About the August 2011 (and September 2011) Header Photo

I shot this month’s header photo from Mount Mitchell Scenic Overlook, Atlantic Highlands, NJ. According to the brochure I picked up at the park, “At 266 feet, this overlook sits on the highest natural elevation on the Atlantic coastal plain, providing beautiful views of Sandy Hook, Raritan Bay and the New York skyline. On a clear day, Mount Mitchell provides a panoramic view across Sandy Hook and Raritan Bay to the landscape of 4 of New York’s City’s 5 boroughs. Visitors can see the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, the WTC Site, the Empire State Building and, more immediately, the historical structures and topography of Gateway National Recreation Area (Sandy Hook) including the lighthouse.
Because I shot this photo from a Summit (the 266 foot “summit” of Mount Mitchell), but the view looks out over the shore, this photo will serve double duty as the Summit header photo for August 2011 as well as the Shore header photo for September 2011.

About the July 2011 Header

This month’s header photo, posted nine days late, features a view looking across Rockaway Inlet. I took this shot about two years ago while on a kayaking trip. I was one of three or four paddlers from the Sebago Canoe Club who paddled from Paerdegat Basin, through Jamaica Bay, to Rockaway Point at the western tip of the Rockaways. The shot is from the northern shore of Rockaway Point, looking north across Rockaway inlet toward Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach and Sheepshead Bay.

About the June 2011 Header

Yep! That is yours truly, in the deep, deep past, the fall of 1976 to be exact. The photo is from my first climbing trip to Seneca Rocks, WV. OK, I know my gear and apparel were not the best, especially the construction style hard hat, but I was a poor freshman in college. CAMS had not yet invented. Goldline was still available as a climbing rope. Ah, those were the days.

About the May 2011 Header Photo

Another month—another header photo. I shot this view of Silver Lake, the local name for the Ocracoke, NC harbor, almost a year ago. At the time, my wife, dog and I were enjoying a two-week car camping vacation on the Island. When I took this photo, we were enjoying dinner at the Jolly Roger, one of Ocracoke’s food and beverage establishments that sit on and look out over the harbor.

About the April 2011 Header Photo

This April 2011 Header Photo (scan of a print), posted four days late, features our third dog, Hermes (2005-2008), poised atop a rock and overlooking West Virginia’s Dolly Sods Wilderness, at an elevation of over 4,500 feet along the Alleghany Front.  Dolly Sods is a Wilderness Area in the Monongahela National Forest and one of my favorite hiking and backpacking areas. My excursions there have ranged from day hikes to weeklong backpacking trips.  It is only one of only three places I have ever seen a bear.  Hermes was with me when I saw it.

About the March 2011 Header Photo

I shot this photo of a full moon over Mill Basin on the evening of September 28, 2010. Mill Basin is located in Southern Brooklyn and feeds into Jamaica Bay after passing under the Belt Parkway. Several marinas are located along its banks. Although I have twice explored Mill Basin by kayak, I have recently become more familiar with it as I have motored, and occasionally sailed, a C & C 24 through its waters and out into the more open water of the Jamaica Bay.

About the February 2011 Header Photo

I am suffering from Alpine Withdraw, not having been to the mountains, let alone a summit, for far too long. That means my catalog of digital summit photos has all but been exhausted. Therefore, this month’s header photo features a fake summit but a summit never the less.

Soon after moving into our present home, I purchased and bolted to the wall above the door in my office/study a Metolius Training Board. Let me explain Training Boards for my non-climbing readers.

Training Boards are a passive exercises/training device climbers use to build arm, hand, wrist and finger strength. Constructed out of rosin that simulates the feel of rock, Training Boards are an excellent way to get and stay pumped at home with only ten minutes of exercise a day. A training Board is the next best thing to a simulated rock wall.

Since I did not want to be staring at a blank wall while I hung and pulled on my training board, I mounted a poster size image of a mountain in an alpine setting on the wall behind the Training Board. Although they do not appear in this cropped photo, draped across the top of the poster is a short strip of Tibetan Prayer Flags.
The Metolius Training Board above my door is my summit away from the summit, a reminder of past adventures and a call to future ones.

About the January 2011 Header Photo

Happy New Year!

It is not only a new month but also a New Year and time for a new header photo.

This month’s header photo, a shore shot, features a shot taken on December 27, 2010, looking out over the Atlantic Ocean from the 25th Street Access at Virginia Beach, VA. It started snowing at Virginia Beach late Christmas evening and did not stop snowing for nearly 24 hours. The storm that clobbered the mid-Atlantic and northern-Atlantic states dumped several inches of wet snow throughout the area. Some enterprising soul took advantage of the situation and constructed a snowbeing, towering over five feet tall, on the beach.

About the December 2010 Header Photo

This month's header photo is a recent one, less than a week old. I shot this looking south from Bear Hill in the Bear Hill Nature Preserve, Ulster, Co., NY, the morning of Thanksgiving.

