Squaw Valley, home of the 1960 Olympics and outdoor playground of the San Francisco Bay Area, hasn’t always had the reputation for being the most user friendly mountain. Poor to non-existent signage, cranky lifties, nude art in the cafeteria and a sense that you didn’t belong there unless you could ski didn’t create a …
When I started skiing in my mid-twenties, much later in life than the tots I see careening around the mountain, all my friends skied at Squaw Valley so that’s where I skied too. I worked hard to learn to ski, wanting to join my friends on the harder lifts, never satisfied to just cruise on …
The Judd Trail to Manoa or Tantalus via the Nu’uanu Trail is an energetic 5-10 mile hike (depending on which trail you take on the second half) in Honolulu, Hawaii that starts in Nu’uanu near on the Old Pali Highway and ascends up a high ridge to Tantalus and down to Manoa Falls. The trails …
Even adventurers sometimes need a relaxing vacation and for my husband and me there’s nothing more rejuvenating than a Hawaii beach vacation with a couple of day hikes thrown in. O’ahu is our favorite island because the best beaches in the islands are here, there are lots of great restaurants in every price range, entertainment …
Car-camping on the shores of Lake Tahoe and beyond can be a great way to get little kids ready for the bigger reward—backpacking. Just don’t linger there too long and stay focused on the goal of getting into the backcountry as soon as possible. This brief post is related to another article, Top five first backpacking …
In a previous article, Backpacking with Kids in Tahoe-Tips for Success, I describe a dawning realization that an article written a few years ago, Backpacking around Tahoe with Kids in Tow, needed a serious update. I had described our first camping and backpacking trips we had taken with our young godchildren but never re-visited whether those …
Diane wrote to me early in the summer to ask some questions about backpacking with kids. We kept up a lively correspondence and as Diane got further in her planning we realized that she, her 6 year old daughter, Joanna, and husband, Pepe, would be passing right by our house in Alpine Meadows as they …
In an article I wrote several years ago, Backpacking around Tahoe with Kids in Tow, I described our progression of backpacking with our godchildren, Taira and Chase, now 16 and 14, from the time they were tiny tots. What I neglected to include were my recommendations for others who want to introduce their children to …
In Part 1, BACKPACKING WEBBER LAKE TO DONNER SUMMIT ON THE PCT, we trekked from near Webber Lake to White Rock Lake on a pleasant six mile stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail near Lake Tahoe. In Part 2 we set off toward Paradise Lake, where we hope that it will be warm enough to swim …
The backpacking trip I look forward to each year is not the longest, hardest or most exotic, it’s the one we take in Tahoe with our godson, Chase, and his mom, Laura. We used to be a group of six, but goddaughter Taira, at 16, is focused on water polo, and her dad, Ken, is …