Podcasts about tenaya lake

This week, we journey into the heart of two of America's most magnificent national parks to unravel mysteries that have confounded investigators for decades. Two young men, four years apart, both vanished without a trace while hiking alone on well-established trails. Their disappearances share disturbing similarities that suggest these weren't simply cases of lost hikers, but perhaps something far more inexplicable.The Story of Timothy Barnes takes us to the crystalline waters of Tenaya Lake in Yosemite National Park. On July 5, 1988, 25-year-old Timothy "Tim" Barnes set out on what should have been a routine day hike. Standing 6'3" with shoulder-length dark brown hair, Tim was an experienced outdoorsman who had hiked Yosemite's trails many times before.At 9:00 AM, he was spotted by a family from Michigan, walking north from the Murphy Creek Trailhead toward Poly Domes. Tim exchanged pleasant greetings with them, appearing relaxed and confident in his white t-shirt with a distinctive red anti-fascism symbol, gray sweatpants, and yellow daypack. This would be the last confirmed sighting of Timothy Barnes. When Tim failed to return, one of the most comprehensive search operations in Yosemite's history was launched. For weeks, professional search and rescue teams with trained dogs scoured the landscape. Helicopters swept the terrain from above while technical climbing teams explored every crevice of the granite domes.Yet they found nothing. No backpack, no clothing, no signs of struggle or injury. Tim had seemingly evaporated into the wilderness.As we explore in this episode, the Barnes case is riddled with bizarre elements that defy conventional explanation:Search dogs exhibited unusual behavior, becoming agitated and confused in certain areasMultiple hikers reported compass malfunctions and static electricity phenomena on the day Tim disappearedTwo search teams heard what sounded like distant calls for help coming from areas that had already been thoroughly searchedHikers described strange, localized fog banks that formed and dissipated rapidly against prevailing windsThree months after his disappearance, a fragment of yellow fabric resembling Tim's backpack was discovered in an area that had been meticulously searched multiple timesPerhaps most chilling were the revelations from Tim's mother that in the weeks before his hike, Tim had experienced unusually vivid dreams about being lost in a landscape where "the geography kept shifting" and had developed a sudden, intense interest in the geological formations of Poly Domes.The David Morrison mystery then takes us to the spectacular alpine scenery of Glacier National Park, Montana. On October 12, 1992, 26-year-old David Morrison parked his rental car at Logan Pass Visitor Center and began hiking the famous Highline Trail. Like Timothy Barnes, Morrison was physically fit, experienced in wilderness navigation, and hiking alone. He had checked in with rangers that morning and planned to return before sunset. He, too, would never be seen again.The parallels between the Morrison and Barnes cases are uncanny:Both men were in their mid-twenties with athletic buildsBoth disappeared in the morning hours from well-marked trailsBoth had clearly intended to return the same dayBoth cases featured a complete absence of physical evidence despite extensive searchesBoth searches encountered unexplained phenomena with search dogsBoth disappearances coincided with reports of unusual, localized weather anomaliesThe most perplexing development came thirteen months after Morrison's disappearance, when a distinctive pendant he had been wearing was discovered by a hiker on a trail more than twelve miles from his last known location—an area that had been thoroughly searched during the initial investigation.The Unsettling PatternIn this episode, I delve into how these cases connect to a larger pattern of similar disappearances across North America's wilderness areas. We examine:The profile of those who vanish—predominantly young, physically fit menThe geographical clustering of these incidents in certain national parks and wilderness areasThe consistent lack of physical evidence despite modern search techniquesThe repeated reports of unusual weather phenomena, equipment malfunctions, and strange behavior of search animalsWhile this episode explores the strange circumstances surrounding these disappearances, it also serves as a reminder of the very real dangers of solo hiking. We discuss:The importance of filing detailed hiking plans with park rangers or trusted contactsWhy carrying emergency communication devices can be lifesavingHow to prepare for unexpected weather changes in alpine environmentsWhy even experienced hikers should approach unfamiliar trails with cautionGet Our FREE NewsletterGet Brian's Books Leave Us A VoicemailVisit Our WebsiteSupport Our SponsorsVisit Untold Radio AM

I asked the HEF Tribe to send in their questions. Paulo then collected them without letting me see prior to this episode. Then we sat down by Tenaya Lake in Yosemite while the sunset. I answered them as honest and best I could! I was allowed one pass and had to answer within 10 seconds! This was fun! Stay tuned for me doing the same thing to Paulo. Send in your questions to hannah@hannahedenfitness.com or watch out on my IG stories!!

