…
New must-see blog: Hiker Hell
by tom • July 18, 2008 • 4 Comments
B-Real down in Orange County created this running tab of hiker misfortune last month, thoughtfully saving me the trouble of doing the same. Just yesterday he scooped the pants off us Bay Area types with this update on a woman…
Moonlight hike at Mission Peak
by tom • July 18, 2008 • 13 Comments
I made a snap judgment Wednesday to check out Mission Peak at sunset, which I had been fixing to get ready to do for ages. Winehiker Russ loves to lead this hike (just under six miles with 2,000 feet of…
High Sierra road trip
by tom • July 16, 2008 • 6 Comments
So I’m on vacation this week and needed to do some vacating yesterday, so Melissa and I headed for the hills. We took Ebbett’s Pass, lunched with a through-hiker and gave him a ride into Markleeville, then headed down to…
Court deals blow to Santa Clara Open Space Authority
by tom • July 15, 2008 • 2 Comments
The Santa Clara Open Space Authority has been piling up over $50 million most of this decade because it added a fee to people’s property taxes to pay for open space, trails and other things. A trouble-making anti-tax group sued,…
No proof a mountain lion attacked that hiker at Foothills Park
by tom • July 14, 2008 • 3 Comments
Something about that story set off my B.S. detector at about 6 p.m. today … which may very well have been when investigators were making up their minds that there wasn’t a lick of proof that the guy who fell…
Free at last!
by tom • July 14, 2008 • 8 Comments
The Hikes column in Thursday’s paper will be my last. For once it’s not an austerity measure imposed from above; it’s me being more frugal about my free time … basically all my hiking hours were going into the column,…
Hiker roughed up in mountain lion attack at Foothills Park
by tom • July 14, 2008 • 10 Comments
UPDATE: Read this first. Turns out there’s no evidence implicating a mountain lion. Original post: Guy walking a trail Saturday afternoon got pounced upon by a mountain lion, whose youth, enthusiasm and ineptitude saved the hiker’s life: The pounce knocked…