above photo © Don Monroe 1979

Bryan L. Allen's Home Page


Hikes, Photos, Stories, and Other (Gossamer) Stuff

Hikes

My most recent hikes seem to get documented in my hiking photo archive long before (or if) they get a more formal treatment on this site. The most-recent event I've completely annotated with captions was a May 2011 overnight hike in Carrizo Plain National Monument. The hiking picture above was taken during a 2009 solo hike into Miter Basin in southeastern Sequoia National Park.

When I'm out hiking, I typically will use my SPOT tracker; you can check to see if I'm out and about, or have been recently.

Sticking my neck out, I posted the draft trip plan for my 2010 Grand Summer Hike on Google Maps. And I followed the plan, mostly, but modified the latter portion due to uncertainty about snow on Kaweah Pass. The hike went from July 30 through August 7, 2010. Update: the GSH was indeed Grand, other than for a petty camera problem I discovered after the trip (soft focus.) Very slightly blurry photos and trip commentary coming "real soon now." Yeah, everything takes forever…

I'm experimenting with Twitter; see my Twitter page for occasional updates. And I decided to give Facebook a try too. I'm not at all convinced either one is worth the trouble… My preliminary conclusion is that Twitter is good for occasional spontaneous haiku, and Facebook is useful for looking at occasional Facebook updates sent me by others but is otherwise unsuited to my style.

My summer hike of 2008 was to Gardiner Basin in Kings Canyon National Park, a hidden jewel at the center of the Rae Lakes loop.

I solo-hiked the John Muir Trail non-stop and unresupplied, from July 4-14, 2007; read my Muir Trail narrative. Every photo I took (yikes, almost 500!) is at my photo archive of the trip.

For conditioning and gear testing, I did some training hikes April-June 2007 in preparation for a planned hike along the John Muir Trail. The three final hikes were to the Hockett Plateau, Roaring River, and a loop out of Mineral King with Kaweah Gap at the northern end. I doubt I'll do trip narratives for those hikes, but I've posted photos with annotative comments.

Read about my February 2007 hike returning to Pinto Basin in Joshua Tree National Park.

My summer hike in 2006 was to Laurel Basin in Sequoia National Park; among other events, I scattered some of my father's ashes and then returned home to find out if I needed further treatment for colon cancer.

I started this web site by documenting a hike in Joshua Tree National Park in late April 2006 where I flirted with heatstroke. I am a bit wiser now.

I make electronic notes during most every hike with an ancient hand-me-down Treo 90. I've started to experiment with using my iPhone instead; provisionally it works OK, but I'm still in beta test on that.

"Hike by yourself? What, are you CRAZY?" Perhaps not; check out my perspective and that of others.

Atop Peak 12362, Sept. 2005, southern Sierra Nevada. Kaweah Peaks in background on right. Click on photo for  larger version.

Photos

Various photos are in my archives, with plans to post them to my SmugMug photo archive "...sometime after tomorrow."

Stories and Writings

A meditation I wrote and presented at a JPL Green Club meeting on shopping bags (I'm such a troublemaker.)

And if that shopping bag article wasn't troublesome enough, then try this article on Ecoheroes.

Story snippet from "No License Required", on hold but still in the queue.

I attended the SpaceOps 2008 conference, for which I was the lead author of a paper; you may view the entire paper for free, thanks to the AIAA. You may view a photo of our poster as well.

Lots more in my archives; I'll be putting various bits here as time goes on. As my friend Bill says, "Everything takes forever."

Other (Gossamer) Stuff

Yes, I was the pilot of the Gossamer Condor and Gossamer Albatross pedal-powered aircraft, flying both of them to prize-winning flights in the 1970s. Below you'll find a few Gossamer aircraft resources.

Various Gossamer Aircraft photos are at Don Monroe's page.

You may view slides from a talk I gave in March 2011 on the occasion of Aerovironment's 40th anniversary.

A recent web interview with me talking about human-powered blimps and Gossamer airplanes can be found at a site called Aerial Canoe.

Gossamer Gathering 2007 photos.

A fairly large PDF (836 KB) detailing the flight of the Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel in 1979, by Ron Moulton et al. The file does not seem to display all pages from within some browsers, but downloading it and then reading it with a PDF viewer seems to work OK.

An excellent resource for human-powered flight information is at the Royal Aeronautical Society's website. The dark-blue box toward the top of the page contains links to many interesting topics.

Wonder how many human-powered aircraft I've flown? Find out the answer! (another ~800KB PDF.)

Here's a video of a presentation to the JPL Bike Club that I gave about human powered flight on March 20th, 2008.

The White Dwarf pedal-powered blimp that we built for Gallagher in 1984 was eventually sold to some folks in Oregon who flew it for several years before the envelope finally failed a yearly over-pressure test.

And finally, I can recommend a truly remarkable on-line resource: adetailed history of human-powered flight, complete with many, many photos.

Other (other) Stuff

My Wikipedia entry.

"Martian" bio at ZipCodeMars (last updated June 2007.)