Cheryl E. Leonard is a San Francisco-based composer, performer, field recordist, and instrument builder whose works investigate sounds, structures, and objects from the natural world. Her projects cultivate stones, wood, water, ice, sand, shells, feathers, and bones as musical instruments, and often feature one-of-a-kind sculptural instruments and field recordings from remote locales.We talk about her time at Palmer Station in Antarctica, her instruments built from natural objects, Tenaya Lake, about her compositional process, and about several specific works.Pieces featured, in order heard:Adélie Colony Young ChicksFrozen OverAblation Zone (unreleased)In The Gloaminghttp://allwaysnorth.com/https://cherylleonard.bandcamp.com/https://soundcloud.com/ieallwaysnorth'Music from the Ice' Blog

Doug talks about his many backcountry adventures, product design, the outdoor industry, and tells a couple of stories too.   Facebook Twitter Instagram   The Outdoor Biz Podcast   Please give us a rating and review HERE   Show Notes   This episode with a very good friend of mine. We've been buddies for over 30 years. He's been a backcountry mountain guide, rock climbing guide, ski guide, been in the industry for many, many years doing all kinds of cool things. He's a great author. Welcome to the show, Doug Robinson.   How were you introduced to the backcountry and the outdoors?   I am an unbelievably lucky kid. At five years old, my parents moved me from Washington, DC where I was born to California and we went almost immediately that summer to the backcountry and Tenaya Lake in Yosemite National Park and camped out. Back then you drove across Tenaya Creek and pulled your car up next to the Lake and we could camp right on the Lakeshore. And we did. And so at five years old, I'm building rafts and paddling out to the islands on the Lake, I could not believe the Sierra. The road was one and a half lanes, 15 miles an hour. It was a dirt road except where it went over granted slabs. So it was like, two hours from Crane Flat to Tenaya Lake, which is 40 minutes now. There were a few other people who camped by the Lake and you could tell they came back every year. We all felt like this was the luckiest thing that could possibly ever happen to us. And as time went on, we started hiking and then backpacking and you know, little by little getting into the Sierra backcountry. When I was 13, I got rescued off of Pywiack dome, which was across the Lake from our campsite. I had a pair of lug sole boots and I knew that made me a mountain climber. So I went up on the side of this dome and 400 feet up I realized that maybe I wasn't as secure. I couldn't go ahead and I couldn't back down. Some tourists stopped on the road and said, are you okay? I shouted NO, but here's where you find the Rangers and tell them to come and get me. And they did. They repelled down from the top of the dome and tied me on. So that was the first time I was ever on a rope in the backcountry.   Your folks ended up buying one of those forest service lease backcountry properties by Rock Creek up here in the Sierra   Another incredibly lucky thing. I ended up in Rock Creek because of Norman Clyde, who I had the good fortune to meet in the late sixties. Everybody knows Norman as quite a climber, but, he was also a backcountry skier. So I asked him okay, where are the good spots, you know, where should I go? And he goes, Oh, Rock Creek. That's the best place on the East side of the Sierra for backcountry skiing. So I moved in the next winter. Then the summer after that I found this one-line ad in the Inyo Register for a cabin for sale. And I mean, it sent me back $4,500. But I moved in and ended up living there many winters, cross country and backcountry skiing were just in its bloom in the seventies. There was a ski touring lodge two miles away and I could teach there and, and live up the Canyon and ski up under Bear Creek Spire every day. It was paradise.   Did you stay up there in the summers or did you go back to work or back to school?   Well in the summers I'd go into the Palisades. Cause in the mid-sixties I lucked into a job guiding there at the Palisade School of Mountaineering. Which was the first climbing school in California. You'll get tired of me saying this, but I'm one of the luckiest people alive. Lucked into that job. And then I lucked into having a place to live in Rock Creek in the winter and, it goes on and on.   So before we get too far into this, let's let everybody know you are somewhere in Wyoming, is that right?   I am somewhere in Wyoming and we won't pin it down exactly because I am caretaking a backcountry guest ranch in Wyoming. The closest clue I'll give you is that when I ski up to the Ridge several hours away, I can see the Grand Teton off to the Northwest. It's amazing. We, I say we, my partner Eva Eilenberg is with me here and we lucked into this caretaking opportunity. We've been here over a month and we've got another month to go. I just came in from, we were doing some work with the batteries that run off the DC hydro and, and kind of keep place electrified off the grid. We're way off the grid. I'm talking to you by satellite phone.   Let's circle back around to the Palisade School of Mountaineering How did you start there? You saw an ad in the paper or how did you get involved with those guys?   So I'm 20 years old. I'm in Yosemite. I pack up my backpack and I'm going to go up to the High Sierra because that's where I started, right? Tenaya like I told you. And I just love going in the backcountry, rambling around, backpacking, scrambling up peaks. So I was getting a little more advanced. I mean technical climbing because I'd been in Yosemite after all. That was the cutting edge place in the world for rock climbing in the sixties. And, you know, we were kind of hot shit and we knew it. So I walk up into the Palisades, I'd never been there. My buddy John Fisher and I had been climbing together since we were 13. He ended up owning the school later on. So I walk in there and I walk all the way up to the edge of the glacier. There's a little obvious backcountry campsite up there. And I dropped my pack and look around and there's nobody there. Now I had just come from camp 4, I mean, you could pick up a climbing partner in 30 seconds down there and I just kind of assumed there would be a scene up there too. So I soloed a couple of easy backcountry peaks and a few days later this pile of lumber appeared on the slabs below the camp and was coming up upwards me. It turned out to be a guy named Don Jensen. And he was getting ready to build a little hut up on the edge of the glacier, or the Palisade School of Mountaineering. Don turned out to be the chief guide, so we made a deal. He went climbing with me. I helped him build his hut. The first day we went climbing, we went out and across the glacier up Starlight Peak down into the notch, up North Pal down the U Notch. And we were back at camp at 10 in the morning. And he offered me a job guiding. I go, wow, I'm 20 years old. I'd never thought about being a mountain guide, but, um, okay, if Don thinks I can do it. So I have been guiding ever since. That was just another one of those really lucky things. And you're right, I was ready for it cause I'd been climbing for years. Right. Dirt bagging before that was a thing. That was 1965.   