West of Liebre Mountain is Sawmill Mountain. This is the only mountain in the Liebre/Castaic mountains which has ponderosa pine on top. It goes down to 5000 feet or so, lower than it is usually found. 

On the way down from Sawmill i drove up into Warm Springs Canyon.. i had 2*4 so couldnt get where i needed to go... i was looking for spotted owl habitat. No owls, but oddly enough i found this hawk in a tree no more than 10 feet away just staring at me. i didnt even want to roll down my window of my car too much... what if it decided to attack me? It just kind of stared at me with an 'angry' look until i drove away. perhaps there was a nest nearby. 

This is Liebre Mountain near the grapevine, where black oak, usually found under pines, grows out in the open. There is newer snow here and it's still powdery. If we're lucky, they will get another dusting on friday. 

It's been dry up high, but cold, and very windy. the little snow we've gotten up there has turned to a crust of ice. This is near Mt Waterman. 

Winter...

The other day i was complaining about the warm, dry weather.

Well, it is still dry, but it is no longer warm. Cold air has descended over the entire area. It will probably get below freezing in many of the valleys around LA tonight, and in the mountains it may get as cold as 10 degrees! The snow that fell up there a few weeks ago has turned to solid ice, and any flowing water above 6000 feet is pretty much frozen solid.

There's a slight chance of rain or mountain snow this weekend, but it's more likely to be dry.. and cold.

I stayed here in San Diego, right on Mission Bay. It was for a work conference so i didn't get much free time.. but still, it was fun. well, it would have been fun. I got horrible, horrible food poisoning (i think from Jack in the Box) so most of the week was not fun at all. 

Oktopos lives on my computer! 

The bay at night, looking the other direction 

well.. maybe not that secretly. By the way, it rained.. hard. 

Water 

the Santa Clara River in Soledad Canyon, running strong after the rains of last week. It didn't rain as much as was predicted in some of the forecast, but most areas got at least 2 or 3 inches out of the two storms, and some areas got as much as 7. 

A hawk on an electrical pole near my office.