EISPIRATEN

After posting news of the partial lunar eclipse across the local boards, I thought I'd better experience it. So after 1 3/4 hours of sleep, I drove to the Church and headed out on the Bear Canyon Trail at 12:15 AM. Since most of the usual cast of characters were on Langley -- and I couldn't cajole any of my sane friends to join me -- I went solo.

It was a luscious morning, more akin to autumn than late June, with a considerable breeze as counterpoint to a bit of humidity.

I arrived at the summit at 4:45 to find one camper. A few minutes later, another 8 folks arrived via Register Ridge.

The eclipse started around 3:15 and peaked at ~54% coverage around 4:30 +/-. What was most astounding to me was that the Earth's shadow began covering part of the moon from a 1 o'clock position, but ended up exiting from a 4 o'clock position. I assumed the shadow would have continued moving in the same path as it followed for the first 1/2 of the eclipse. But it didn't...

No Atherians were on the summit while I was there.

After about an hour the sun came up and I headed down the Skihut trail.
About 600 feet below the summit, I ran into my dear friend -- and mentor to the California Wilderness -- Will Wyles, and decided to head back up to the top with him, as Blooty had done for me a few weeks back.

We hung out for a while and then headed down. Then the busloads started arriving. What more can I say? It took me almost as long to descend as getting to the summit, since I was standing to the side almost in perpetuity as the hordes ascended. Nevertheless, all appeared to be delighted to be out on the mountain.

Here's a preview as well as the link to the few pics I took:



http://picasaweb.google.com/EManBevHill ... directlink

I did my weekly hike up Baldy on Saturday morning, Register Ridge to Harwood to Baldy and a rapid exit off Baldy to a less crowded West Baldy. I have never seen so many people up there and they just kept streaming up as I descended.



When I was cutting cross country from West Baldy to Ski Hut I came upon some weckage of the two Marine F6F's that crashed in 1949. This was right off the ski hut trail but invisible unless you walked off the trail a few yards, much higher up than the wreckage near the Baldy trail sign.



The wind was gusty and kept it cool, all in all a nice day for a walk, but I wish I had gone up the night before for the eclipse.

Love your sunrise self portrait.

I was able to hand out a bunch of stickers to people in the crowds the other day.

I can't remember if I saw the eclipse. I think I did. Had some strange dreams about it.

Nice Pix EMan! There was an eclipse? I thought it was a Gibbons Moon. Surprised the Aetherians missed out on such an opportunity.

Nice Full Moon Romp and Pictures Eman, if I was in town I would have liked to have joined you. Needless to say I told everyone on the way up that it would be happening, they, like myself were too busy getting the 6 hours sleep we needed to do the Cirque/Langley thing and Taco said he saw it in his dreams when I woke him up at 5:30 so that was good enough for me

I think we need to have "Tackle Tourist" as a new sport for the top of Baldy. You get points for tackling people off the edge of the bowl - will that help control the crowds?

Thanks y'all.

And I was bumming because I couldn't leave early enough to join you on Langley.