Home on San Diego Alpine Club

Mike and Chesson's Very Big Walk

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Let’s talk about this big walk that Michael and I did

Prep

At some point in late 2025, Michael approached me with an idea.

We were both interested in doing an ultra-esque adventure sometime in 2026, once my marathon training died down. He suggested that we backpack across San Diego county. A 156mi, almost JMT-length trip that takes most plebians 7-12 days. Here’s what Michael said when I asked how many days it would take us:

A Mous Takes a Schauer (Shower?)

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

With the goal of doing the East Arete of Mt Russell, Ben Schauer and I (Ben Mous) managed to snag two difficult-to-get overnight permits for the Whitney Zone. As the trip approached, the weather forecast continued to get worse. As Schauer had never seen rain in the eastern sierras, and my past experiences with Sierra rain mainly consisted of light drizzle, we decided to head out anyway on a Friday afternoon - hoping the weather wouldn’t be as bad as forecast.
![weather][image7.jpg]
The plan was to camp at Horseshoe Meadows Friday night to start acclimatizing, drive to Whitney Portal Saturday, and summit Russell / hike out Sunday. As we drove out we saw rain clouds but experienced no rain. However, the trip started to not go to plan as we drove up the road to Horseshoe Meadows at sunset, as Ben S’s miata started to overheat. We discovered the coolant tank was completely empty; unable to go higher, we turned around. Unfortunately, even coasting down the road caused the engine to overheat.

Horizontal Gear Review: Choosing a Backpacking Tent

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sometime in November 2024, I developed a non-life threatening medical condition forcing me to be (mostly) horizontal for several months. As part of an effort to stave off the beasts of boredom and apathy, I decided to write… a gear review?

This was written as a reference for California folks looking to buy a tent for backpacking specifically, in particular those looking to upgrade… I lay out my decision-making process in pain-staking detail below. Please keep in mind that this calculus is highly regional! I don’t pretend to know what is good for the Bavarian Alps, that would be dumb. Adapt this to your ranges of interest.

'Elite' Mountain Men

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A quick summary of a journey through the East Sierras by some truly elite mountain men. These guys are just about the most skilled group of hikers you’ll ever meet (who needs ropes lol).

The plan was simple: drive up to Whitney portal Saturday morning (6ish hours), hike up to Meysan Lake (5-6mi, 3,000’ gain), put our packs down, summit Mt. Irvine (13,780’), and return to the lake to set up camp and eat dinner by dark before hiking out first thing the next morning. Ok, maybe not so simple. But these guys didn’t really think things through at the beginning. This will be a recurring theme.

Boyz in the (trail around Mt) Hood

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In early October, in a period of about 30 minutes, Shreyas, Chesson, and I convened and, for better or worse, purchased flights to Oregon. The standing plan was to do a cute and short 24 mile loop trail in the Jefferson Wilderness as a weekend overnight backpack. Little did we know that in a few weeks we would be walking the length of this loop in a single day, a third of it in 3 inches of snow, in a very different location. The trip was about to become much less cute and short.

The Invention of Tuednesnday

Sat, 05 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Typically, when you want to do some athletic thing that’s beyond your current means, you want to adhere to a few broad but useful principles:

Plan: Deliberate and thoughtful planning, of both the trip and your training, goes a long way to ensure success.
Train: Be consistent, and make it goal-specific
Recover: Get lots of sleep and keep overall stress levels low

Now, knowing all this, it’s a damn shame Phil and I did absolutely none of these things to prepare for Steck-Salathe. To be clear, the reason for this error was the fact that we simply underestimated the route. It’s a common story – and we hope others may learn from our mistakes. This is the story of how we proudly achieved the blazing time of 27 hours car-to-car on a 16-pitch route.

A Series of Unfortunate Events (for Shreyas)

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Here, we document the epic journey of Payton, Jay, Shreyas, and Chesson (and Gromit!) to an eventual summit of Mt. Russell, a 14er (technically, 14,089’). Basically, it was an all-star crew. By which I mean we had every possible permutation of prepared-ness covered:

	Altitude acclimated/good cardio	Sad lungs
Actual climber	Payton	Jay
“Hiker”	Chesson	Shreyas

Shreyas had a bit of a rough time this trip.