Then after Palisade School of Mountaineering, you got involved with the clean climbing movement and wrote the manifesto, tell us about that.   Here's how it started. Royal Robbins kicked it off. He went climbing in England. He saw, clean climbing there with pebbles stuffed into cracks and then machine nuts that were already on a runner. And he got all excited and came back and put up Nutcracker in Yosemite, which was the most popular route in the Valley, and is still a classic. He did it as a demonstration, Royal and Liz, his wife. Then he wrote about it in summit magazine because we were reading summit every month. None of the backcountry focused magazines that are out now existed then. It was a basically a hiker magazine, but there was occasional climbing stuff in it. So it was the only game in town. I got turned on by this and went straight down to the hardware store and bought brass machine nuts in a whole range of sizes and filed the threads out of them so they wouldn't cut the runners and strung them on runners. This was 1965 or 66. So I was guiding in the Palisades then. So I had my backup Pitons and a hammer, but I took the nuts long too. Well, it turns out that the backcountry Alpine granite is just perfect for holding nuts. You can almost throw them in the crack. So some of the very earliest all clean climbs were done there and all the other guides got turned onto it too. We're all in this together and realized that we could do things clean. We didn't need the hammer or the pins and it was lighter so we left them in camp. Then we started going to Yosemite in the spring and the fall and starting to try to climb in the backcountry clean also. So I did the East buttress of Middle Cathedral rock all clean. That was the first grade four that was done in that committed style. And then the next year did the Steck, Salathe on Sentinel without carrying hammers. And you know, we're just very gradually progressing up. Meanwhile, I had met Chouinard, we had gone ice climbing together in the Palisades, did some first backcountry ice accents of routes like the V notch. And I started going and hanging out in Ventura at the tin shed and being a laborer. I started out there, my first job was being an assistant bong bender is what they called it, but people don't even know what a bong is anymore. And we're talking about clean climbing, we're having fun doing it. Um, and um, and Chouinard and Frost got interested in it and you know just innovate equipment before breakfast. So pretty soon they're making the aluminum nuts that are really good and I'm contributing to the design. So in the end, and this is a hats off to Chouinard too, cause he'd started making Pitons in 1958 in that chicken coop in his parents' backyard in Burbank, he's a teenager and selling out of the trunk of his car. And that business was built on pitons and hammers and all the unclean stuff to go climbing. So these piton makers, they're making a living, they're being able to hire us. Thank you very much. But we're understanding that these pitons are so good at being removable, which we thought was clean and they're chipping away at the rock and destroying the cracks and then they're getting ugly looking. And so this clean climbing is the solution to that. And they bet the farm on clean climbing and it ended up eliminating the piton business. Pretty scary though because they're making all their money off pitons and they're doing all right. But we think this is the right thing to do. So anyway, I ended up writing a piece for the catalog. It was the first real catalog of the company. It was called the Great Pacific Ironworks at the time. So in the 72 catalog is my manifesto called the whole natural art of protection and it really changed things.   Val Franco is doing some pretty amazing archival work that is keeping all those times alive, talk about that.   You walk into that archive and this is only a couple years old but it's phenomenal. I mean there's examples of every piton on that Chouinard Equipment ever made and she has the newer equipment that is now called Black Diamond Equipment, but it's just this like the lineage is right straight through. And all of the clean hardware and some fascinating prototypes that I remember making with a file and a bench vise down there. And they are doing taping sessions too. I got to sit in on some sessions with Tom Frost before he died where he was talking about his part in all that. He'd been an aircraft designer, aeronautical engineer, and quit all that. He's a Stanford trained engineer, smart guy. The mechanical drawings that he made for the nuts that we were designing are phenomenal. They're just beautiful. And those are in the archive too. And so are the interviews with Tom where he talks about his role. Um, it's very cool. Val Franco is the head of that and she was a sewer at ironworks when I was there. We knew each other when we were in our twenties and she's still there and putting this thing together and she's so excited.   What was your first backcountry ski experience?   