Skip to main content

Mountains, Desert, Ocean: Can One Place Have It All?

Sunday, while Hollywood was getting ready for its big night, with Oscars, red carpet, and gowns, we travelled to the mountains to enjoy the snow. We loaded the skis onto the Jeep and headed for our favorite local ski resort, Mount Baldy. Here's what we found:




I am sometimes reluctant to make the journey to Mount Baldy. Not that it's a long one by L.A. standards (45 minutes from our home to the parking lot) but - when it comes to skiing I am spoiled because I grew up on a mountain. Anyway, the view from the top is reward enough: the Mojave desert to the north, the Pacific to the south, and a checkerboard called Los Angeles county in between.

Mount Baldy is one of those L.A. excursions that make me wonder how one place can have it all: the desert, the beaches, the mountains; surfing, skiing, hiking... Is it a surprise that the movie industry should have settled here?

Images from top to bottom: palm trees against the San Gabriel Mountains; Lord's Candle, a drought tolerant California native; and view north from the top of Mount Baldy's chair 3 into the Mojave desert.
Labels:

Comments

debi said…
Christina,

I envy you; from Frisco, TX a ski trip is a minimum eleven hour drive.

The pictures are beautiful. My parents have land in Colorado that is arid high-plains, a half hour from Wolf Creek Ski Basin. I wish I was there right now.

Standing on the top of a mountain looking down on the world is one of the best experiences there is, especially in the quiet created by snow.

Ahhh, nostalgia.
March 2, 2011 at 8:24 AM
Lorraine Seal said…
Christina

I love these pictures! Thanks for posting them. The one of the palm trees against the snow-covered San Gabriel Mountains strikes a chord for me in particular.

I went to Salzburg's Donnerstag Markt today, the one in Mirabellplatz. On my way back, I noticed that the snow is getting patchy on the mountains here; pastures are beginning to appear.

Lorraine
March 3, 2011 at 3:15 AM
Christina Schweighofer said…
Thanks, Debi and Lorraine. I feel blessed to be living here. Glad to hear that winter in Austria is on its way out!
March 5, 2011 at 9:49 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Schokoladenstückkekse? No Chocolate Chip Cookies in Austria

Today as I was making chocolate chip cookies it came to me: these baked treats which any US American child grows up with don't exist in Austria. There isn't a German term for them. Schokoladenstückkekse? The word doesn't exist. German recipes for chocolate chip cookies call them just that, by their American name. The funny thing is Austria is famous for its pastries. I have some wonderful recipes for Christmas cookies:  Vanillekipferl, Kokosbusserl, Ischler T ö rtchen, Lebkuchen, Spitzbuben, Nussstangerl...   They are all delicious but not one is as easy to make as a chocolate chip cookie. My recipe for chocolate chip cookies is from the Los Angeles Times.  I found it in the printed edition many years ago. Unfortunately I cannot locate the online version of the article but here is the scanned original: I make the cookies much smaller than the LAT chefs do, using about one and a half tablespoons of dough per cookie and baking them ten minutes at most. As yo...
3 comments
Read more

A Book Club Divided: How Funny Is Franz Kafka?

Yesterday evening my book club discussed Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, in which a man wakes up one morning and finds he has turned into some kind of vermin. Opinions on the 50 page story were sharply divided. My Austrian friend and I talked about how we cracked up reading; our American friends shared their feelings of depression and disgust. Is it a coincidence that the difference in perception runs along lines of nationality or is it cultural? Put differently: do you have to be Austrian/Central European to feel comfortable with Kafka's humor?
6 comments
Read more

Ban on Plastic Bags Bugs L.A. County

Paper or plastic? Bag from South Africa. My friend recently came back from a trip to South Africa and brought me a reusable grocery bag. It is from Woolworths, one of the largest retail chains in South Africa; it is made by a community project and serves as a symbol of the company's commitment to sustainability and social development. I will think of this whenever I use my new bag. Thank you, dear friend! The Woolworths bag is not my first reusable bag. I carry two baggies which fold up into packs smaller than a deck of cards in my purse and a bunch of bigger ones in the trunk of my car. To me this feels like an easy way of making a difference environmentally. Others seem to have a harder time. When the county of Los Angeles recently introduced a ban on plastic bags for its unincorporated areas the new ordinance was met with resistance. Shops bemoan that paper is more expensive than plastic. They charge customers ten cents for every paper bag. Shoppers complain about ...
10 comments
Read more