Just for pictures

I wanted to try to get some nice pictures of Canyon Lake with Four Peaks in the background. There are lots of places just off Apache trail where there is a view of both. I decided to hike to the top of a hill next to First Water Creek that I've been thinking I should climb for a couple of weeks. It seemed like there would be a good view from there and the slope leading up to the top didn't look very steep in some of my pictures of it.

I'm going to that dark-colored ridge on the left. It looks easy from here.

I've seen cairns out there before but they never seemed to go where I was going. On this day though, they led all the way to my destination. The trail split at the base of the hill. One went up and it looks like the other might go all the way down to First water Creek. I'll have to follow that some other day. Anyway, I went up and it turned out to be much steeper than I thought it would be. I had to stop frequently to catch my breath.

There were fence-building materials at the base of the hill.

In the recent past I've made videos as I approached a cliff or someplace with a potentially interesting view. I kind of wish I had done that as I topped this ridge. On the other hand, it would have been embarrassing if you heard me scream like a little girl. The top of the ridge is 5 or 6 feet wide and the other side appears to be almost vertical for at least 400 feet. Maybe the trails were made by base jumpers.

The view of the lake and Four Peaks was pretty good from the top.

I stayed up there for about 15 minutes taking pictures. I wanted to take a 360 panorama but there was no way I was going to balance on that ridge and turn a full circle while looking through a viewfinder. I managed to get a 180 without moving my feet. My toes kept going to sleep because I was afraid to move my feet, even while I was sitting down. My toes were also achy from trying to hold on to the rock through my shoes. I was not comfortable up there.

I took a bunch of regular pictures and a bunch of HDRIs. When I got home, I processed the HDRIs several different ways, trying to find what looked best. I couldn't decide. Rather than trying to decide which pictures to upload to a web album, I just uploaded all versions of all of them and asked the world which ones look best. So far, I've heard back from one person who said she likes a couple of the pictures that I probably wouldn't have even uploaded if I was being choosy (some random rocks and a stick). *Sigh.*

Lately, I have also been uploading a screenshot of my hiking tracks shown in Google Earth, showing an elevation profile. Google Earth is strangely confused about this elevation profile, though. It shows the peak of the hill as being much lower than the saddle I went through to get to it. I was looking down on the saddle from the ridge. Endomondo seems to show the elevations correctly. Click below to see all of the pictures.

2013_06_14