Housekeeping 2023

 I am a little late on this blog. I had a few technical issues that I wanted to take care of before going into this. If you follow the blog you probably already know about most of this. I created a video I link that goes over the various issues for people that watch my videos and probably do not read the blog. A lot of this I have said before, but let me restate some here:

#1 I don't do Ads of any sort. If you see ads those are not of my doing. The internet is destroying itself with constant ads. There was a time when ads were rare. Btw, this is one of the reasons I am a bit sensitive about leaving comment sections open going back many years. I realize we live in a capitalist society, but scammers and just anyone that wants to try to sell something usually like to invade comment sections. 

#2 I do not give out GPS coordinates anymore. I started this policy last year, but many who do not read the blog still have e-mailed me so I am stating again and now in video. I am keeping up what I have had in the past, but no longer will in the future. I explain it a lot in the video below with examples, but it has to do with geotagging, too many people are showing up to isolated areas that are not designed for loads of people, and these people do not have the same values and love as others before them in regard to these locations.

#3 I have new Go Pro camera, microphone, and computer! What this means is I will be using this new technology in a slightly different way than in the past. I am trying to make my videos in 4k (or 5k) so one can watch them on a bigger tv screen. Most of the videos I have done in the past in 1080p were good for the time, but these days the quality is a little dated. They still work on smaller screens like cell phones and tablets, but I want to work for bigger quality screens. I have already done the first video I will release next month and I really like it. 

One downside is I am probably not going to add movie video clips on to my videos like I used to. I intend to use a lot more still pictures instead. It is a lot of work to do video over video like I did in the past and getting everything to line up. Then there is different "frame rates" and issues of copyright that I do not have time for. Also, just about any video I have done in the past I might "reboot" with a new version if I am in the mood. We shall see.

#4 I am not looking for work or other projects to do right now. I had a few e-mails last year about this, but I do not have the time right now.

#5 I could use the help on a potential project in the future if you or you know someone who is a mountain scrambler with a Go Pro 10, 11, or whatever they release in the future. I am getting to the point in life where a lot of the mountain scrambles I did when I was younger are no longer on my list of things to do. I am relatively healthy and in some shape, but definitely not the way I was ten to fifteen years ago. My main thing is I just do not have the motivation as I have in years past...too many years of getting in shape just to find out the Eastern Sierra was on fire! Lol! 

This would be a completely free venture. Just for the love of the experience. Basically, I would explain some of the way I like to do video to the person, the way I hiked the location in the past, then they would go hike it and take video in the summer. I would then edit the clips of video given to me and narrate my memories of the hike. I would give full credit to the person(s) doing the hike and video.

I am going to use Matterhorn Peak as my example. I have old video of this hike, but it goes back to the vhs era and just does not work. So if you know someone or are someone that thinks this would be a fun thing to do then let me know: thegreatsilence@mail.com

Not something I expect too many replies on, but it was something I have put some thought into this last year. 

Housekeeping Youtube Video (2023)

With that said, I intend to cover a location I have been asked about a lot over the years, but never knew exactly where it was until a few years ago. Sometime in February!

The New Year Has Come! (The Silmaril Series)

Merry New Year! I hope you are simply having a wonderful holiday season. As I have stated before I have a tendency to think of Christmas time continuing until about the second weekend of January (or whenever Martin Luther King's birthday holiday is in the U.S.). So, I typically have what most would consider Christmas music in my mp3 player until then. Keep in mind I do not really listen to the popular Christmas music you hear on the radio during the season. I always enjoy taking walks at night listening to my music and seeing what houses are still decorated with lights. It gets less and less as the weeks go on, but I have seen some Christmas lights out until March before. 

Skipping back to my previous December 21, 2022 blog entry, I showed what happened back in May, 2022 when I hiked to Leavitt Lake. It was a strange weekend, but I was somewhat happy to get some sort of picture of the "winter-like" conditions there.

So, we went back about two months later near the end of July. This time the issue was there was a lot of smoke due to fires going on. Again, this was frustrating. I was a bit fortunate in a few ways:

So, as one should expect during the summer, all that winter snow and ice was gone. The only downside I had was a small amount of smoke haze I had to deal with here. You have to look really closely, but on the right side in the lake is tiny little boat. Some guy was fishing there. There were others camping around the lake with the 4WD vehicles which you need to have to drive into this area. For this blog entry and the one back on December 21st we hiked in on the dirt road. In the past, I have been driven in with 4WD trucks. I have to stress that or someone will get stuck in the middle of nowhere! Do not drive this road unless you have the proper vehicle! 

I did get the drone to clear the lake. This is looking back across the lake. I kept pushing the drone to see if I could get all that pond in the shot, but at the same time I did not want to crash into the side of the mountain as I kept going backwards. So, this is the best I could do. 

The smokey haze was much more apparent in the background. I moved the camera down to focus on the lake. The mountainside was very smokey so no need to show that. You can see some of it on the upper right side.

We did not spend much time at the lake. Just enough for me to fly there and back again. There is more hiking that can be done around the lake. We have talked about doing more, but I hope to do other things before coming back here in the future.

So with that said, we start the new year! I will have another "housekeeping" type of blog entry in the next week or two. I am preparing a video for it that is more for my video watchers than those who read the blog, but stay tuned here since it will prepare how I go about 2023.