I started downhill skiing when I was seven years old at Goldridge and Sugar Bowl. And I had these Hickory skis, little segmented metal edges screwed onto them. But the bindings were interesting cause they had a cable on the heel and there were two hold-downs on the sides. And I hope you can visualize this cause, you snap the cable underneath one to hold your heel down onto the ski, right? That's the rear one. The forward one snapped from the rear. It's a walking mode and these are my downhill skis. But this is 1952 and skiing hasn't advanced that far, so it's still like walking on skis is important. It's a backcountry sport that happens to have some ski lifts and hasn't evolved into plastic boots and all that. Um, so in a sense having that gear was my heritage and I realized that you could walk on it and that meant that I could go uphill on my skis. Jeez, no big deal. They were built for it. So in a sense, it started right there and by the early sixties, I was going into the backcountry skiing Pyramid Peak. I got to move to Bishop in 1969 fresh out of college. I'm already a guide and lucky again, I had a client for the entire winter. We rented a cabin up Bishop Creek and I taught him how to backcountry ski and winter climbing in the Palisades. We ended up the next spring, spring of 1970, skiing the John Muir Trail, which we thought was a first. But it turns out that we were scooped in 1928-29 by Orland Bartholomew. And that's another whole story. Well, nothing like skiing the whole length of the range to give you some ideas of places to go and things to just do. in 1975, David Beck and some friends pioneered the Sierra High Route in the backcountry, which goes from roughly Independence across to Sequoia National Park for six days. Or I like to take eight or nine days to do it cause, once you're out there, well why rush back to the city? I was guiding that every spring or maybe even twice every spring. And by the mid-eighties, there was a time when I skied across the range, guiding it for a week and then rested a day or two. And I had another backcountry ski tour to guide starting on the Eastside. So I skied back in 22 hours. This is like a six or eight-day trip but you know, I'm really fit and by then and I have set my own track across the top of these high basins. But what a day, you know, to be out there all by myself.   I'm sure all this time in the backcountry gave you plenty of time to think about gear.   The Ultima Thule Pack evolved out of a pack that Don Jensen had designed. He was brilliant. He gave us the plans for them and for our Muir Trail backcountry ski trip we built packs that weighed 17 ounces and carried 70 pounds. I built those packs and a tent that Don Jensen designed for that trip. And then while I was working in Ventura I knew that I could improve on the Jensen pack. So Tom Frost and I ended up crawling around on pattern paper on the floor and laughing to ourselves. It was so much fun to work with him as a designer and we came up with a truly better version of that pack that carried better. And so that was wonderful and decades later I designed another carrying system for a pack for Montbell when you and I were working there. That was the Wishbone system. I mentioned that the Ultima Thule dragged on your shoulders just like the Jensen backcountry pack did. We hadn't figured that out. And so it was figuring that out over the years with essentially some internal stays in the pack that rose above the shoulder straps, like lift straps, which everybody's got now. But there was a time when that was a big deal. It was a new way and the new hybrid materials that I came up with without going way into it.   When did you write your first book?   Writing for magazines like Outside, which I helped start, another whole story. I wrote some cover stories and was having such a good time. That was the first really professional magazine that I'd ever been around. I ended up moving to San Francisco to hang out with them and I was making enough of a pest to myself that they gave me a desk and a phone and ended up staying the winter. Then I wrote cover stories and I was writing for backpacker and already mentioned Powder. So that was half of my career and guiding was the other half. By the nineties, I had all these magazine articles that I had written that I liked and other people liked so I pulled them together into a book. So my first book was really just an anthology of my own writing. Things I liked the best going back to the sixties. And it was a big success actually. It was recently named by climbing magazine as one of the 33 must-reads climbing literature of all time.   You were thinking about the listeners of the podcast, what do you want to say to them?   I was thinking about the people who might be listening to this podcast. And I'm imagining that some of them are shop people working on the floor, some are designers, some are marketers, you know, we're all in the same industry, this outdoor industry, which is so great. It's given us such great friendships and good times. I was thinking about the customer that walks into that shop and you're the guy on the floor saying “hi what can I do for you”? And that what you can do for them is not just talk about the qualities of the packs that you're selling, that they want to buy, but also the experience. You've been out in the backcountry more than they have. You have the experience they admire that and they would love to soak it up and hear some of your stories. And if you're a customer just walking into your local mountain shop, yeah you wanna walk back out with a parka and a pack and a sleeping bag, but you also want to rub shoulders with the experience itself. And so don't you guys out there sell yourself short on, on that. You got a lot to give people besides the tech specs.   Do you have any other suggestions or advice for someone wanting to get into the outdoor business or grow their career if they are already in the biz?   Follow your bliss. I mean, that's how basically all of us got in here. And I have one other sort of oddball piece of advice too. Don't think that you can get that degree from Oregon and be a product designer without the outdoor experience with it, cause you gotta be out there in the rain with the water somehow finding its way to drip in around the hood of your parka, you know, and you have to have that experience before you can know how to design around it, how to fix it.   If you could have a huge banner at the entrance to the OR show these days, what would it say?   My banner would say “take care of the planet because if you don't, nothing in this show is going to mean anything.” Y ou can follow up with Doug at his website Moving Over Stone

