Potato Chip Rock Mt. Woodson, Poway, CA

It seem like at some point everyone in San Diego needs to make the trip up to Potato Chip Rock for an (insert social media platform here) photo. Well I am no different. I was surprised to find that it is a pretty demanding hike almost 8 miles round trip and 2k feet of elevation gain. Now knowing how demanding the hike is I have a new appreciation for all those photos.

It seems like this is the Saturday morning cardio hike for a lot of San Diego's fitness minded residents. There was certainly no shortage of yoga pants and sports bras.

Past Potato Chip at the empty summit, I made a number of failed attempts to boulder and reach the true peak of Mt Woodson.

-James

Lele Kawa

October, HMCS Yukon SCUBA

I finally made it underwater in San Diego! I joined Power SCUBA on the Marissa dive boat for three tanks of diving goodness starting with the HMCS Yukon followed by Lazy Daze and Seven Fathoms.

The conditions were near perfect for diving, aside form the cold. 50 feet of visibility and almost no current. The cold was the main thing keeping me out of the water for so long, since most of my dives have been tropical. I don't yet own any 7mm cold water gear. Other than my gloves being too small, the wetsuit i rented did a pretty good job of keeping the cold at bay, but I definitely felt it.

At Lazy Daze, I found a dive knife as a explored the bottom. Then during our safety stop, a huge Mola Mola swam past and my partner was lucky enough to capture the video below.

My luck continued at 7 Fathoms and while my dive partners searched for lobster, I spotted a GoPro on the sea floor.

Captured this video with a head mounted GoPro, moving from stern to bow and back again.


Video of me chasing a huge Mola Mola, captured by my dive partner.

-James

Lele Kawa

Saving lives

It's a sad fact that when you are doing "crazy" things, from time to time people get hurt.  I feel fortunate that nobody from our crew has suffered more than some cuts and scrapes on any of our adventures. However sometimes you see people from other crews do not follow the same precautions that we to the mitigate the chance for injury.

That being said, the Lele Kawa crew was at Sunset cliffs when a man jumped and suffered a head injury. We were among the crowd of bystanders that came to the mans aid, before he was life flighted out. So far we have been unable to locate any follow up information on the man.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/sep/16/jumper-at-sunset-cliffs-suffers-traumatic-head-inj/

Be careful out there. You can be stupid and you can be crazy, but try very hard not to do both at the same time. If you are getting stupid don't do things that are crazy or reckless. If you are doing things that are crazy be as smart about them as you can be.

-James

Lele Kawa

Three Sisters Falls, San Diego, CA

Finally took advantage of my adventure pass and did some hiking in the Cleveland National Forest.

Reading about this hike most people rate it 8 to 9 out of 10 on the scale of difficulty. I think this rating was undeserved. I would only put it at about a 6. With good shoes and taking your time on the steep area of loose sands, there is almost no risk.

For what turned out to be for no good reason we carried a surf board and a body board the whole way. The only thing they proved useful for was a prop in the photo below, with the three sisters in the background. This picture was taken on the way down just before the steep and loose part of the hike.

Once we got to the falls it was time to play around. The hike up to the top of the third sister was a little sketchy, it was a slab scramble. If you lost your grip you would tumble down the rocks and over the water falls. The water at the bottom of the falls was only about knee to waist deep.

The shallowness of the water didn't prevent me and Jeff from jumping. There was a sandy bottom under the shallow water, so it was soft when you hit bottom.

Above the third sister there was this queens bath in a crack between the rocks that created an infinity pool. I slipped my way down into the pool and relaxed for a minute. Getting out of the pool turned out to be a little hard. The rock gets really slick when your wet.

A little way from the parking area on the way back we crossed paths with a Rattle Snake. This was only my second encounter with a rattler in the wild.

Even got to take a little Poison Oak home with me all over my right arm. I might have been able to avoid leaving home with it if I had read the directions better. At the bottom of the hill when you reach the creek you need to rock hop or hike along the left side of the creek. The trail seemed to cross the creek so I did some bush whacking on the right side of the creek.

-James

Lele Kawa

Jumping Sunset Cliffs, San Diego, CA

Spent part of the weekend getting back to the Lele Kawa roots. Jeff did the leg work and located the place to go.

Based on some videos we found, we made our way to the location. Once at the cave, we scouted the area. It looked safe enough, and our depth stick measured about 20 feet over the water with about 12 feet of water. The water was pretty cold so there wasn't any in water scouting.

Once you hit the water for the first time and got over the shock of the cold it wasn't bad. We both made a few jumps.

-James

Lele Kawa

SUP with seals on Mission Bay, San Diego

For my first real SUP (stand up paddleboarding) experiance, if you don't count my ten minute demo in Oregon over a year ago, I joined Mr. Lele Kawa himself for about 2.5 miles around Mission Bay.

On a previous trip to San Diego, the owner of Wind and Sea surf shop in Mission Beach, offered me an unbeatable deal on a SUP package. I finally made my way back there to take the offer.

Sunday morning we hit the water starting from Fanuel Street Park. As the two of us Paddled our way across the Sail Bay, we were joined by a seal. He shadowed us as we paddled, often following just behind the tail of our boards. He would bump the boards and nibbled on my leash. We stopped for a while before crossing under the Ingraham bridge. As we sat on our boards the seal played around us. He could surface along side our boards and look at us, and then swim off a bit to splash around in the water.

View Mission bay SUP in a larger map
When we grew board of our seal friend we headed under the bridge. There were a group of outrigger canoes gettign ready to start a regata. Along with them was a single SUP rider. She told us she was the only SUP rider for the race, and tried to talking us into joining her. We declined and headed back to Fanuel Street Park. The way back got tiring because the wind made it so you could only paddle on one side to keep your line.

Swing flipping in the park

-James

Lele Kawa

La Jolla Cove

The day after Christmas I made my way over to La Jolla Cove outside of San Diego, CA. It was pretty crowded and parking was a premium. I was lucky and found a spot right next to this little beach that was covered in seals.

 Looking down from where I parked

 View down on the beach with the sea cliffs in the distance

As we walked down towards the cove there was this single seal on this rock. It was still for a while and almost looked like a statue.

 There were plenty of pelicans, seals and some crazy people in and around the water. Some people had full wet suits, while others were in just bikinis. I did not get in the water on this trip. 58 degrees is a little cold for me, and I did not come prepared.

We turned around at "Sunny Jim" cave. It looks like an inviting cliff jump, enough so that they have a sign forbidding it. No Lele Kawa on this trip.

-James

Lele Kawa

A little blood for you carnivorous ppl

Well, here is another story yet of our crazy escapades around the world and you all (our readers) being able to see some of our redonkulous and unconventional acts or undertakings. Once again I was at the Clairmont Dr. skate park in San Diego...the Krause Family Skatepark they call it, one of the designers being Andy McDonald, so this place is nice! Well I was getting some video footage for this joint and of course, as I do this often when I skate for a video shot, I go faster, higher, and bigger. This tends to leave me planted into the pavement afterwards, as you all will be able to see in my video and photographs from my good friend JP. Here I hit this ramp fakie (backwards) to do a little 180 and I end up over shooting the transition and hitting the flat so I was not really prepared to take the shock of flat ground, therefore proceeded to eat concrete. The video doenst really give it the full effect, but I was there, it felt pretty good. Not the worst, but it def. removed a portion of my back and elbow. BUT, thank goodeness, the wound inflicted, went around my tattoos. Enjoy my friends, enjoy: