JimBob (I hope you don't mind the familiarity, but I love Southern naming conventions!)-
I agree! I have walked with Bob in New England enough to know there's some tough climbs in the East, and when I was younger, in the South, in the Smokies. While I'm not a western mountain snob, I did grow up in Northern California not to far from Mt. Shasta, which rises as a long dormant volcano from the valley floor at about 4000 feet ASL to about 14,000 feet ASL. This last October, I was in central eastern California collecting data on foxtail pines that are just south of Mt. Whitney in the Sierra Nevada range (at about 14,500 feet ASL) and looked down directly to Owens Lake on the valley floor (at about 4,500 feet ASL) and then across at the White Mtns. and Inyo Range which run around 13,500 just 15 miles or so away. This winter, I'll be stopping in for a visit to my folks house, near Palm Springs (at about 3,500 feet ASL) which has a tram that runs up from the edge of town to San Jacinto Peak, which I believe is about 12,000 feet ASL. These are all accessible to hikers, and are popular, well-known and range between 9,000 to 10,000 feet relief Back when I was younger and much tougher, I hiked up to Spanish Meadows (at about 9700 feet) and dropped down into the north fork of the Kings River Canyon into what is called Tehipite Valley (or alternatively, Little Yosemite Valley) which was a little under 4200 feet ASL, for approximately a mile of relief (5,280 feet)...modest in comparison to the above relief giants, but in this case, the entire drop occured within one square mile on the Tehipite Valley Topo Quad...for an average of 45 degrees. My knees were so wobbly half way down I couldn't come to a full stop. It is a spectacular valley, much like Yosemite with bullet shaped domes rising from the valley floor to over 10,000 feet ASL (Tehipite Dome). The climb out was much easier than the drop in! If I haven't bored you, and I'll wait until requested to, I could tell you what we discovered on the other side of the valley once we crossed the Kings River at runoff stage, a little ways up the Gorge of Despair...:>} -Don > Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:22:18 -0700 > Subject: [ENTS] Re: Catskills > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > > > Absolutely gorgeous photos! > > I love our eastern peaks. I meet up with a lot of hikers from out west > that I call "mountain snobs". They don't consider our mountains to be > anything other than hills. I point out to them that the 13K-foot peak > they climbed only has 2500 feet of relief, but this matters not at all > to them. I've stood on many mountains in Virginia that have as much > vertical relief as Half Dome in Yosemite. But they wouldn't admit that > those Virgina summits are mountains. > > Alas. > > At any rate, those are great photos. One of these days I hope to hike > in the Catskills, too. > > > _________________________________________________________________ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that’s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