John Muir described the Sierra Nevadas as "clean, pure, and full of divine lessons". You'll fall in love with the majestic beauty of this park. In this episode of the RV Homeschool Podcast, we discuss traveling to Yosemite National Park with your family in an RV.In this podcast, we discuss: Brief history on the park and why you want to visitTravel logistics: how to get here, routes into Yosemite Valley**WARNING - Lots of Tunnels - don't get stuck with your RVHighlights of the Park:Hetch HetchyMariposa GroveTioga Road (Olmsted point, Tenaya Lake, Tuolumne Meadows)Yosemite Valley (Bridalveil Falls, El Capitan, Half Dome, Yosemite Village)Camping Options (NPS sites, surrounding private RV parks) Helpful Links: Tunnel Heights into Yosemite Valley found hereNPS RV Camping limitations found here.When to Book your NPS camping reservation at this link.Our website: RV Homeschool - more info/podcast, etc.Find us on Instagram @RVHomeschool or Facebook @RVHomeschool

Yosemite Podcast Show Notes   Today we’re going to talk about photographing Yosemite, the national park that Ansel Adams made famous and one of my all-time favorite parks. I still remember getting goosebumps the first time I came down the hill on Big Oak Flat Road and the valley opened up before me.  I’ve been back many times since, but still remember that first time.  Most people only visit the valley floor which is only a very small part of the entire park, but it’s where the icons are and not to be missed.  My favorite spots are Tunnel View, Valley View and Glacier Point.  Pretty obvious ones I guess, but we’ll also talk about some of the lesser known spots too. The park itself is about a 4-hour drive east of San Francisco and southeast of Sacramento.  I always recommend people fly into Sacramento because of all the traffic in and around San Francisco not to mention the hassle of flying into San Francisco International. If you’re driving, you have more options depending on where you’re coming from.  I live in NW Nevada, so I prefer coming down Hwy 395 on the east side of the Sierra’s and going over Tioga Pass when it’s open which is usually sometime in May.  But if you’re in California or the Pacific Northwest, you will want to use either the Big Oak Flat entrance in the NW part of the park on Highway 120 or the South Entrance on Highway 41. The best times of year to be there are spring and winter in my opinion.  Spring for the waterfalls and wildflowers; winter for snow and clearing storms. Summer is less than ideal with lots of tourists and in most years the waterfalls are a trickle or not running at all.  There is some fall color in Yosemite usually in late October and early November, but the trees do not always change color at the same time. It’s a time for intimate landscapes along the Merced River mostly. So, a typical day in the park usually starts before sunrise and ends after sunset.  The best color is frequently a half hour before sunrise and up to a half hour after sunset.  For sunrise, you have to be there early not only for the pre-sunrise color, but also to get the best spot or any spot at all.  You definitely want to be there before the tour buses arrive. Likewise, at sunset you need to be there 45-60 minutes before official sunset to stake out your spot at Valley View, Tunnel View and Glacier Point.  Sunset light hits Valley View first and then Tunnel View with Glacier Point last because of the differing altitudes.  You can do Valley View and Tunnel View in one day if you don’t dilly dally too long at Valley View, but Glacier Point is at least an hour from the Valley Floor and a separate trip. The best time of day to photograph the various waterfalls like Yosemite Falls, Bridal Veil Fall and Vernal Fall is mid-morning for Yosemite Falls, mid- late afternoon for Bridal Veil Fall and mid-day for Vernal and Nevada Falls.  This is because Yosemite Valley sits in a deep canyon several thousand feet below the rim, so light does not strike the north rim until mid-morning and the south rim until mid-late afternoon otherwise these falls are in deep shadow.  The same is true of Vernal Fall and Nevada Fall because they’re in the Merced River canyon. I usually recommend people plan to spend at least five days photographing the park to allow for a couple of sunrises and sunsets at Tunnel View and Valley View and 1-2 sunsets at Glacier Point.  Plus time to drive to the Mariposa Giant Sequoia’s, Tenaya Lake and Olmsted Point. Off the beaten path spots for sunset are Olmsted Point and Tenaya Lake.  There are great views all around at Olmsted Point, but my favorite is the one of Half Dome at sunset especially if there are some nice clouds to reflect the sunset light.  You can shoot from the parking lot here or climb the rock on the west side or north side for a different perspective.  Don’t forget to look behind you or to the east for sunset lit clouds or mountains. At the Tenaya Lake parking lot, you have to hike a hundred yards or less to the east to reach the lake front.  There is a flat rock extending out into the lake which makes a good leading line for the lake and the distant mountains as well as spot to put your tripod. Night photography at Olmsted Point can be productive.  You have good views to the south and west and there are Jeffrey pines for foreground material.  The best time for this depends on the phase of the moon and the time of moonrise.  Ideally, you want either a new moon or a quarter moon at most and shortly after moonrise time wise.  If the moon is too full or in the wrong part of the sky the stars are nearly invisible. One other popular option is a moonbow over Yosemite falls which works best under a full moon in April and May.  Fortunately, the best times are pre-determined every year by Donald Olson at Texas State University at www.donolson.wp.txstate.edu  A new moon or quarter moon also allow for night shots of the icons from locations like Valley View or Tunnel View. My favorite lenses in Yosemite are the 24-70 and 70-200.  The 24-70 for the grand landscape view.  But sometimes it’s more interesting to isolate parts of the scene for a different perspective.  My go to camera body for landscapes is the D4.  Not a traditional landscape body, but if I want more megapixels I can shoot panoramas. I always like to recommend Michael Frye’s book “The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite” available through my Amazon A-store and his Yosemite app available at https://www.michaelfrye.com   Another useful app is The Photographer’s Ephemeris for figuring out sunrise, sunset and moonrise.  Available for iOS, Android and pc’s. Another useful app for national parks are the National Parks by Chimani available for Android and iOS both.  Apps are free and available for all 59 National Parks. Also helpful is www.npmaps.com where you can download free NPS maps for each park. If you like to hike, http://yellowstonehikes.com is a great resource. Here are a few photos from Yosemite from myself and Bill Naiman:  

