Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Driving down the foggy California coast from the Bay to LA, we came upon a small pod of hunting dolphins cruising the coastline somewhere between Malibu and Ventura.

The dolphins had found a school of fish, and were enjoying the feast, diving and leaping as they chased them up and down the coast, just yards away from where we'd stopped the car. As one dived, I was lucky enough to get a shot of its flukes raised above the steel grey Pacific.

And then we flew home.

I used to climb, hanging from the faces of Gower sea cliffs and welsh limestone in the Brecons.

But I never would have climbed El Capitan. It's the Big Wall among big walls, sheer pink granite rising thousands of feet from the Yosemite Valley. If you're a world class fast solo free climber you can be up it in hours, but most take a couple of days to make their way up the smooth rock of its vertical faces.

In Yosemite at the beginning of October we watched a small team half-way up the wall make slow progress across the exposed rock, inching up a crack to a ledge where they'd bivouac for the night.

Tiny dots, smaller than ants. It gave you a sense of perspective, of insignificance.

And of the beauty of it all.