Hiking around the southern Shawangunks has become sort of a Thanksgiving tradition the past couple of years, and this year was no exception. Since I do not get to the mountains as much as I would like, these Thanksgiving hikes have provided me with several "summit" photos that I have used for headers.

1,950 feet above sea level is barely worth claiming as a summit, even by eastern standards, but when one lives near sea level, it sometimes has to do.

About the November 2010 Header Photo

This month’s header photo features a “shore” photo, but a photo taken from on the water looking back to shore rather than from shore looking out over the water. I took this shot from the cockpit of a C&C 24 looking north while sailing south on Jamaica Bay, NY. The skyline of Manhattan is visible on the horizon.

About the October 2010 Header Photo

Looking back, I do not know how this scene, featuring Seneca Rocks, WV, has not appeared at the top of my blog before now. Sure, I featured part of Seneca as the March 2010 Header Photo, but that part of Seneca, a formation known as the Gendarme, no longer exists.

I first climbed at Seneca in the fall of 1976 and climbed there rather steadily the next three and half years. I have climbed off and on at Seneca ever since, but not often enough or as often as I would like or would have liked.

Unlike West Virginia’s New River George or New York’s Gunks, Seneca offers a true summit, the south summit. Once a climber attains it, the only way down is to rappel. Comprised of the same rock as the Gunks, whereas the Gunks lie horizontal to its bedding plane, offering long horizontal cracks, Seneca lies perpendicular its bedding plane, offering long vertical cracks, some a hundred feet long.

Because Seneca lies perpendicular to its bedding plane and rises from the surrounding area like a knife blade, it offers two main climbing faces, the eastern face which gets the morning light and the western face, pictured here, which receives the afternoon and evening light. The depression in the center is the Gunsight notch, where the Gendarme used to stand.

About the September 2010 Header Photo

In early August, my wife and I attended a wedding that was about half an hour’s drive to the east. The reception was a few hours later, another hour’s drive to the east. It was not worth driving home between the wedding and the reception so we drove toward the reception and explored the northern coast of Long Island until it was time for the reception.

This was our first time to explore the northern shore of our home island, and we discovered that the closest coastal area near the reception was the Oyster Bay area. We parked near the waterfront and walked around T. Roosevelt Memorial Park during what was a warm, sunny afternoon with a slight breeze. While we were enjoying our waterfront walk, I snapped this month’s header photo with my HTC Imageo smart phone.

The shot looks out over Long Island Sound’s West Harbor from the T. Roosevelt Memorial Park.

About the August 2010 Header Photo

Because I have recently been spending more time around water and the beach than in the heights of the mountains, I have had to reached back into my archives for this month’s header photo, all the way back to August 15, 1979. I electronically cropped this month’s header photo from a scanned black and white print. A colleague took the original with my Minolta SRT 101 SLR shooting Tri-X-Pan black and white film, which I developed myself. I also printed the original.

The shot, now a little grainy after scanning, is of me climbing (sans ice ax and crampons) a snowfield on the western slope of Mt. Geike in the Wyoming’s Wind River Range. At the time, I was a student on a National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) Outdoor Educators Course. We were backpacking up and out of Desolation Canyon, heading for Pain in the Ass Pass (11,632 ft) between Mt. Bonneville to the northeast and Raid Peak to the south.

Thirty-one years later, many of the lessons I learned on that NOLS course still inform my outdoor ethic and the way I approach outdoor adventure type activities. Now, however, many more of those activities take place on water rather than on mountains.

About the July 2010 Header Photo

This month’s header photo was posted a day earlier because of my travel plans.  It features a shore shot of our dog Myrrhlyn’s silhouette with the rising sun behind him as the solar disk rises over the Atlantic Ocean. I caught the scene with my HTC Imagio phone’s camera during our recent twelve day stay on Ocracoke Island, NC. The setting is the beach just east and over the dunes from the national Park Service Campground.

About The June 2010 Header Photo

The June Header Photo premiered a few days ago, on Friday, May 28. Personal travel plans prevented me from posting the photo today. The Blogger platform, however, allowed me to write this post at that time but to delay its posting until June 1.
The photo was taken over a year ago on May 25, 2009, during my most recent serious climbing trip to the Gunks. That means it has been over a year, far too long, since I last went climbing.

The scene features the western slope and face of New York’s Shawangunk Ridge looking south from the popular climbing area of the Gunks known as the Trapps.

About the May 2010 Header Photo

This month’s header photo features a view of Ocracoke’s Silver Lake, shot from the National Park Service docks and looking east toward the famed Ocracoke Lighthouse. Located at the southernmost remote inhabited point of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Ocracoke (both an island and a town on the Island) can be reached only by air or sea (vehicle ferry) and is one of our favorite vacation spots.