Welcome to the first episode of the Tioga Wellness Podcast – I’m calling it the TWP, just for fun! I’m so excited to start this adventure and begin a whole new way for me to share the passion I have for health, fitness, and overall wellness. I bet you want to know why I’m doing this – or maybe you don’t! That’s OK. Anyway, here’s the deal:  I want to help people find their way – because that helps me find my way. So, in a sense, this podcast is a way to hold myself accountable in my own journey to wellness and my new mission in my life. Let’s do this together! About Me: My name is Tom Barbieri. I’m a fitness trainer and healthy lifestyle advocate, a wellness coach and consultant. I take an individual approach to everything I do for clients. I apply that individualized-focus to all things fitness- and wellness related. I call in my “It depends…” model. I think you’ll get to understand this about me as you tune in to more shows. I love human anatomy, physiology, and functional biochemistry. In other words, I'm fascinated with how the body works and adapts to exercise, stress, and nutrition in the "real world". That's why I do this! I studied biology in college, with an emphasis on human anatomy, physiology, and athletic training. I spent many hours in the anatomy lab with my arms elbows-deep in cadavers learning muscles, bones, and the other organ systems of the body. I moved this learning to more applicable environments – the football field and in other team sports in college as an assistant athletic trainer. This is where I began to really understand how the specifics of individual human movement and activity are so important when it comes to training, nutrition, injuries, and general stress recovery. While it's important that I've had the lecture and classroom experience, I also have vast experience working 'in the field' with athletes at all levels. This hands-on experience is rooted in working closely with variety of experts: general physicians, chiropractors, metabolic specialists, podiatrists, cardiologists, and professional athletes and sports teams. These valuable mentorships allowed me to observe, learn, and understand how to apply key fitness training, endurance coaching, and wellness systems that have helped individuals achieve their goals. This experience in applied, in-the-field exercise science is the foundation of my unique ability to effectively match sport- and fitness-specific modalities to the goals and objectives of athletes of all abilities. Yes, everyone is an athlete, to some degree - even YOU! I have over 25 years of experience as an athlete in endurance sports. About fifteen years ago, I’ve began to be approached by athletes with questions around training and staying in shape. I happily and excitedly gave some advice - And it worked! I saw runners and triathletes that sought my advice begin to perform really well – even qualify for such events as the IM World Championships, Boston Marathon, be invited to be a part of pro cycling teams, and even participate in Olympic trials. This is where I began to see myself as a legit coach. Ever since, I've built many fitness and endurance training plans for at all levels, in all individual conditions and circumstances. I always like to keep it simple and use a combination of my own experience, the specific experiences of each athlete, and basic biofeedback markers as the attributes to design and adjust training based on tracked progress of individual adaptations to physical stress.   I do not have the deep ‘textbook’ and ‘lab-test ‘science background many folks have that do what I do. However, I do not really think that having that background provides true value to an athlete. Yeah, it’s nice to know this information and it sounds cool to quote or talk about a specific study. But I think that the most important knowledge to have is to know how to help athletes realize their own potential, train in a way that matches that potential, assess their results, and change their training as a result of individual performance. This is where the practical experience I have – both as an athlete, a trainer/coach, and as a dad/husband/employee is so valuable. Some more personal background:OK, so really what do we have in common? Lot's! I'm a husband, and a Dad to two (very active) boys. I live in Reston, Virginia in suburban Washington, DC. I run a small business and have a ‘day-job’, I have a mortgage, bills, help with school carpool, share in managing kids activities, love to have fun and at the same time have all the concerns you may have as we get older – when it comes to health and fitness. To add some balance to my life, I continue to be avid age-group athlete. Not a 'weekend warrior', but I'm not what I would consider fast or 'elite'. I'm an experienced runner, swimmer, and cyclist having participated in over 100 triathlons, 25 marathons, an ultra-marathon and many other endurance events over the past 25 years. I love these sports! I grew up playing team sports, but moved away from them after high school. I found that participating in these individual endurance sports provided a safe place for physical expression based solely on my terms – I could decide the “when, where, and how” of my runs, rides, or swims free of any expectations of others.  Running, specifically has never let me down.  I’ve been so lucky to run in some of the most spectacular locations in the US. I look forward to many more years of the well-beaten path of running! My personal experience in fitness and health has not been without its challenges. After successful completion of Ironman Lake Placid in 2011 - my 100th triathlon - fitness and overall wellness was no longer a priority. Boy, was that a mistake! Upon going through some serious soul-searching, I identified some key changes I needed to make to my active life and nutritional habits. This changed my life and may have even saved my life! The results have been incredible: Weight drop of over 50 pounds, vastly improved bio-markers, improved muscular endurance, more efficient training protocols, and faster race times. Oh, and I just feel better! It's your turn. Want to know more about me? Visit my personal blog site at www.heytombarbieri.com.   