Hiking in the Pinnacles
Last Saturday, a couple of colleagues and I went up the Pinnacles, a park with soaring peaks and imposing monoliths. These rocks rise in the middle of the valley, remnants of an ancient volcano. The chaparral vegetation provides little shade from the sun and vultures circle overhead. If one is lucky, they might see one of the endangered condors carefully coaxed back from the brink of extinction.
We had previously done this hike a year ago, but this time, AR brought along a new gadget. It was a Magellan Explorist, and it kept a track log of the route we hiked. The trails were well marked, so we had no need for the Explorist, but it was still interesting to see the output of the GPS receiver.
The coolest thing was that the log can be converted (via GPSBabel) to a KML file - native format of Google Earth. The software shows a 3D rendition of the area and the route taken. Here is a shot:
The other thing that the GPS log helped with was the distance and altitude change. Knowing this will help gauge the difficulty and timing of future hikes. My own reckoning from last years hike was about 6 miles, but the GPS corrected this to actually 5.4 miles. Hmm… only 5.4 miles?