Hollywood Hike
Hi Everyone! I hope those of you who came enjoyed pre-frosh weekend! I enjoyed meeting my pre-frosh and showing her around campus!
Right after the pre-frosh left, I went to a hike with the Caltech Y. It was a sunset hike to the Hollywood sign. There were 14 of us, and we drove to the base of the trails in Hollywood and then spent about 2.5 hours hiking.
The group was super-diverse. We had people from France, England, Italy, and a bunch of other places. All techers, of course :). There was a good mix of UGs, grad students and post-docs too, and we had some really interesting conversations about international and US politics, the fact that 5% of Americans own half of our wealth, and athletics in different countries.
We hiked to the top of the Holllywood sign, and that was a really flattrail with little elevationgain.[This was a very easy hike.]A large part of the”trail” was paved for access to the antennas over the sign.
Nicole, our group leader, had looked up trails in the area before we came. Apparently, there was another 0.4 mile trail to the adjacent peak, and we wanted to get there before sunset. After a little going-around-a-fence (we didn’t actually go anywhere bad, we just had to walk around the fence!), we hit a much more rugged and overgrown trail.
There were lots of beautiful wildflowers, so I just put a bunch of pictures below here:
We got to the top of the second peak just in time for sunset!
The hike down went well. We never actually hiked in the dark, because there was still some sun shining over the mountains and because of the very bright full moon. I talked with a grad student about chemistry, and the trip down went by really fast! It was a super-fun hike! I was even sore the day after - I really need to start doing more exercise again! (I got injured during swimming this winter.) I hope you enjoyed reading about the hike :)
The trip down
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