Field Trip!

Every fall semester I teach a very special class - the Geography Field Course at the University of California Berkeley. My colleague Dan Plumlee and I lead a small group of students on three long weekend trips, traveling to remote areas of California.

This was on the first trip of this season, setting up camp near Lassen Volcanic National Park. You can see our big pickup truck, known as the Beast, and a ten passenger van. We are completely self-sufficient, carrying all the gear we need, drawing water from the stream. Tables and stoves have been set up and chairs arranged around the campfire. The cook crew is preparing fajitas for dinner while the others set up the tents. Everyone is bundled up as the cold mountain night falls, the temperature already down close to freezing.

On this three day trip we will visit active volcanic areas, explore lave tube caves, swim below spring-fed waterfalls, visit the site of the Modoc Indian War of 1872, consider the water controversy in the Upper Klamath River area, visit several picturesque small towns, and enjoy a sacred meadow high on Mount Shasta.

On the second trip, four days long, we cross the Sierra Nevada through Yosemite National Park then explore the ranges and valleys along California's eastern border. The third trip takes us south along El Camino Real and the San Andreas Fault rift zone, returning north along the Big Sur coast.

USA-Canada / USA-California

Lat: 40° 35' 39" N
Long: 122° 18' 47.91" W

Elevation: 5859 ft/1786 m

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: Medium. Nearby, but not to the last decimal.

Photographed with an Olympus E-500 digital SLR with an 8mm Zuiko fisheye lens, on a Nodal Ninja VR mount, Acratec Ultimate Ballhead, and Velbon Carmagne carbon-fiber tripod. Stitched with PTGui 6 on a Mac dual-G5 tower, retouched with Photoshop CS2, converted to QTVR using Cubic Converter.