Grumpy old mountain man living in Spain
Big day today on Corazon de la Sandia. There is no easy way up this peak, easiest route involves over 1000m of ascent & 14km. Nevertheless, despite the name, the "Heart of the Watermelon" is a dramatic peak.
Will write more tomorrow about the route. Until then here's a view from it's rocky summit, looking towards the main Sierra Nevada range. The wonderful mountain scenery in between needs few words. It's tremendous!
Evening light over Lanjaron and the cliffs of Tajos Colorao tonight. Clouds building over the Sierra Nevada behind
A tiny 21€ Lillygo LoRa board with antenna hooked up to my Meshtastic network.
onboarding easier than but uses only LoRa for communication. Range testing next.
You can tell I'm from Yorkshire. Commercial 3d boxes cost twice as much as the cost of the radio itself, so I drilled some holes in the original box it came in. Job done 🤣
So proud of my two daughters. I just couldn't ever get them interested in climbing hills & mountains. Now, both in their 40's, they are qualified mountain leaders, do SAR stuff and go out at night into the hills to play in the snow. Why couldn't I get them to do that? 😂
Believe it or not this is on Mam Tor in the Peak District
I've always been interested in navigation. From reading wonderfully detailed paper maps by a winter fireside to micro navigating my way out difficult mountain terrain in a blizzard. Navigation has been made much simpler recently due to sophisticated GPS mapping systems. It's all interesting stuff. And, just when you thought we couldn't get much better .... Quantum Navigation appears out of the gloom. Interesting eh?
Been testing better antennas on today's dog walk that have expanded the range and increased the reliability of my local Reticulum Network. Even managed to voice transmit but words were lost due to the howling wind 😀.
Two Groups of Castaways Marooned on the Same Island: One Did Everything Right; One Didn’t
https://explorersweb.com/auckland-island-castaways-contrast-in-survival/
That's the last time I'm ever going into an Ikea. Must have done 5 miles twisting and turning down alleyways and walkways lined with people and products 😂. No direct route to the part of the store you are looking for. At the end ... the €18 product we wanted. Online only, if at all, for me from now on.
@jds some images from . Descriptions in the alt text
Spring is in the air
Yesterday we came across an interesting and unusual feature that we've never encountered before in mountains (outside of Kamchatka in 2013). A deep crack/crevice was found near the summit of Morron de Enmedio at 1098m in the Sierra Elvira. Coming up out of the crack was a constant strong blast of warm wind. This feature (the Raja Santa cavity) is just west of the summit if you want to experience this for yourselves. Natural warming for a cold winters day!
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As we had never been to these mountains before we called this walk "The Sierras We've Never Heard Of"! The Sierra Elvira lie just NW of Granada city. Good motorway connections mean the start is just 45 mins drive from our home base in Lanjaron.
We started the walk at the large parking area at Collado de los Pinos and made our way up through pine forests and open slopes to the Collado del Morrón del Punta.
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Beautiful winter sunset in the Alpujarra tonight
I love RSS feeds and do most of my blog and website catching up using these feeds. Used various pieces of software over the years to co-ordinate and aggregate feeds. Today, just installed FreshRSS on my server. Easy to install and no messing with ports forwarding etc. Just install on a server you run. Initial thoughts are that it works really well and provides a very nice platform to read your content.
Christmas Eve from a pub somewhere in darkest Andalucia 😂 . Can't say this reminds me of my Christmas's from my youth in the UK
Anyway, if you celebrate Christmas, ... Feliz Navidad a todos
Had some time to play today so back to exploring netstack using and app.
Excited that without wifi, bluetooth nor mobile data I managed to connect the two phones and send/receive text messages via LORA.
Initial testing got me to the end of my land (100m) without problems. Not "line of sight" either. Will extend distance tomorrow on dog walk. What can these very tiny aerials achieve?
After that maybe time for big aerial on the roof?
Back in southern Spain our group hiked up the Silleta de Padul from Padul (S of Granada). A nice 12km circular hike with 850m ascent/descent. Much of interest, including spectacular views of the Sierra Nevada mountains and the rock arch of "Piedra Ventana". Give it a go!
Nearly Christmas and we were fortunate to be able to walk around in t-shirts and shorts
I've seen Lautaro from far away to the south. A magnificent massif rising out of the Patagonian Icecap. Remote. Hats off to these two who managed to ski down the 2200m north face.
https://explorersweb.com/first-ski-descent-of-the-north-face-of-chiles-lautaro-volcano/
My two daughters and I sat on the diminutive summit of Latrigg last week, in the English Lake District with the town of Keswick and Derwentwater lake below.
We had just left my Dad, who died a few years back, with an eternal view over a place he dearly loved. What a final resting vista!
As a young inner city kid, in 1971 I was introduced to the hills. We spent some days camping & climbing the mountains surrounding the Newlands Valley in England's Lake District. Last week I returned to my spiritual hiking birthplace.
The forecast was dreadful but the gods were smiling. Cloud inversion & some wonderful light conditions. Quite emotional. Brought back many memories from my past.
