Archive for December, 2007

Winter/Spring 2008 Plans

Sunday, December 30th, 2007

In no particular order, here are some outings I'm considering for this winter and spring.
Additional suggestions welcome, particularly for any place I've yet to hike.

  1. Pinnacles NM, Couterclockwise loop around the Northern Wilderness and High Peaks trail.  (Done clockwise a few years back, doing this to kick off the year on Tuesday)
  2. Big Basin HQ to Butano SP via Gazos Creek Road
  3. Pine Ridge Trail thru-hike w/ overnight at Big Sur lodge
  4. Ventana Double Cone from Bottchers Gap (do this about once a year)
  5. Skyline to Sea (looking for a car swap partner for this, I'll take the uphill variant)
  6. Lost Coast trail (been there twice, but never been south of Jackass Creek)
  7. Henry Coe,  Hunting Hollow to Burra Burra Peak (repeat of the very first hike on the website)
    Will do Bear Mountain instead if they reopen the northern section of the park in the spring
  8. Dick Smith Wilderness, Malduce Mountain and Samon Peak (2 of the HPS Big 4)
  9. Mt. Diablo 4 peaks, Clockwise (Done this counterclockwise)
  10. Ventana Wilderness, Cone Peak from Highway 1

Posted in Backcountry | 5 Comments »

Looking Back At 2007

Saturday, December 29th, 2007

Time once again for the yearly review post.  I didn't get much hiking done in '07 so reviewing this year seems a bit like a band releasing a greatest hits compilation after only a single album.  I'm planning on working much less and hiking much more in 2008.

2007 Highlights

Back on the horse- Return to Yosemite Valley for a successful reattempt of the route I had been doing when I broke my ankle:


Sierra Point and Liberty Cap, Yosemite

After 4 unsuccessful attempts, I finally was able to dayhike Pinyon Peak in the Ventana in an 20 hour effort:

My first and second 30 milers since breaking my ankle:

   
Ventana Double Cone, Ventana Wilderness  &  Buena Vista Pass, Yosemite

Most viewed pictures of 2007


2007 was a freak year for Half Dome fatalities and this picture of the cable route got linked from a number of discussion forums on the events


Half Dome from Clouds Rest, the previously reigning top photo


Waiting for Yosemite SAR after breaking my ankle back in 2006


Half Dome from the Clouds Rest Summit. 

Most viewed albums of 2007 (2006 rank)
Only one album from this year cracked the top ten

- Top referers were Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft
– Top non-search engine referers were Tom Mangin's Two Heel Drive (thanks Tom), Summitpost, and the VWA forum.
– Top search engine key phrases were "clouds rest", "fedak, lost coast trail", john fedak, and kaiser wilderness.

Traffic to fedak.net came in at ~250k page views- flat with the prior year for the first time in the site's 5 year history.  This was probably partially due to the lack of new content in the latter half of the year, a honeypot that I implemented, and a gradual shift to people using the rss feed.  Non-human page views added another 344k, up substantially from the prior year.

Posted in Website | 2 Comments »