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Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 8:14 am
by Telkwa
Good morning!
The ranger gal at Prather gave me fairly detailed instructions over the phone - "at the stop sign, turn left past the biker bar", etc. Plus, I have the National Geographic Topo! CD's for California. Printed out what I needed in a scale large enuf so that even we should be able to figure it out.
Thanks for the warning about Herndon area.
Will figure at least 3 hours Madera to Edison. Even if we get there in time for the ferry ride, the Goodale Trail looks like a quieter, less dusty, more interesting route so may go that way regardless. Thanks for the link to that guy's trail journal, mtneer.
His picture gave me the first hiker's eye view (instead of Google Earth or Flash Earth) of the terrain between Warrior and the pass towards Mace/Hortense. The west side of it anyway. Didn't look as menacing as I'd feared.
oldranger, the Eagle Cap 10-day looked very sunny and stable.

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 9:41 am
by TehipiteTom
I am not certain whether it is faster to go all the way "around the horn" southward to 180 east and hence to the 168 freeway or cutover from Madera on 145-road 206-Millerton Rd-Auberry road to join 168 at Prather.
I always do the latter route--I'm pretty sure going all the way down to Fresno would take more time. I've done this a couple of times in the last two months, and Madera to Kaiser Pass takes me just under 2 hours (even when I get stuck behind lame-o morons driving below the suggested minimum on their way to blow all their money at the casino). From Kaiser Pass it's another 45-50 minutes to either Edison or Florence.

Goodale Pass is a good way to get in, and Graveyard Lakes are a lovely detour. The lowest Graveyard Lake has been pretty crowded, in my experience; not sure if the dip in visitation to the area (which I noticed as well) will still be in effect, but that could make GL a more appealing destination.

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 7:13 am
by Telkwa
Good morning!
After all the great help, we didn't go. Be sure that all info has been collected for future use. In the end, it sounded like the Sierras would just be too beaten-down from the low snowpack and hot summer. And there's that 18+ hour drive to think about. Did a last minute detour to Eagle Cap Wilderness in NE Oregon.
Called the Visitor Center in Enterprise about permits. You self-register at the trailhead. They charge $5/day unless you have a NW Forest Pass. (Stupid use fees) Asked about bears & bear cans. The gal went silent for a moment, then she said they haven't had any complaints about bears. I'm not sure she knew a bear can from a beer can.
Tell you what - you folks who live near the Sierras have it so good. Take a look at a map of Eagle Cap. The white granite/alpine acreage is tiny, and the Lakes Basin is over-run on popular weekends. Hard to find isolation or put together more than a few days of walking without covering the same ground.
We stared at the map and picked two different spots above the main Lakes Basin. PM me if you're interested, although AFAIC there's little reason for anyone living near the Sierras to bother with Eagle Cap.
Some weather moved thru Thursday and Friday. We were fortunate to have a seat in the balcony to watch the beautiful thunderclouds blow thru, and only got rained on for a half hour or so.
Thanks again for all the help!

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 10:09 am
by mountaineer
See if I ever give you any advice again! :D You missed perfect weather and there was nobody up there.
it sounded like the Sierras would just be too beaten-down from the low snowpack and hot summer.
Negative. You just have to know where to go. Of course the JMT is going to be dusty...and all the popular spots are going to be overcrowded...just go somewhere else. The Sierra Nevada is a big place! Here is what you missed:
Image
Image

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 6:04 am
by Telkwa
Oh, thanks, rub it in some.
mountaineer, your images are very sharp and clear, yet they load very quickly even on our stupid-slow dial-up connection. How do you do that??
I took all of our Eagle Cap pics at the highest .jpg setting possible, and am having trouble reducing them. Have several different programs for re-saving an image to a lower res .jpg. Adobe Photo Elements, GIMP, irFanview, even tried the software that came with the Olympus camera. Every one of them gives horrid results when trying to take a 3+MB pic down to 200K or so.
My old 1.2MP digital camera was better for re-compressing to e-mail. I guess that makes sense but something I wasn't prepared for when moving up to a 6.3MP camera.

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 9:51 am
by mountaineer
I use ACDSee software for all my resizing. I scan at high res...and then just resize using the medium compression setting. That usually gets me under 100Kb for a 600 pixel wide photo which is manageable for web display.

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 7:57 pm
by ericZ
telkwa, you just need to learn how to use the software and camera. they can be tricky sometimes. it's not hard to resize/sample an image down to under 100k. i'm only replying because you mentioned going to a higher MP camera may have contributed to the problem. are you compressing and saving as a jpeg, then compressing again, then saving again? that would lead to jpeg artifacting. i think i was shooting 7mp for a few years until recetly, now having moved up to 11mp i think. you do not have to shoot at the highest jpeg setting to get great results. of course, it's all relative and dependent on what your final output will be. of course a touch of unsharp masking can't hurt if done correctly. sometimes a camera's software wil lead to some softening.

what is it which leads to you calling them horrid results?

eric
fresno, ca.

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 8:07 pm
by mountaineer
In my case, if I am being REALLY picky, I do all my alterations in TIFF and the final save in JPEG. That seems to help. The only thing I do is a resize and minor adjustments to make the scan exactly match the original slide.

Reducing photos

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 9:47 am
by oldranger
We were really close in the Eaglecap. As soon as I got home I downloaded my 7 meg photos into iphoto. When you email from iphoto it gives you several options for reducing the file size. So I immediately e-mailed my photos of the Matterhorn in Eaglecap Wilderness, after the friday night storm ended, to my kids as I was talking on the phone to one of them, he couldn't believe the unreal colors.

Anyhow short of getting a mac I bet there are some people in the photography forum that could help you out.

You are right about the numbers of people. I saw more people on sunday of laborday weekend than I did in 9 days in southern yosemite in July.

While I didn't appreciate the numbers of people I was intrigued by the number of possible loop trips in the area.

mike