Soldier Canyon - Prison Camp to Hairpin Turn

After quite a few days of rain this weekend finally brought drier weather, it seemed like an interesting chance to see Soldier Canyon full of water - so we set out on a hike from Prison Camp to Hairpin Turn via Soldier Canyon. If you stay in the water course there are a number of possible rappels - but this is also very fun canyon to do without technical gear and it is possible to see practically all of the canyon without any rappelling. The weather was cold and the canyon full of water so we bypassed optional rappels 1-3. Here is a quick comparison of the water flow between January of 2006 and December 2007:

This hike requires a car shuttle - the lower car should be parked in the pull-out along the right side of the road just before the first hairpin turn heading up the mountain (before the road crosses Soldier canyon). Climbers will know this as the parking area for the Hairpin Turn and Rivendale areas. After dropping off the car head for the the Gordon Hirabayashi Recreation Area (often called ‘Prison Camp’) where, just as in past hikes to this area (same hike Jan. 2006, partial version of this hike 2007), we parked in one of the pull outs along the loop at the end of the road.

Start on Soldier Trail which will quickly take you to Soldier Canyon - leave Soldier Trail as it heads up and left and follow the canyon. Bypass the first drops and falls on a climber’s trail on the right side of the canyon and continue hiking and scrambling into and down the canyon. The scrambling in this section is generally easy, but it is also easy to escape the canyon bottom to bypass any difficulties.

Eventually the canyon flattens out as you hike thru the area where Soldier Trail crosses the canyon several times. Soldier Trail leaves the canyon for the last time and climbs up to the cliffs on the left side of the canyon just before the canyon begins to narrow into another beautiful - and possibly technical - section.

As you work down the narrowing canyon bottom you will come to a short drop, optional rappel 1 (depending on water flow stronger climbers may bypass this rappel). Shortly down canyon you will come to optional rappel 2 - this is more easily down climbed than the previous drop but flowing water could make the climbing quite slick. Work past another short drop on the left side of the canyon and down to optional rappel 3 which takes you around a huge boulder that creates one of the most beautiful spots in the canyon. It is awkward - but possible - to bypass optional rappel 3 by working up onto the cliffs on the left side of the canyon. All of the optional rappels can be easily avoided by hiking along the cliffs above the canyon and thrashing back down into the canyon bottom.

After the giant boulder there is one more set of cliffs down canyon that form optional rappel 4 - when the cliffs are dry this could be a down climb for confident climbers (there are also options to escape and reenter to the canyon). Past these cliffs the canyon is a beautiful hike down to Hairpin Turn with a number of small scrambles and occasional route finding puzzles. Map.

Enjoy!
CM

Arizona Canyoneering Books

I updated a few of my posts today to note that there were alternate descriptions in the latest book about canyoneering in Arizona:

Arizona Technical Canyoneering - by Todd Martin (you may know his website - Todd’s Desert Hiking Guide - lots of good information and hike/trip reports)

The other book that is not to be missed in this category is:

Canyoneering Arizona - by Tyler Williams (revised edition)

I have not done enough of the hikes in either book to offer a review - but I have had a few good adventures with Canyoneering Arizona and am already excited about some of the destinations in Arizona Technical Canyoneering.

Enjoy!
CM

Agua Caliente Canyon Loop Hike

Agua Caliente and Milagrosa canyons are beautiful destinations at the base of the Santa Catalina Mountains on the east side of Tucson. Interesting sections of both canyons can be enjoyed as loop hikes starting from the end of Suzenu Road - this weekend we decided to visit Agua Caliente Canyon. Map.

To get to the trail follow Snyder east - after Synder divides look for a left turn onto Suzenu Road. Park on the right side of the road before the T intersection. Start the hike by taking a right - thru the gate - and to the end of the road. At the end of the road continue past a gate (several ‘No Parking’ signs) and across a wash via an old road - after a few minutes (and heading downhill) look for the trail on your left (if you start to cross the wash you have gone too far).

The trail has great views of the Santa Catalinas and the Agua Caliente Hill area - the trail also has very little shade and can be quite hot (be prepared!). It is fairly easy to follow the trail into the bottom of Agua Caliente canyon. The canyon bottom is unremarkable for the first minutes, but keep hiking and you will arrive at a rocky section with falls/drops/pools. There are several obstacles to bypass down canyon - these will likely require bushwhacking, scrambling and/or following faint trails on the loose/sandy/exposed/bushy side of the canyon (be very careful!). The canyon gradually mellows as you head towards the junction with Milagrosa canyon - we spotted an impressive beehive high on the cliffs during our hike. When you reach the junction work your way back up onto the trail and head back to the parking area.

