. We are only two weeks into the spring athletic term, but students in the Advanced Climbing Program have been hard at work accruing vertical mileage on the rocks and, you may be surprised, cleaning our local boulders for the climbing season. To say “cleaning” is to be somewhat poetic, since the pruning and sawing of fast-growing […]
Author Archives: Brian Pidduck
Thacher on the Slopes: Ski Trip to Mammoth Mountain
Armed with warm clothes, skis, snowboards and a cardboard box overflowing with burritos and fried chicken for the 7 hour drive, 55 students and faculty clamored aboard a bus last Friday after classes for a weekend ski trip to Mammoth Mountain in the Sierra Nevada. Rain and snow fell steadily throughout the drive, bringing 8 […]
Climbers’ Thanksgiving Rendezvous
On the day before Thanksgiving I met up with Thacher students at Stoney Point in San Fernando Valley for an mid-vacation impromptu bouldering session. It was a great opportunity to climb with a couple of my current students, such as Alex ’13 and Jackson ’14, as well as to catch up with alumni Katie CdeP […]
Mountain Bike Extra-Day Trip
On Wednesday I returned home from leading a 6-day 105 mile mountain bike trip through the Los Padres National Forest with 5 students and an alumnus of the Thacher School (it was part of our bi-annual week-long camping trips) in which we rode from Sisar Canyon in Ojai to Romero Canyon in Santa Barbara. A […]
Spring Storms and Rock Climbing
We didn’t have the chance to ski in the backcountry as much as we would have liked this winter due to the lower than average rainfall/snowfall in Southern California. However, Mother Nature seems to have been making up for it recently with some particularly heavy storms. The irony is that we have had to cancel […]
Over the Ridge to Patton’s Cabin . . . and Back Again
All Thacher students have ridden a horse over the ridge (the Nordhoff Ridge that is) and camped in the Sespe at some point during their Thacher career. This past weekend we did a variation of this excursion, also riding, but under full human power – on mountain bikes! Adam Silberberg ’15 joined my twin brother […]
Weekend Mountain Bike Trip in the Los Padres National Forest: Over the Ridge and Through the Woods to . . . Patton’s Cabin
All Thacher students have ridden a horse over the ridge (the Nordhoff Ridge that is) and camped in the Sespe at some point during their Thacher career. This past weekend we did a variation of this excursion, also riding, but under full human power – on mountain bikes! Adam Silberberg (CdeP ’14) joined my twin […]
Giving Thanks on the Trails
Early on Thanksgiving Day I participated in a 15k trail race in Topanga Canyon of the Santa Monica Mountains (part of a series of XTERRA trail races in Southern California). While jogging in place and attempting to stay warm prior to the event I was surprised to see a competitor stroll in to the starting […]
Macroinvertebrates & Biodiversity in AP Environmental Science
Students in AP Environmental Science recently completed an assessment of the quality of Reeves Creek (near Thacher) by sampling for the macroinvertebrates that inhabit the substrate. Based upon the relative dominance of the species, students were then able to calculate a water quality index. The field work involves using the kick-seine technique (a lot like […]
“A” Campers at The Thacher School
I shot this slideshow a couple years ago during a weekend backpacking trip in the Los Padres National Forest. I came across this while organizing some media files and thought I would include it here as way of showing the beauty of our backcountry and the remarkable adventures that we share with our students. I […]