As the Crow Flies: Getting Hosed on Lurking Fear

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It’s amazing how alive the valley is at night in the summer. Thousands upon thousands of little critters emerge from every crack and crevice as soon as the sun goes down. The flow of ants and silverfish is endless, only punctuated by the occasional scorpion, toad, spider, rodent, or ring-tailed cat. Up on the western shoulder of El Capitan, the bustle of the valley is another world. Here the insects outnumber the people at least a million to one.

The Freakin' Creek

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

For a place not known for its winter, it seemed like the colder months had been rather dark in San Diego. Heartbreak, injured and graduating partners, car troubles, and work-related difficulties had kept the crew in something resembling hibernation pretty much since October. Of course, there were plenty of local outings, but somehow the fire just wasn’t there. But the uneventful and altogether depressing season had an upside: turns out, it made for fertile training ground.

A Snowy Hike Up Baldy

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Certain primal fears are dominant in the human race… for example, the fear of creepy crawlies. A strong primal fear I have is cold weather. Having been born and raised in a tropical paradise in India, this is a fear I was exposed to very late in life, with very little know-how on how to tackle it. Every time I have come face to face with it, it has left me scarred. It has left such a lasting impression on me, that when I applied to grad school in the US, I specifically chose places in California just so that I need not suffer from the cold.

Seasonal Adventures in Idyllwild

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Davide was finally back in town, and we had a free weekend to do some chill tradding. This could only mean one thing: Idyllwild! Forecast looked autumnal: comfortably above freezing at night, but certainly breezy. Maybe a light drizzle at night. Daytime was gonna be in the 50’s. My trad gear was in Orange County with Andrew (this had almost ruined the previous week’s much less silly outing), so we invited him as a third for Saturday and for camping. Hopefully, this would provide sufficient incentive to give me back my cams. We posted in the chat, and Carrie happily joined us on the ride over — she had invited a few old friends to join us for camping. I booked a campsite, and we were off to the races. We, as always, met at Higher Grounds (now renamed ‘Pure Coffee’ — I refuse to use the new name). Andrew arrived, Carrie’s friends arrived. We handed them our guidebook, and headed on up! On the approach, the views were spectacular. The trees were above the clouds, and the typical socal desert was completely invisible. Fall colors were peeking through, and Idyllwild was as beautiful as ever.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

We are a social club! This is a loose amalgamation of mostly grad students, a few undergrads, and some community members who are stoked about doing stuff in the mountains. If you’re new to the whole thing, that’s A-OK – many of our members got started with this stuff through the club. On the other hand, if you’re more experienced, we think this is a really easy way to expand the partner list!

Gear Rentals

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The club has free gear rentals for dues-paying members.

Please note: The gear list does NOT automatically update when someone checks out gear.

TODO: Work on this…

Gear Checkout Gear Return

Join

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Get in touch

To get in touch with other club members, fill out the waiver below, and a link to our slack channel will appear at the end. You can also show up to an event on the calendar.

Waiver and Slack

A link to the slack channel will appear after you fill it out!

Join the club

The dues are required to attend any official trip, or borrow gear. To join the club, please come to any of the events on our calendar below. It’s 15 dollars/quarter, or 30 dollars/year. If for some reason that stops you from joining, just talk to us!

Resources

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Cool stuff members have made

Andrew Barabas’ Eastern Sierra Tour Map (honorary member) available upon request

Philipp’s Woodson Map: Phil’s Messy Woodson Map

Good online resources:

Mountainproject: Great resource for climbing routes

Summitpost: Semi-defunct, but maintains good bits of info about mountains.

CalTopo: Awesome for planning trips

Eastern Sierra avalanche forecast, socal snow, san jac jon: For local avvy prognoses. Typically our own in-club beta is more up to date.

Mountain forecast: NOAA tends to be the most reliable, but the altitude stuff is helpful. As always, make calls at your own risk.