Update! 2007-10-28 - For another description of Agua Caliente Canyon (and Milagrosa) see Arizona Technical Canyoneering.

Enjoy!
CM

Montrose Canyon

The Romero Canyon Trail in Santa Catalina State park can be a busy location - on a hot day you will undoubtedly pass groups of hikers focused on getting to the Romero Pools and enjoying the cool water. For much of the hike to the Romero Pools you can look down into Montrose Canyon. On Sunday we hiked up the Romero Canyon Trail until the last prominent saddle before the pools and bushwhacked/boulder hopped down the steep hillside into Montrose Canyon. Getting off the trail quickly separated us from the crowds and we took advantage of the quiet to have a nice nap in the shade beside the water. From where we entered the canyon traveling down is mostly easy hiking and scrambling - but we did come to several places where we had to exit the canyon to bypass obstacles. Eventually we ended up back at the Overlook to the Montrose Pools and returned to the car via the Romero Canyon Trail.

CM

Sweetwater Wetlands - Blackbirds!

We visited the Sweetwater Wetlands this weekend and had fun watching the flocks of Yellow-headed and Red-winged Blackbirds flying at dusk.

The Sweetwater Wetlands is part of Tucson’s water treatment facilities and the odor can be bit daunting at first. You will probably forget about the smell since the birding is fun and the habitat is different from many other Tucson area birding locations - highly recommended.

Wesabe, PasswordSafe, hosted-projects.com, S3 Backup, HotSpotVPN

Last month I ordered a Lenovo X61 Tablet (originally due to arrive last week - now delayed…) and I immediately started a folder of software that I wanted to install on my new machine. As part of that process I also looked for new web applications that would work for me as desktop application replacements and thought about services I want to continue to use:

Wesabe
web address: www.wesabe.com
length of time used: just over a month
for me replaces: Microsoft Money

I have used Microsoft Money for about 7 years. I am a ‘light’ user of the product - no investment tracking or anything complicated - and it worked well for me but did not have any must-have/killer features.

When I saw Wesabe I was intrigued, Wesabe provides basic account tracking (including pulling information from your bank via a desktop app or (better) a Firefox plug-in), has clean/flexible tagging of transactions, supports adding attachments to transactions (such as a scan of your reciept), very basic reporting/exporting and a nice clean interface. In addition Wesabe adds a twist to financial management software by tying you into a community of users who can provide tips and join groups on topics such as saving money.

I have been using Wesabe for about 1 1/2 months now and for me it is has worked great - no glitches or problems, simple to learn and has the features that I need! It seems fairly clear to me that Wesabe is not intended to (at this point anyway) track a complex financial portfolio, but for tracking/tagging transactions on a basic set of accounts it works great.

PasswordSafe
web address: www.passwordsafe.com
length of time used: about two months
for me replaces: PINs

I have seen many suggestions about different ways to manage the insane number of online accounts (not to mention ‘offline’ numbers/combinations/pins/etc.) that almost everyone seems to accumulate - but none that are perfect. I found PINs over a year ago and liked the simplicity and small footprint, but occasionally wanted access to my passwords when I did not have my computer or USB drive handy…

For me PasswordSafe is a nice solution. PasswordSafe offers a number of features, for me the ability to store usernames/passwords and search my account to bring up the information I need is great. PasswordSafe has a desktop app that can pull down all of your information into a format that is available offline and a (beta) favorites link that will bring up a browser window with your PasswordSafe information for the current site. This service has worked great for me and, like Wesabe, the features match quite nicely with what I need.

hosted-projects.com
web address: www.hosted-projects.com
length of time used: just over a year
for me replaces: hosting a local subversion server

For the past couple of years I have been trying to continually improve my programming skills and have several personal projects that I have been working on - even working 99.9% by myself it is hard to imagine not using a version control system.

Subversion (with tortoisesvn) is the system I picked and I started by running a subversion server on my own system. This was a great way to get started, but I was nervous about losing data if I had computer problems.

So I found an alternative - hosted-projects.com; the price is good and they have plans that are appropriate for a wide variety of needs. I have never seen the service go down, they set up a trac site for each module you create and the management interface is easy to use. I do not have much experience with other version control/project management hosts, but for my uses hosted-projects.com has been perfect.

[Caffey left a great comment about CVSDude.com offering both CVS and SVN hosting. Looks like the basic plan at CVSDude is $1 less than hosted-projects.com with slightly different options.]

S3 Backup
web address: http://www.maluke.com/s3man/
length of time used: about 6 months
for me replaces: external hard drive backup

Large, inexpensive external hard-drives and multi-gig DVD formats have made personal backup easier, but unless you store the backups somewhere secure and in a different location from your computer how useful are they if there is a break-in, fire, flood or a need to restore while you are traveling?

