The flight from Los Angeles to Liberia, Costa Rica takes approximately eight hours with a layover in Miami, Florida. If a direct flight or layover in Texas is available, it would have cut the flight down to 5 to 6 hours. We arrived at Liberia from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) at 7PM, the weather was warm and dry, it reminded us of a warmer version of Southern California.
The Quick and Dirty:
Location – San Gorgonio Wilderness
Distance – 14 miles round trip
Terrain Type – Dirt and Sand, Switch backs, narrow trail.
Difficulty – Intermediate to Strenuous
Best Time – Spring through Fall
Special Conditions – Permit required, apply in advance.
San Bernardino Peak sits 10,470 feet above Redlands, California. While not the tallest peak in Southern California, it is one of the best destinations for weekend backpacking due to the close proximity to the greater Los Angeles area.
The Quick and Dirty:
Location – Eastern Sierra Nevada, California
Distance – 10.7 miles one way to summit, 21.4 miles round trip (RT)
Terrain Type – Rocky, Sandy, Gravel, Switch Backs
Difficulty – Strenuous
Best Time – July-August after the snow melts
Special Conditions – Special permit required for backpacking and day hiking to Whitney summit.
Summit of Mount Whitney
We both have full time Monday through Friday (sometimes Saturday and Sunday) jobs and it is difficult to break away to do long outdoor adventures. Over the course of three weeks, we climbed three separate peaks with a few of our friends and family, planning around our work schedules.
We compiled a list of time saving tips we keep in mind when planning multi-day backpacking trips and the best way to take advantage of your weekends if you are busy with your careers like we are.
The Wave is an area located on the Arizona, Utah border. It is an geological marvel, red sand stones carved into wave-like striations covers 6-miles of Bureau of Land Mangement (BLM) Land. This is a geological formation that is unique only to this region, there is nothing else like it anywhere else in the world. I think I first saw a photo of the Wave as a Windows 98 (95?) screen saver and thought it was the most memorizing landscape I’ve ever seen. We’ve been wanting to go for quite sometime and have applied for a day use permit once earlier this year but was unsuccessful. Our friends and I decided to try again last week and we were granted 6 day use permit passes for hiking the Wave on Sunday, October 27 this year!
Photo of The Wave courtesy of Wikipedia
Hike Now, Work Later 