It has been over a year and a half since we last visited Ocracoke and I am looking forward to spending nearly two weeks there starting very soon. We will be camping at the National Park Service Campground, along with our dog Myrrhlyn. Myrrhlyn has been to the beach and ocean before but has never been camping, so we will see how it goes. We will be taking our sit-on-top kayaks with us and I hope the weather will allow us to enjoy some kayaking in Silver Lake as well as in the sound and in the ocean.

This is the third Summit to Shore header photo featuring a scene from Ocracoke. The March 2009 header photo featured a dune shot taken in or near the National Park Service campground. The September 2009’s header photo was taken near Sam’s Point and featured my wife kayaking and our now deceased dog Hermes swimming near Teach’s Hole.

About the April 2010 Header Photo

I shot this month’s header photo from the summit (O.K., it was really one of many exposed rocky outcrops and observation areas, not necessarily the actual summit) of Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania, on October 3rd, 2009. The view is looking out toward the north.

What was I doing in Pennsylvania and at Hawk Mountain? What is so special about Hawk Mountain? Read my October 9, 2009 post for all the details.

As soon as Holy Week and Tax Day pass, I need to get to the mountains, as I am running out of possible "summit" header photos.

About the March 2010 Header Photo

Every month on Summit to Shore I feature a different original photo for the header. For odd numbered months I feature a “shore” shot and for even numbered months I feature a “summit” shot. This month’s photo of Atlantic City, NJ at sunset was taken with my Verizon HTC Imagio phone. While its focus time is slower than my Sealife ECOshot digital camera, it takes better photos under low light conditions.

The Photo was taken in January 2010 from the second floor observation deck of The Pier Shops at Caesars, looking south back toward Atalntic City. I balanced my phone on a flat wooden railing in order to minimize vibrations and was very satisfied with some of the shots.

Snow in Ridgewood, Queens, New York City

It was snowing yesterday morning when I walked Myrrhlyn. It was snowing this morning when I walked him. It will probably be snowing tomorrow morning when we take our morning walk, though by tomorrow I might be wearing snowshoes.

This is only the third winter I have lived in New York City and it is without a doubt the snowiest. Even before this most recent storm dumped a foot of snow on us I asked an older lifelong New Yorker what he thought about this winter, how it compared to previous winters. He said we have received more snow this season than we have received in many years and he had to reach all the way back to his childhood memories to recall a winter with this much snow.

Yesterday the temperature was slightly above freezing and the snow, often falling as down like flakes, was very wet and quickly turned to slush after it fell. Three or four times I shoveled what looked and felt like a giant 7-Eleven Slurpee. Overnight the temperature dropped below freezing, the snow changed consistency, and this morning I woke up to about ten inches of snow on top of an inch or two of slush, with some drifts nearly up to my knees. The gusty winds forced me to squint as Myrrhlyn and I made our morning rounds.

As we circumnavigated the block we saw buried cars (photo top right), local residents cleaning snow off their cars and in some cases digging their cars our from snow drifts or after having been plowed in. Many of the cars already on the road, unable to handle the slush on the streets, were slipping and sliding, unable to gain good traction. I even saw a NYPD Patrol Car, emergency lights flashing, driving by at about 10 mph. I am certain response times are up this morning.

One sight that surprised me my first winter here but that I am now growing accustomed with is seeing pedestrians walking through a snow storm holding an open umbrella over their head. It seems to make sense when the snow is really wet, but when the snow is cold, well, I just don’t get it.

I saw one umbrella yielding pedestrian walking through the middle of the intersection of 70th Ave. and 60th St. in Ridgewood (photo to the right, second from top) probably because she thought the slush on the streets, an inch or two deep, would be easier to negotiate than the eight to ten inches on most sidewalks. I think she was right.

We are predicted to receive another 3-5 inches of snow today, another 1-2 inches of wet snow tonight, and up to an inch of slush tomorrow before the storm winds down and moves out of the area. At least we have power and can easily walk to a store.

I have posted some of this morning’s photos on Picasa so that you can see for yourself what a snow storm looks like in an urban environment.

Happy Holidays NOLS NYC

It is always a pleasure to reunite with other National Outdoor Leadership School Alums in New York City. In addition to catching up with the usual regulars like Tobey, Lori, Gint, Mac, Chris, Elizabeth, Kate, Cat, and Michael, I always enjoy meeting some people for the first or second time, like Kelly and Jonathan and others whose names now escape me. Last night we gathered at Destination Bar in the East Village for our second annual holiday party.

Have a Happy Hanukkah, Enlightening Winter Solstice, Merry Christmas, Kind Kwanza, and Happy New Year.

With appetizers provided by NOLS, we enjoyed two-for-one Happy Hour bar drinks until 8:00 PM and a Yankee Swap gift exchange. I came home with a really nice pair of green Campmor rain pants in my size and A 5x7 picture frame. I think I will use the frame for one of the 255 photos I shot at the party. After a little editing and deleing of the really bad photos, I uploaded 200 to Picasa, where you can see them for yourself.