I have been very interested in backing up to online storage and Amazon’s S3 service makes it possible to backup up the amount of information I have for a reasonable cost. I have been backing up with S3 Backup for about 6 months and it has worked well. The software is still in Beta - I have had occasional small glitches - but so far the benefit of having secure online backup has been worth any small problems.

Amazon S3 is new enough that I am not aware of any well established software packages for working with it - it will be interesting to see what other options emerge. I want to try Jungle Disk (recently out of Beta) at some point… I have also seen Mozy recommended numerous times for online backup - but I like the idea of not being tied into one vendor for backup/access software.

HotSpotVPN
web address: http://hotspotvpn.com/
length of time used: about 18 months
for me replaces: unsecured browsing over public wireless

A few episodes of Security Now! may induce enough fear about wireless security that you will start looking at VPN solutions. Some of my friends simply VPN to their home/desktop computers when on the road, but I do not have (and do not intend to have) anything other than my laptop. So the solution for me when using unsecured wireless hotspots has been HotSpotVPN. I have occasionally had trouble connecting and have trouble at some airports with the login system - but overall HotSpotVPN has been easy to use and the extra security has been worth the cost.

Enjoy,
CM

Flickr vs. Picasa Web Albums

I am moving my photos over to Flickr from Picasa Web Albums and gradually changing all of my links - I thought I would share my personal opinion on the two services as a very casual user:

Flickr
Good - More people and better community!!!
Bad - There is not a full featured desktop client for Flickr (that I know of…) like Picasa - for me organizing and tagging is slightly painful in the Flickr web interface (compared to using Picasa on the desktop). [Lance points out below that Picasa is still useful for tags and captions if you do those before you upload!]
If sharing and community features are important to you I think Flickr is the better service.

Picasa Web Albums
Good - Decent integration with Picasa makes it easy to organize/tag/caption pictures on your desktop and then transfer them to Picasa.
Bad - Picasa does not have the same level of community or number of members that Flickr has.
If your primary concern is online personal photo storage and occasionally sharing photos then the integration with Picasa makes this a strong choice.

Other ideas?
CM

lolcats blackhole

For the past couple of weeks I been unable to stop visiting I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?, and laughing. Why are odd (mostly) cat pictures wth mizpelld captions so funny? And why is this showing up in blogs I read (BoingBoing (multiple times believe it or not) and Joel on Software) practically forcing me to click again and again… pulling me ever deeper into the time wasting blackhole that is lolcats.

Gone to I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? - Be Back Later,
CM

Zion!

Recently ADT and I headed up to Zion to meet some friends and do a little canyoneering! Trips to Zion have been the high point in my summer for the last four years and this trip was no exception. This year we did Behunin (interesting entrance to the canyon and great final rappel) and Englestead (unforgettable start, walking thru the woods in a small stream and then walking out of the woods onto the huge first rappel!). Here are a few links and a little info if you are tempted to visit -

We usually stay in the Watchman Campground (reservations) - there are plenty of other options but the easy access to Springdale and the Backcountry Desk are a big plus. I think it has been windy just about every night that we have camped in the summer - well worth staking down your tent…

The hiking in Zion is fantastic and hassle free for day hikes - if you want to canyoneer inside the park there is a good chance you will need a permit. Opinions vary on this system, but for now you will likely want to visit the Zion National Park - Backcountry Reservation System - walk-in permits are available also.

If you are looking for some general canyoneering information you might start from the American Canyoneering Association website.

For detailed information about canyoneering in Zion try:
CanyoneeringUSA has the very useful Tom’s Utah Canyoneering Guide (including, of course, Zion) and many other interesting links. Tom Jones has also recently published a book Zion: Canyoneering.

Anther source for Zion Canyoneering information is Climb-Utah.com. Some of the canyons in the Zion section are only available to members of the site ($25 a year) and all contain useful information including GPS waypoints.

You can not have too much information so you might also check out Zion National Park Canyoneering - there were some details in these descriptions that helped us out on this trip.

Visit Zion!
CM

Scott Dasovich ?

Aaron recently reminded me that most people eventually search the web for their name, and often the names of people they know - so these searches might actually be a good way to contact someone! With some names I suppose this would be a hopeless strategy - other names, like Scott Dasovich, that do not have a large return in Google seem really well suited to this strategy.

So I am throwing this post into void because I am really curious what my clarinet playing friend from Indiana University Scott Dasovich is doing now and I think it would be fun to exchange an email or two….

Wish this message good luck for me -
CM