What does Tioga Wellness mean? Tioga Wellness is the name of my wellness consulting company. I hope you know what wellness is – but I’ll expand and briefly share my understanding of wellness. To me, wellness is the measurement (…in any way) of the balance between the mind, body, and spirit. Simple, right? But this is so hard for some of us to understand and obtain. It is for me! We’ll get into this more as more episodes come out. The word Tioga is from the Iroquois culture and means 'where it forks' and 'moves fast' when referring to a river or stream. The name has special meaning to me. Tioga Pass is the name of the eastern entrance to Yosemite National Park in California and is one of the highest passes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I've spent many summers of my youth in Yosemite and developed a particular attachment to Tioga Pass and the surrounding high-country. Whether it was the multi-day hiking adventures, rock climbing, trekking across glaciers or just swimming and relaxing in nearby Tenaya Lake, this place has special meaning when it comes to natural beauty and awe-inspiring views. My time spent in this part of the World always included some sort of activity that rewarded me with a sense of accomplishment. This is what I hope to bring to and share with my podcast listeners, blog readers, and the clients of Tioga Wellness - an appreciation and passion for fitness, endurance sport training, and general wellness for a better quality of life. In this business, I come across many folks that have a time in their life where fitness and wellness become a priority and everyone has different goals. This means no two fitness, training, or wellness action plans can be the same. I work with you, individually to understand your goals and needs, experiences, and your current fitness level. Then I recommend an individual action plan to go after those goals and offer to monitor performance at the right pace so we can be sure you stay on track to success. When I meet with clients or potential clients, I ask them to 'lay it all on the table' so to speak. I like to go through everything like current fitness level, nutrition, health history, mindset, bio-mechanics, etc. This may sound like some work, but its well worth it! Why a Podcast: Why a podcast? I’ll get into that more in a minute. But I wanted to share a little about the journey I took to get to this point. As I shared earlier, post-Ironman (…in summer 2011), after taking time off of training consistently, I began to see the signs (…emotional and physical) of poor wellness and health. It was time - I had to put myself through some pretty extensive changes around my nutritional habits and fitness regimes. My goal then was to lose weight, improve body composition, and become more effective, and focused in my endurance training. I achieved my goals, and then some!  For details on this transformation, your can visit my blog www.heytombarbieri.com. I have a three part blog series that chronicles this experience – I’ll link to it in the show notes. Going through this journey was very enlightening as I not only changed my body, but I also came to understand that changing my day-to-day habits led to a change in lifestyle. This change really came to light for me in my innate behaviors like cravings for and the increased satisfaction from whole, real foods – like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, etc. This is what needs to happen in order to sustain a healthy lifestyle – including a healthy weight, bio-markers, and just plain ol’ feeling good! As I was still learning to be comfortable with this new way of living for me, I began to wonder how other people arrived at the same destination I had. Specifically, I was interested in nutrition and why folks chose a certain way to eat that was labeled in a way that made it different from a mainstream way of eating. In this searching I went to the all mighty internet. I found blogs and on-line communities that were like little clubs aggregated of people with similar habits and nutritional lifestyles. I also found podcasts. From podcasts, I came back to social media. Full circle! Through podcasts, and as related to social media, this is where I discovered how powerful social media channels can be – both in a bad way and a good way. As it relates to my experience around health, nutrition, and fitness, via social media I observed the behaviors of many people in different stages on the journey to their ideal wellness. This was fascinating to me! I loved reading stories of success, learning best practices, and helping to cheer people along their journey. But one thing was very apparent… To see people, including myself, attach themselves to ideologies and dogmas was like watching a train wreck. Again, I include my self in this too! I wanted inclusion, and I found it.  It felt so good to ‘interact’ with others who had the same goals. However, it became more and more apparent to me that these groups were not just about inclusion, but about esteem – the esteem of those individuals who were part of the group and frequent contributors.  I mean, beyond just sharing commonalties, the ‘passion’ around these groups on Facebook was just out of control. And I admit, I fully par-took in this – guilty as charged! I mean I got fully into it – from these groups, and I mean I was all in, even helping some of these podcasters and ‘leaders’ organize and drive their content to their audiences. One of the more common things I heard from all these people I observed and interacted with on-line was that, in most cases, they were the only one in their family making the change to stick to a certain diet. While on the surface this looks fine, and you can say “well, that just means the other people in the family weren’t ready to change…” all you want. This is trouble below the surface. I saw people put together ‘challenges’ and post on Facebook groups that they were going to go without sugar for 30 days, or coffee for 60 days, and other activities that seemed to celebrate the fact that they were going to subject themselves to some sort of deprivation that was supposed to end up in a positive result. Some did! But I have an issue with these types of activities – the issue I have is it provides and end point. While I must applaud the legitimate attempt to get fit and improve health – and some of these certainly are. I caution people so as they do not focus too much on the end date, so they can go back to the way they were. Why not just make small changes to eliminate a habit or adopt a healthy behavior rather