Expeditions by Daniel Cassman

The Lost Coast

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 22:02:00 PST

State Route 1 runs along the Pacific Coast for most of California’s length, winding steeply and sharply along some of the world’s most spectacular shores. But about forty miles north of Mendocino, the highway takes an abrupt turn east and joins Highway 101 further inland. The highway leaves the coast because that part of California is so rugged that the highway’s planners simply couldn’t build a road there. Known as the Lost Coast, the area boasts some of the most incredible coastline in the world, with steep cliffs and hills dropping straight into the ocean.

The coast from near the trailhead

Carson Iceberg Wilderness

Tue, 6 Oct 2009 10:55:07 PST

About thirty miles south of Lake Tahoe and thirty miles north of Yosemite, the Carson Iceberg Wilderness is a little known gem in California’s high country. Just beyond Bear Valley on Highway 4, the wilderness is past the point at which the road is maintained in winter, making access impossible after the first heavy snows of winter. I led an introductory backpacking trip to Carson Iceberg just before the beginning of the winter season.

The Carson Iceberg Wilderness

Mount Shasta

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 22:07:00 PST

Fourteen thousand, one hundred and sixty-two foot Mount Shasta is a dormant volcano that rises in solitary drama in the far north of California. A few years ago, I attempted the climb with my father. We were turned back by low snow, poor conditions, and severe dehydration. Over Memorial Day weekend I tried again with a group of friends from school.

Mount Shasta from Bunny Flat

Pyramid Peak

Fri, 1 May 2009 16:35:02 PST

At 9,983′, Pyramid Peak is the highest point in California’s Desolation Wilderness. Since it is only about a three hour drive from the San Francisco Bay Area, Desolation Wilderness is the most heavily-used wilderness area in the United States. Thus exploring Desolation during the winter months has a number of advantages—not only do the snow-covered peaks make for spectacular vistas, but most of the visitors that swarm the area during the summer are kept away by colder temperatures and feet of snow.

Hiking below Horsetail Falls

Glacier Point Road

Sun, 8 Feb 2009 22:02:18 PST

One of the most popular winter activities in Yosemite National Park is skiing or snowshoeing Glacier Point Road. The road is closed to cars in winter beyond the Badger Pass Ski Resort, but most of the road is groomed, making the 10.3 mile road a relatively easy ski route. The reward is a spectacular view of Yosemite Valley.

Yosemite Valley from Highway 49

Skiing at Silver Lake

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:58:23 PST

The winter retreat for the Stanford Outdoor Education Program instructors was a back country skiing trip off of Highway 88 near Kirkwood Mountain Resort. We left campus early on a beautiful Saturday morning. Despite a flat tire in Jackson, we managed to make it to Tragedy Springs Road, of which only the first hundred feet or so had been plowed. We parked in the plowed area and distributed group gear and food. Then we strapped on our skis and went on our way.

John points out our route

Peru

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 21:18:34 PST

I flew into Lima in the early hours of December 14. A desert city on the Peru’s western coast, Lima is known for its depressing weather, and sure enough it greeted us with oppressive clouds and fog. A taxi took Kate and me to a hostel in Lima’s Miraflores district, one of the nicer tourist districts in the city. I didn’t really know what to expect, having never been to South America, but Miraflores was definitely not anything like what I would have anticipated. Within a five-minute walk of our hostel were a TGI Friday’s, a Chili’s, a McDonald’s, a Starbucks, and a Domino’s pizza. We spent the rest of our first day trying to fight jet lag while exploring the area around our hostel. We ate dinner at a nice Italian restaurant a few blocks from the hostel—apparently Italian food is a hot trend in Peru.

