Hiking Las Trampas, part 2

In part 1 of this blog I shared photos from our hike up through the Bollinger Creek Canyon to Bollinger Ridge in the Las Trampas Regional Wilderness near Danville, California. Part 2 is thankfully more than, "Okay, time to go back down." First we enjoy walking along the ridge for a bit— and visiting a sister peak near it.



From where we crested the top of the ridge after completing our initial climb we enjoyed views across the ridge and to the valleys far below. The photo above shows some of the knobs on the ridge. In the center is Vail Peak. The ridge trail winds around over it from the right. The ridge on the left is actually geologically distinct from the Bollinger Ridge. It's part of a different rock formation called the Corduroy Hills. But it's close enough that we can cross over to its summit, Eagle Peak, on a short spur trail form Vail Peak.



From atop Eagle Peak in the Corduroy Hills there's a great view east across the valley to Mount Diablo, one of the most prominent peaks in the SF Bay Area, at 3,849' (1,173 m). In the midground of the photo above are the cities of Danville and San Ramon.

While atop Eagle Peak we didn't see any eagles... though we did see a few hawks and lots of turkey vultures. The vultures were "kettling", circling around in groups following the air currents as they drifted higher and lower looking for food in the area. Food for them, of course, is dead stuff. Vultures are carrion eaters. Sometimes they "kettle" around a hawk or an eagle to mop up the leftovers of whatever it hunts.

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After watching the vultures flying around for a while we spotted a few of them taking a break to sun themselves on the rocks. In the video above I jokingly refer to these turkey vultures as "ugly". That's because their bare and bony heads look kind of ghoulish. Those bare flesh heads and wide open nostrils are actually part of their adaptation to being carrion eaters.

After sunning ourselves on the rocks at Eagle Peak for a bit it was time to start heading back down. It was already after 4pm. (Though we'd only started hiking just after 2.)



For the route down we chose a different path than previous visits here. The photo above shows part of the Chamise Trail. In the past we've looped farther around to the left and come down a fairly steep descent into a stream canyon. Here we enjoyed a less-steep— though by no means easy— descent along the nose of a ridge.



The last bit of descent especially is fairly steep. At least with the route we took this time we didn't have to climb back up out of the stream canyon to go back down the other side of this hill. We made it back to the trailhead a bit after 5pm, for a good 3-hour outing.

That was later than I planned on but still totally fine. For me the point was to do a thing I enjoy, hiking— and to do the full hike— despite being sick. In beauty I walk.

Timeless: What's Rittenhouse?

The streaming TV series Timeless (2016-2018) open with a simple premise. A brilliant inventor has secretly invented a time machine. But then a terrorist steals it and uses it to go back in time to muck with key historical events. A small team of heroes have to jump in the other time machine— an earlier prototype the inventor built— to chase after the terrorist and prevent him from changing history in ways that could upend the modern world. What if Nazi Germany triumphed in WWII? What if the US fell apart after the Civil War?



As with any good story, we readers/watchers soon learn there's more to it than that.

In the first episode the villain of the story has a chance moment alone with the protagonist. Rather than fight her he challenges her, "Ask them about Rittenhouse." She gets home and asks the government agent leading the task force. The agent says she's never heard of Rittenhouse. But the seed of suspicious is planted— both with the protagonist and with us. There's a deeper story here.

Over the next several episodes we learn that Rittenhouse is the name of some conspiracy, like the Illuminati or the Freemasons. It's a shadowy organization of powerful people with influence in government and industry. They're secretly pulling strings. In fact they funded the creation of the time machines— so they could travel to the past and change things to enhance their power. But what are their goals?

What are their goals? is a legit question, because you wonder how bad this group really is. Do they want wealth? Do they want power? What's their vision for how to use that wealth and power? I mean, plenty of wealthy and powerful people want to amass more wealth and power. How is this any worse?

At this point the series reminded me of various table top games about conspiracies and/or time travel. For example, there's the Steve Jackson Games classic Illuminati and the card game Chrononauts. In these games the players represent rival conspiracies. Each has its own victory conditions it's trying to achieve. Some want to amass fabulous wealth. Some want to control the levers of power. Some want to... destroy the world as we know it.

Is Rittenhouse the proverbial space cockroaches, happy with nuclear annihilation of the earth as an outcome? Presumably not; members of the Rittenhouse conspiracy are portrayed as human. But the writers don't give us much other than assuming because it's a conspiracy it's got to be bad. I mean, they could portray Rittenhouse as, say, a Nazi type organization. But they don't. Yeah, they're a bit sexist and racist. But frankly less so in this 2016 streaming series than mainstream Republican politicians in real-world 2024.