First, an update on the Kickstarter Campaign to help pay for the printing of my new book, “Fifty Classic Adventures In California”. I’m over 25% funded after 5 days which isn’t bad but it is going to be tight. If you are at all interested please help out and head over to the Kickstarter page. There are some nice aerial photos I’m using as rewards.
Fifty Classics Kickstarter Link
As part of research for the book I flew down to Joshua Tree for a week. I did “normal” adventures like hiking Ryan Mountain and under-the-radar adventures like hiking out to the semi-secret Samuelson’s Rocks. Also utterly oddball adventures like finding the Iron Door in the desert or crawling through cracks and fissures of a small mountain from one side to the other.
I also invited Mike Lindle, a professional and very creative photographer, up for a sunrise flight over Joshua Tree and he brought a small crew with him. We met the night before for a beer and since there was room in the parking area near the airplane we all just slept in our vehicles. I had been sleeping in the airplane but I slept in the rental truck so I could have all the seats already installed and checked for the early morning departure.
It was a great flight, these sunrise mountain flights always are. It was a little more of a challenge than, say Yosemite, because there are no tall mountains so it is hard to get a sense of depth. You could fly low to get that, but not in a National Park with a 2,000 foot requested terrain clearance.
All photos by Mike Lindle. Framework Films www.frameworkfilms.net
West Coast Flying Adventures 