Early season snowboarding at Big Bear, CA

The worst part about early season snow is only two runs being open and lift lines. The best part is all the snow bunnies in tank tops as the day heated up.

It had been a while since I spent any time on a snowboard, so I was happy to get up to Big Bear, CA for the long weekend. Plenty of fake snow on the two open slopes, one beginner and one intermediate. The good thing was the intermediate trail had a bunch of man made terrain scattered all over it.

Normally I shy away from terrain parks in favor of glades or side country, but for early season you have to take what you can get. They had a good variety, which was nice. They had rails, boxes, small table tops, larger kickers, and some large pipes.

-James

Lele Kawa

San Bernardino camping

After I split from my friends in Joshua Tree, I headed to Big Bear Lake, CA for some snowboarding. I didn't really have any plan for this part of the weekend. Before I hit the road from J Tree I went online to see what camping and lodging options I had.

I found out about Yellow Post camp sites, from my google search. The main permit needed was the Adventure Pass, that I have had and barely used for about a year now. A further search gave me the map below, which showed me the locations of all of the sites.


View Yellow Post Campsites (partial) in a larger map

I decided to try for Yellow Post 26, because it was the closest to the lake and the ski resorts. I was amazed to find that the site was empty, since it was less then a mile off the paved road and 3 days into a 4 day weekend.

Once I arrived I was disappointed I didn't have my mountain bike. There was a constant stream of bikes headed up and down "Plantation Trail", which is mapped below. The weather was perfect for some biking. The ground was a little crunchy from the cold rather than wet with snow in spots but the air was a comfortable 60 or so in the early evening.

-James

Lele Kawa

Up to "Shit" creek with a Paddle board

I finally did it. I paddled a SUP board from Gateway Park in Yuma, up river to the confluence of the Colorado and Gila rivers, here often referred to as shit creek.

Board in front of the Ocean to Ocean bridge

It happened to be a little cooler this time, but I still set out around 1:30 in the afternoon sun. The cool weather must have scared away most of the floaters, because there were only 3 groups that I saw.

Going upstream was burning my arms out. It started to seem like I would never make it. There were a few times I though about turning back to attempt another day, but I pressed on. Eventually I made it to "shit creek". It wasn't very crowded, just a few people camping out and some trucks tooling around.

I decided to head up the Gila for a just a little bit. It proved to be too shallow after not very long, so I turned around and went up the Colorado for a little distance. Once I found a little beach to myself, I stopped for my break.

View during my break

After my break was the easy part, downstream. I kept a pretty good pace on the downstream, paddling the whole way rather than just floating. The worst part was the sun had gotten low and was in my eyes the whole way. I arrived back at Gateway Park just as the sun was setting.

-James

Lele Kawa

Colorado River Crossing Balloon Festival

This year Yuma hosted the 22nd annual Colorado River Crossing Balloon Festival. I took it as an opportunity to break out the camera and take some pictures.

It didn't hurt that they were pouring beer and serving barbecue. For $15 they had tethered balloon rides, to a high of 75 feet. It sounded better than it looked, so I didn't partake.

After my food and drink, I picked my seat in the stadiums bleachers. My seat seemed to provide a pretty good angle for seeing the balloons for the glow.

Watching the balloons inflate with the sky still bright was underwhelming. As the sky got darker the balloons started looking better.

After it wasn't getting any darker, I decided to wander around the grounds. It was kinda cool feeling the heat from the burners in all directions.

As I was leaving, I turned to see the balloons from the parking lot. I think this gave one of the best view. Being farther away evened everything out a little better.

-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

Lele Kawa the movie

The Lele Kawa crew has been working on a feature length movie that documents some of our adventures in an artistic fashion. The plan is to finish the movie before the end of the year and then to sell it, with any profits it generates going to "Path International" a nonprofit that helps rehabilitate veterans through therapeutic horseback riding.

So far we have this trailer put together. I will add an update when we get our kickstarter up and running.

-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