The next day we were joined by Kate’s friend Divya and her boyfriend Daniel. Daniel, a native Colombian, spoke fluent Spanish and proved to be invaluable in helping us travel throughout Peru. The four of us walked around Miraflores, and we ate lunch at an upscale Peruvian restaurant where Kate and Divya tried ceviche, a quintessential Peruvian dish. We strolled west to the cliffs above the beach, where we were heckled by paragliding companies. Then we walked down to the beach, where we were heckled by several people offering surfing lessons. Declining, we gravitated towards Larco Mar, a new mall built into the cliffs above the Miraflores beach that wouldn’t look out of place in San Diego. It was a surreal experience to stand in an Aeropostale store in Peru, with pop remixes of Christmas carols (in English) playing outside on the mall’s soundsystem and The Killers blasting on the store’s speakers.

Mount Silliman

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 20:54:57 PST

In late October of 2008, I led an attempt to climb Sequoia National Park’s 11,188-foot Mount Silliman as part of the Outdoor Education Program. We left Stanford on Friday evening and arrived at Lodgepole campsite a little after midnight. Mount Silliman is in the same area as a peak I climbed last spring, Alta Peak; it lies a few miles to the northwest. We went to sleep almost as soon as we arrived.

Saturday morning dawned beautiful and sunny. We had a pancake breakfast and then drove through the campsite to the trailhead (the trail for Silliman lies in the eastern part of Lodgepole campground). For the first two miles, we followed a trail up to the north of the campsite. At about the 2 mile mark (where the trail meets Silliman Creek), we turned east, following a use trail that paralleled the stream. The trail wound its way to a meadow below a striking 10,000 foot peak. We took a break in the meadow and did a navigation workshop with maps and compasses.

Mount Sill

Fri, 5 Sep 2008 16:38:00 PST

Early in September of 2008, I attempted a climb of 14,153-foot Mount Sill in the Palisade Range of the eastern Sierras. About one year prior, I had tried the climb but was turned back on the second morning by inclement weather and ill health. On that trip I climbed Mt. Agassiz instead. This time I was determined to make the summit with my three friends, Kate, Whitney, and Ian.

Half Dome in Yosemite

Half Dome

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 12:10:54 PST

At the end of June during the summer of 2008, I left for Yosemite with a group of Stanford Outdoors leaders. Our goal was ambitious: to watch the sun rise from the top Half Dome.

We left campus late on a Friday afternoon. The drive was relatively painless; there was no traffic, but we were hampered by thick smoke from the forest fires burning in hundreds of locations across the state and endless stories about pet hermit crabs. We stopped for dinner at a place called Ofelia’s’ taqueria in Tracy. We found a number of interesting items in our burritos, and none of us will be returning there.

Half Dome

Umbria

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 12:01:56 PST

After leaving Florence on my journey to Italy in June of 2008, my family and I drove to a small town in Umbria called Lerchi. About a 20 minute drive into the hills above Lerchi is an old farmhouse christened “La Dogana”. Nestled in the hills among the farms and forests of Umbria, La Dogana lies beneath the fortified town of Monte Santa Maria Tiberina. Monte Santa Maria dominates the horizon, its imposing silhouette overlooking the countryside in all directions.

Monte Santa Maria Tiberina

Florence

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 11:36:18 PST

I flew into Florence on a Wednesday afternoon in mid-June. Wrestling with jet lag, I went to bed early the first night after a delicious dinner at an osteria a few blocks north of the Arno with my family. The next day we strolled through the city and visited Santa Maria del Fiore, known as Il Duomo. We visited the baptistry outside the cathedral, and then walked into the church itself. Beneath the church we toured an ancient Roman town that had been on the site before the cathedral. Then we climbed the dome, which offered spectacular views of Florence’s rooftops.

The Arno River

Alta Peak

Tue, 20 May 2008 11:26:58 PST

As an instructor for Stanford’s Outdoor Education Program, I led an introductory mountaineering trip to 11,204 foot Alta Peak in Sequoia National Park during May of 2008. We left the Bay Area at around 7:30 PM on Friday evening, and drove all the way to the park that night. We camped at Lodgepole, a front country campsite with a visitor center, market, flush toilets, and showers.

