mountains! flowers! Chocoflan!

Finally, a plan to go into the high sierra. It's been too long my friend.

The tentative plan (all plans are tentative until they are in the past...behind every cynic is a disappointed idealist) is to climb in mammoth on saturday with lauren, john and sarah, and then go tag north peak and do the north ridge of conness on sunday.  It's a tidy little weekend with routes and bigger stuff.  I'm excited to do it with Lauren so we can see what our paces are like, how our legs feel etc. for the possible Kenya climb.

So excited about the high sierra these days.  I want to do middle palisade as well.  Of course I'll lose a lot of fitness if I get called to the gulf, but whatever.

I'll finish the post with some photos of the endangered Vine Hill clarkia and the Vine Hill preserve.  Take a good look at the flower because this is it - all that's left is what's growing on this 1.3 acre preserve.

closeup of a flower that's going ape shit.

view of the Vine Hill ceanothus and some biologists

biologists in their natural habitat

more clarkia - this is the more standard form compared to the photo at the top

Oh yeah - and I made CHOCOFLAN!!! so damn tasty.