Last weekend Lachlan and I took off for Lover's Leap. It's up in Strawberry, CA, near South Lake Tahoe. We did four trad climbs, and a little bouldering. We climbed from dawn until dusk. Other than that there was a bottle of bourbon, a camp fire, and macaroni and cheese. A wonderful weekend. Hopefully next time we'll get to climb Bear's Reach.

Here are even more photos from our Maui trip. Laura made it out for the second week, and the fun rolled on. Much more beaching, snorkeling, and adventuring. Most of the pictures are from two adventures: Road to Hana, and Haleakala for sunrise.

My very good friend Caius, took me to visit a goat farm an hours drive North of San Francisco. It was a really wonderful day, with super friendly goats, warm sun, ocean breeze, and a brilliant quesadilla.  I love the sound of the kids munching the grass. Laying there in a hammock, between a couple of pine trees, close enough to the ocean to hear it, surrounded by edible flowers, I really couldn't help but wonder what I was doing with my life. Why don't I live on a goat farm?

Jesse and I took a plane down to Long Beach, where Lachlan picked us up and took us to his house for the evening. We then packed up the Westfalia camper and hit the road before dawn. I managed to get a little sleep on the ride, but didn't truly wake up until we hit the park. Finding a site in hidden valley didn't even look good on a Wednesday morning around 9. We happened to see some folks that were packing up and snagged their site. The next four days were filled with our first legitimate trad climbs. We did some very easy routes that allowed us to get the hang of placing some trad protection without feeling like we were too much in danger. I have to say that even an easy climb starts to feel like something formidable when you've got ten pounds of trad gear hanging off of you and no rope hanging down from above. We also got in a number of top ropes, and a bunch of bouldering. We actually got the chance to meet and climb with Todd Gordon. That was really cool, he's a really nice guy, with loads of good stories.

A huge thanks to Christy, Joel, and Lachlan for really pulling this trip together!

Well, I had a really lovely time out in Death Valley. I met some really good folks. Went on some really fun rides. Ate well, slept well, and experienced something pretty new to me. The weather was perfect. Maybe 40º F at night, and 70º F during the day.

It was probably around 1500 miles in total that I put on my KLR. Everything I needed was all packed up in my top box and panniers. The camping was much cushier than I had anticipated. But at the end of a long day of riding I was pretty grateful for running water.

A couple of the rides I did incuded, Titus Canyon, Chloride Cliffs, and Lippincott Pass. I actually got some video from my GoPro that posted via vimeo. Some of it was pointed in an unfortunate down angle that get's more of my handlebars than the surroundings.

Death Valley Ride Montage from Cory Logan on Vimeo.

I ride a KLR650, as anyone who is likely reading my blog knows. I love my motorcycle, perhaps to the point that it annoys the people around me. I love riding my motorcycle. I love commuting, on my motorcycle. Anyway, there's a forum on the interwebs called KLR650.net and it's filled with people that also own KLRs, and also love riding them. Every year there's an informal get together out in Death Valley at the furnace creek campground where a bunch of KLR riders all happen to be in the same spot. This year I will be in that spot. I'm leaving tonight, spending the night at a friend's place a little ways down, and then shooting down highway 1 just to enjoy the ride that much more, and then I'm headed east to Death Valley. I've never been to death valley, and I've never done any motorcycle camping before. This should be interesting. Estimated time of departure is 8 PM tonight 01/26/2011. I plan on returning on Sunday or Monday, we'll see.

I recently joined a meetup group oriented towards outdoor rock-climbing in the bay area. The couple of event's I'd previously signed up for had been rained out. The weather really hasn't been great for outdoor climbing. It had seemed for a while that the timing was always perfect to be sunny all week, then rain all weekend. Now it just rains every day... I don't know which is better. Anyway, those climbing events weren't looking too promising, and so a man I now know as 'Stan' proposed the idea of spelunking. It was a hit. I got all signed up and checked it out. I wasn't expecting something quite so involved. I was hoping for it, but I didn't think that in reality it would be nearly as awesome as it was. I can't wait to go back some time.

Combining two good things to make them even better. Camping and climbing go together like like bread and cheese. Lachlan and I went up all on our lonesome. Once we got there we began to wonder if other people wanted to come, if we'd even have room for them in the car, let alone their gear. Long story short, I'm thinking about getting a bigger car. Anyway, here are some pictures from the trip to Phantom Spires in South Lake Tahoe.

We went climbing down at Goat Rock yesterday. We got up at around 5 to head out. We made it to an outlook just as the sun was peaking up over the hill. There was a super short hike into the climb, and we spent much of our day on it until a ton of people showed up. We were glad we had gotten up early, here are the photos I grabbed on my iPhone. (more...)