I've been going slightly stir crazy after my recent knee surgery and the fact I can't hike or do any other sort of outdoor activity has greatly altered how I spend the average weekend.

Hot springs I can still do and we know a few that offer overnight accommodations.  El Dorado is one of our favorite though it's a big of a drive being located in Tonopah Az.

This time we reserved the Sunset Pool since we've only ever stayed at the Desert View Pool.

This is part of a series of entries covering my fall back in 2011, surgery in 2015, and my recovery immediately afterwards.  If you came here directly the rest of the entries can be found here.

Below covers the day of the surgery and the first five days of recovery.

This was a part of Matt's Right Kneecap Farewell Tour in the weekends leading up to Knee Surgery 2015.  I was going to be laid up for months so I was desperate to get out even if the swelling meant I couldn't hike.

Benton Hot Springs is located near the Eastern Sierra and offers overnight camping spots.  They also offer cabins but we'd reserved pool #5 since it was advertised as private and only #5.

Due to a mix up on their end we ended up getting the much nicer Conway House for the same price.

This is the first in a series of entries I'm planning to write about my experience (hopefully) recovering from a knee injury I sustained back in 2011.  Since I'm going to be recovering from surgery any new trip reports will just be from the backlog I haven't had time to finish (of which there are unfortunately a large number)

October 28th, 2015
[Pics] [Map]

About once a month a group of us get together and paddle Newport Harbor after work.  We launch from the beach at the Newport Aquatic Center and paddle over to Pizza Nova in the main harbor where we dock our boats, partake in pizza and beer, and then paddling back to the cars.  We do this all year round and in pretty much all conditions.  You can find writeups of other pizza paddles here.

This was to be the last pizza paddle for the immediate future due to an impending knee surgery.  I was a fun one though with several friends joining us for the first time.

The Sierra Club Advanced Mountaineering Program or AMP was started in 2009 by Dan Richter and Pat McKusky to teach basic and advanced mountaineering skills with the goal of promoting safe climbing and train a new generation of club leadership.  While it's primarily targeted to WTC graduates and Sierra Club leaders anyone is welcome.  It's run twice a year in the spring and fall and staffed by an array of hard working volunteers.

This post covers the Fall 2015 AMP class.  More posts about AMP can be found here.  More information on AMP and instructions on how to sign up can be found here.

Past the break is a very long quasi chronological sequence of photos following the 2015 Wilderness Travel Course in Orange County with most being specific to Kaweah Group led by myself and Paul Warren along with a staff of extremely hard working volunteers.

For more information on what WTC is and how to take the course see the official site here.  More posts by me can be found here.

This was the 4th year since we split off from the Modjeska Group and formed Kaweah.  This also had the distinction of being the worst year for snow at snow camp since I took the course back in 2008.  This year for the first time most people were camped on dirt instead of snow.  Despite this we managed a good snowshoe race, took advantage of the easy travel to back a mini peak on the second day, and all around had a lot of fun with a lot of great people.

This was also the second and final year we would hold Orange County at the Santiago Canyon College before moving to the Murray Center in 2016.

September 23rd, 2015
[Pics] [Map]

About once a month a group of us get together and paddle Newport Harbor after work. We launch from the beach at the Newport Aquatic Center and paddle over to Pizza Nova in the main harbor where we dock our boats, partake in pizza and beer, and then paddling back to the cars. We do this all year round and in pretty much all conditions. You can find writeups of other pizza paddles here.

This was the first time our friend Jia-Meng was able to join us from all the way up in LA.

August 27th, 2015
[Pics] [Map]

Our monthly after work pizza and beer paddle in Newport Harbor.  Which this month just so happened to fall on an unusually strong tide.  Oops...

This trip was primarily aimed at WTC students who need two trips to complete all the requirements of the course and be eligible for graduation in October.  I usually do a few more of these but it's been a rough summer climbing schedule wise between unsettled weather in late Spring and knee issues towards the end of the summer.

As a result this ended up being the last Sierra Trip of the summer for me after having to cancel Star King, Florence N, and a long haul desert trip over Labor Day.

For this trip Kristen and I picked Cirque because the drive to Horseshoe Meadow is on the short side (it's 25 miles above Lone Pine) and the stats are pretty reasonable letting us plan for a large 15 person group.

As the weekend approached the bigger concern became smoke from the still burning Rough Fire.  After we'd seen it on the Harrington trip it had continued to grow and depending on the day was making the east side extremely unpleasant.  For the moment the worst of it seemed to be to the north so off we went...