Author: marcuscengland
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Cool Clouds in the Verdugos
[Featured image: Downtown Los Angeles as viewed from the Verdugo Mountains on October 16, 2016] Even though I am supposed to be training for January’s HURT 100, I hadn’t run a step in two weeks. Having just come off an extended layoff because of a knee injury, I woke up the next day after running…
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Morning at Hahamongna
[Featured image: Subadult Cooper’s Hawk] I had a little time this morning, so I decided to head over to Hahamongna Watershed Park by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and do a little birding. I parked on the west side of the park, an area that was formerly called “Oak Grove Park”, proceeded southward over…
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An Eruption of Hemiptera
I took a short bird walk, as I often do, through Elyria Canyon Park this morning. Unlike yesterday’s fairly active day, today was a little boring with roughly half the species I had yesterday after one pass through the park. I decided not to walk back through and went home instead. There was one occurrence…
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Map: What We’ve Lost
Around 10:30 am yesterday I was driving northeast on Highway 14. The San Gabriel Mountains were on my right. For the better part of a half hour I saw little other than charred hillsides and moon-scaped mountains. My view was a product of the recent Sand Fire, the largest in the San Gabriel Mountains since…
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Make it Count
Dear Angeles Crest 100 newbie, Last Saturday, I stood at the top of 9,407-foot Mount Baden-Powell hoping to view much of the remainder of the San Gabriel Mountains, as well as the Angeles Crest 100 course. Unfortunately, a relatively rare weather phenomenon known as a haboob left the air densely hazy, with visibility much lower…
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Kayaking Upper Newport Bay
While losing the ability to train for this year’s Angeles Crest 100 has been upsetting to me, I am enjoying the time that has suddenly become available to me to do other things. Some of these things are things that I have wanted to do for quite some time, but never really found the time…
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The Running Year That Isn’t
I might as well open here by getting directly to the point: I will not run the two ultra races (Speedgoat 50k and Angeles Crest 100) that remain on my schedule for 2016. This was an extremely difficult decision for me to make, but one that I am certain is correct. My only hesitation in the last…
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Ken Burton Trail Reborn
Since I began serious trail running in 2010, two of the closer trails to me in the San Gabriel Mountains were only runnable via out-and-back routes. This changed at the start of May when the Ken Burton Trail, closed since the 2009 Station Fire, reopened due to the diligent work of the Mt. Wilson Bicycling…
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A Theater of the Absurd
Yesterday, I ran the Nirvana Ultra Big Bear 50 mile trail race based out of Rim Nordic ski area in the San Bernardino Mountains. I had some difficulty getting here: After a great start to my training season, I managed to get a pretty significant injury to my right hamstring while, believe it or not,…
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One More to Go
One of my stated 2016 goals from a birding perspective was to get the Elyria Canyon Park bird list to at least 100 species. As of this morning, the bird list for the park stands at 99. Because of adverse weather conditions in the San Bernardino Mountains this morning, I had to cancel a planned…