Fish Creek Hill overlook

I made my third attempt at finding an overlook of Fish Creek hill on Monday. I didn't have a lot of hope of being successful, since on previous attempts I had come across terrain that required rock climbing skills to cross. I had to try, though, because it was a good excuse to go explore someplace new.

I'm going to be going out along that ridge that can't be distinguished from the background in this picture. It was a very cloudy day.

There was a little bit of pointless ups and downs, but overall it was an easy walk. I saw a couple of cairns along the way, but it doesn't look like people go out there very often. Other than the two cairns, I couldn't tell that anyone else had been there.

The cliff I was at the top of drops at least 300 feet straight down. Such things make me nervous, so my first pictures are taken pretty far back from the edge.

Just can't make myself get close to the edge.

After a while, I managed to get a little closer to the edge. I also sat down and kept my backpack on, so a breeze wouldn't blow me over the edge. I sat there enjoying the view for a while. Several cars going up and down the hill were honking their horns. I guess they were hoping to hear an echo. Maybe they did. After a while, I got a little bit of sunshine.

Sunshine looks amazing after a couple of days of overcast skies.

I loaded my route into Google Earth. I usually do that just to look at it against the satellite view. I also viewed a profile of the track. It showed that I descended about 300 feet at the far end of the hike and stayed there for a while, which I did not do. I think that maybe the small cliff behind me was blocking some satellite signals, and the receiver was using signals that had bounced off surrounding cliffs. Mountains and tall buildings can really confuse GPS receivers.

That dip in the middle of the altitude profile is when I stopped to enjoy the view. The receiver must have been having some multipath issues then.

Click below to see all of the pictures. They get kind of repetitious. Near the end is a panorama that I uploaded full-size. You can zoom way in.

2012_01_16