than going to the extreme – just my take. I also heard quite frequently, and I must admit here too, I was part of this – that going a long time without food was, in a sense, celebrated. I heard things like “…all I have to eat is one egg and a cup of coffee at 5 am and I’m good until after 1 pm.” Or “I just did a 14-hour hike on only coconut oil and three strips of bacon.” This is not good! My wife even told me that when she heard this, she thought it was encouraging folks to deprive themselves and if they couldn’t last that long with out food, something was wrong with them. Interesting….. I’d agree with her. I know that this was not at the heart of what was being shared, and not everyone would see it this way, but it was being delivered the wrong way. The foundation, it seemed to me, of many of these behaviors I saw, and again acted out by myself too, was the amount of anger towards others rooted in food and health. This really came from podcasters and bloggers standing on the proverbial mountaintop screaming that they were here to tell us the truth. That our intentions to be well and eat right were not working. And that all of the devices, programs, and advice we were being given was a lie. Almost like self-appointed preachers calling followers that were down and out, needing a helping hand. And boy did a lot of people follow, me included! I mean it got to the point that I was told that food companies, doctors, the media, and the government were trying to undermine my nutrition and health. While this may be accurate to some degree, no one was forcing me to eat poorly. I was making my own decisions. This anger does nothing productive for anyone. It only gets attention. Just like shock-jocks get attention on the radio. This anger transferred to me. It also made me very judgmental of others. I’d get to the point to where in my mind, I was criticizing everybody who I saw eat something I thought of as un-healthy. I went on a big no sugar no grain kick for a while. And while I think this approach has its place in a well-thought out strategy to improve health, I went to all lengths to avoid any ‘carb’ or sugar. I was obsessed. It was horrible. I know others go through this same struggle. Now I know this behavior I evolved to understand and identify was entirely my own doing. Just like the decisions I made about food, were not wise – the decisions I made to obsess and become compulsive around ways to eat was not healthy, mentally.  No one forced me to listen to these podcasts, join and interact in these Facebook groups, and spend my time helping these ‘leaders’ get more followers and sell more books. I was in a vulnerable state, like many people are – unfocused, unorganized in my goals, and unknowing what worked well for me. This anger then began, BEGAN to turn into guilt around food. This is where I saw a red flag. I never, ever thought I’d be in an emotional state where I would experience guilt as it related to food. This was a bit scary! After some soul-searching around this for a few months, I’m now finally at a good place - A place of balance. Where I can free enjoy food without the judgment or guilt I was being told I should live with – not is so many ways – but you get the picture.  I also learned that I’m very sensitive in protecting my own views and opinions. When I began to question the thoughts and views of leaders in the podcasting world around food in their ‘owned’ social media groups, I was chided for not supporting the message, not being on-board, or even told my tone was not productive. Interesting? Ok. I’ll give you the ‘tone’ thing, but I will not stand for not supporting a message that was dependent on getting as many followers as possible. Sounds cult-ish to me! I had enough! Back to the question: Why a podcast? I want to give back and provide a voice of reason to so many out there that may be in the same boat as me. If you’re not, that’s fine. I hope to provide you some valuable content you can use on your own journey - a forum to help others find their way, as I did. Podcasting is easy, cheap, and popular. I feel I owe it back to the medium and community that was such a large part of my growth in the past three years. Here’s what I want to do through this podcast: We all experience this confusion – How do I set my goals? What should I eat? When and how much should I exercise? How much stress is too much stress? How do I know if I’m making progress? What do I need to look out for? When and how do I change my plan? Etc. etc. In the information age, we have countless informational resources at our fingertips – the internet, social media, television, print, etc.  This can be daunting and very confusing. Add to this the intentions of some fitness and health ‘experts’ to sell books, push supplements, provide ‘quick-fixes’, and honestly just feed their own ego built on a lifestyle dogma – like I experienced. The TWP will cut through all of this and provide valuable content that will help you make the best decisions about living well and achieving your fitness and health goals – according to your needs and way of life. The TWP will be a valuable part of your tool kit in helping you stay on course as your goals and objectives. Join us and become part of the conversation.  What to expect: Not perfection! I’m not a professional podcaster, but hope to improve over time. This will be loosely produced so please excuse any imperfections in the sound quality and production. As far as content, I want your help. I’d like to know what you want to hear. What type of guests do you want to hear on the show? I have some ideas and some guests and topics lined up. My goal is to keep this a forum for reasonable voices and ideas. I’d like to get to a point where I’m posting two to three shows a week, on a consistent schedule. But who know when that will happen. I’ll try. Please share this show with others. I’ve started a Facebook group for more interaction and we have a home on iTunes that is ready for reviews and feedback. A webpage is in the works. Thank you for listening and will be back soon with another show!   Be well, and go get it!

A walk on the ice covered Tenaya Lake in Yosemite National Park.

A 3D walk onto the frozen ice of Tenaya Lake in Yosemite National Park. The lake freezes every winter, but is usually hard to get to due to the Tioga Road closing because of snow. This year, there has been very little snow and the road has been open. Stay tuned for a longer show that is in the works.