Rainbow Pools / Yosemite / Tioga Pass Report & Photo Tour: I drove through Yosemite on Friday and Saturday. Rainbow Pools was going off. I’ve never seen so many people there. I had to park up the road and walk down. That’s never happened to me. There were over 100 people hanging out, fishing, swimming, peanut gallerying, and cliff jumping. One guy threw a double backflip and put the rest of us to shame. A couple other guys, who’d clearly been drinking, tried flips and ended up doing 1.25 flips with very loud, painful, and entertaining consequences. The crowd that spends time at Rainbow Pools is the classic American crowd. I call it the Big ___s and Tattoo crowd – B.T.&T. in [..] Conditions Report Miles Clark | July 21, 2014 1 Comment
One Day in CA: Surf โ Water Ski โ Cliff Jump โ Ski โ Ice Cream โ Hot Springs California. It’s simply an amazing place. Today, it showed off what it can really do. I was up early and got into the water at Ocean Beach, San Francisco by 7am. The waves were terrible, it was windy and cold. I got a few “fun” rides and called it good after about an hour. Size was in the 2-4 foot range. From the beach to the Stockton Delta. Met up with […] Conditions Report Miles Clark | May 24, 2014 7 Comments
Tioga Pass Report: The North Peak Couloirs My favorite area to go backcountry skiing is the Eastern Sierra. And this year for one reason or another I hadn’t made it out to the East Side yet. With the season coming to a close, I knew I had to get out there whenever I had a free day. So a few days ago I made a day trip out to ski North Peak with my buddy Stefan. We had heard that Saddlebag Lake was plowed but not open yet, so we brought along mountain bikes for the approach. The gate was locked on our way in, but on the way out we saw that the gate was open and a few cars had already driven up and parked at the lake. Saddlebag Lake is mostly frozen and […] Conditions Report Guest Author | May 19, 2014 2 Comments
California Adventure Report: Tioga Pass, Rainbow Pools, Mono Lake, Hot Springs, Water Spouts… California can shine and it very well may shine brightest in springtime. This year, we had a low snow year and that’s the yang. The yin is that Tioga Pass opened very early so in one day, you can easily experience the foothills, the white granite domes, the high mountains, the east side, and the desert. Today, I woke up in Waterford, CA and got on the road by 7:30am. From there, it was a classic California adventure: Flipping into Rainbow Pools in the foothills, gaping at Half Dome, skiing Poop Chute on Tioga Pass, gawking at […] Miles Clark | May 16, 2014 3 Comments
Yosemite Rim Fire Aftermath Rainbow Pools Did Not Burn Report & Photo Tour This past Sunday, I drove up to see the damage from the Yosemite Rim Fire and to check if my favorite cliff jumping spot, Rainbow Pools, had been burned. The Yosemite Rim Fire was a highly destructive fire in August and September that burned over 257,000 acres (full fire statistics below). I took highway 120 up towards […] Miles Clark | October 22, 2013 6 Comments