cyberhobo

Month: March 2010

  • Laini’s Little Pocket Guide – Geo Mashup with Street View

    A small Geo Mashup customization for Laini’s Little Pocket Guide adds a link in the info window to Street View where it is available. Street View is loaded over the map, similar to Google’s interface, with a close button up top to return to the map. This is good stuff – some of this code…

  • Mount Kimball

    We realize we’re about to leave Tucson without doing any of the “challenges” we concocted for ourselves while researching the area. The most practical one is to hike Mount Kimball via a trail in Finger Rock canyon that gains 4,000 feet of elevation in 5 miles, for a 10 mile round trip. We figure we’ve…

  • Tucson Botanical Gardens

    On the menu today: a cornucopia of cactus. There are many other attractions at the Tucson Botanical Gardens, like a butterfly house that is important to the world migrations of some species of butterflies, but we’re hungry for cactus. With biological diversity in decline, it feels good now and then to just blow your mind…

  • Return to Jailhouse Rock

    I figure this now-familiar area is a good place to see if I can lead something a little harder. After a few nice easier routes in warm, pleasant afternoon weather, I pick out Solitary Refinement 5.10a. It’s a shady, gently overhanging, blocky sport climb. Ann and I are both nervous, and I fight to stay…

  • The Arizona Trail in Molino Canyon

    After seeing signs for the Arizona Trail, I get curious how it traverses Molino Canyon, where we’ve been climbing a little at Jailhouse Rock. I’ve also noticed that some trails show up in this area at OpenStreetMap.org, but not the AZT. Thus today’s mission is born – map the AZT in Molino canyon while enjoying…

  • The Green Slabs

    We nearly give up on this crag without climbing anything. Aside from a fun looking 5.9 offwidth that I don’t feel up to yet, the routes look hard to find, or hard to protect, or just kind of scrubby and uncertain. Further up the hill, though, we find some other climbers with a toprope up,…

  • Barefoot to Lime Falls

    It looks like rain, so I head for a non-canyon hike. The trails in Saguaro National Park are so nice for barefooting, I make the whole run shoeless. Along the way I pick a spot and take a waypoint for Ann to find when she follows – our own simple geocaching game. The lime falls…

  • Soldier Canyon

    Ann makes an astute observation: we could save ten miles of driving if we hike to the Jailhouse Rock crag from below, up through Soldier Canyon. It’s just five extra miles of hiking, and a couple thousand feet of elevation gain to haul our forty pound climbing packs up. No brainer! We sweat our way…

  • A Vegan Restaurant: Lovin’ Spoonfuls

    I’ve been eating vegan for well over a year, and still haven’t been to a fully vegan restaurant. Today we get on the bikes and head for my first. Ah, I never realized what a nice feeling it is to consider an entire menu freely. I guess it’s not surprising that many of the items…

  • Pima Canyon Peramble

    Another trailhead in the midst of posh houses takes us through an easement corridor and into the alternately rocky and lush Pima Canyon. Our goal for the evening is “the dam”, a waypoint 3.2 miles up the canyon. I run ahead, getting some barefoot time in, until the peace of the place overcomes me and…