The next morning, we woke up, broke camp, and drove to the trailhead. At about 7,200 feet, the trailhead was low enough that there was no snow. However, the rangers had told us that snowshoes—and potentially crampons and ice axes—would be necessary for the climb. Due to these reports, we strapped snowshoes and a few ice axes to our packs and started up the trail.

Panther Gap

Arroyo Seco Canyoneering

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:40:21 PST

Every quarter, the instructors of the Stanford Outdoor Education Program (OEP) go on a retreat to refine skills and plan trips and lessons. For our Spring 2008 retreat, we took advantage of a spell of hot weather to brave the cold, swift waters of Arroyo Seco, a gorgeous canyon east of Big Sur. Not only is Arroyo Seco beautiful, but it’s much closer to campus than the Sierras, so it made for a short and easy drive.

Arroyo Seco

Trinity Alps

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 13:41:27 PST

Tucked in the northwest corner of California, the Trinity Alps are a small but spectacular mountain range. The Trinities have been on my list of places to visit for a few years now, so I was excited for an opportunity to explore them. I joined a group planning to snowshoe up the Canyon Creek Trail to the Canyon Creek Lakes, an eight mile hike with 3,500 feet of elevation gain. The goal was to get as far as possible up the trail, given the storm forecast for the weekend.

Jeff at the trail head

Early Season 07-08

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 23:30:28 PST

I managed to sneak five days of skiing in before New Years during the 2007 – 2008 season. After an usually low snow year for 2006-2007, it was encouraging that Tahoe got several feet of snow before Christmas. Despite this early snowfall, all of the Tahoe ski areas suffered from the usual early season low coverage with lots of exposed rocks.

Kirkwood Valley

Point Reyes

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:47:35 PST

During our week off from school for Thanksgiving, my friend Paul and I decided to do a short backpacking trip along California’s Point Reyes National Seashore. We left early on Monday morning, piling ourselves and our gear into Paul’s 1978 Volkswagen bus. The morning was cloudy and gray, with dreary rain tumbling from the overcast sky. We drove for a little over two hours, picked up a permit, and parked at the trailhead.

Paul and me at the trail head

Mount Agassiz

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 23:39:38 PST

Shortly after I returned from Alaska in the summer of 2007, my family left for a short backpacking trip in the Eastern Sierra. My mother, my father, and I met my father’s high school friend, Chris, near the town of Bishop, California. Our goal was the 14,153 foot summit of Mt. Sill, a remote peak in the Palisade Range.

We left civilization at the South Lake trail head, at 9,755 feet. The first day we hiked up to Bishop Pass, at 11,960 feet. The elevation gain was about 2,200 feet, but over a distance of 7.5 miles. Once over the pass, we hiked down into upper Dusy Basin, a beautiful rocky region speckled with alpine lakes.

Mom, Chris, and me at the trail head

Wrangell Mountains Part Two

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:55:10 PST

After the first two weeks of my trip to Alaska in the summer of 2007 (see Wrangell Mountains Part One for stories from those two weeks), I began designing my field study for the second segment of the program. Along with a group of three other students, I decided to study the issues involved in safe bear-human coexistence, including identifying bear habitat to help backcountry travelers avoid or at least be conscious of it, and researching methods for storing bear attractants in the backcountry. We spent about a week researching these topics and designing our field study. Then we embarked on an eighteen-day journey through the Wrangell Mountains.

Sunset from McCarthy

Root Glacier

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:00:17 PST

I spent two months in Alaska during the summer of 2007 as part of a college field study program. On our day off, a group of people in the program decided to go ice climbing on the Root Glacier, one of the two major glaciers in the area.

We took a shuttle to Kennecott, an old mining town that sits above the glacier. Our guides were two women, Elizabeth and Betsy. They outfitted us with gear: plastic mountaineering boots, helmets, and crampons, and together we hiked a mile and a half down to the glacier. We arrived beneath an ice wall, and Betsy and Elizabeth walked around behind it to its top and set up an anchor of three ice screws.

Me on the wall