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A few days ago, Gant, Jared and I climbed Alta peak. I’ll write about that later. The thing that struck me was while hiking we ran into not only this, but three other hikers going up the trail. Each of them were solo, while we were rolling three deep.

It just made me thankful to have friends to travel with into these places and see these things and experience these events. Those three solo hikers don’t have the same level of safety net that we did, but more importantly I don’t think they’d have quite as much fun either. Sometimes solitude is great, there’s nothing like that feeling of the immensity of the world when you are the only person for a hundred square miles. Sometimes that is exactly what you need.

But there is safety, a measure of fun and a shared sense of adventure when you have a good crew.

I’m thankful for my family, who allow me the time to explore. I’m thankful for my friends who explore with me and I’m thankful for BSG being back on this Saturday, though I’m working, so I’m also thankful for my DVR.

Here are some basics, after the big HST trip:

I weigh: 172.8 lbs. Loss of 3 or 4 pounds, and I’ve been eating like an ethiopian kid at a buffet since I got back

My pack weighs: 36 lbs. It dropped about 22 pounds of weight during the trip

Total tickets recieved by Josh during the drive to the portal: 2

Total Accidents Josh was in during the drive to the portal: 1 (that’s my very first ever accident, by the way)

Total repair bill for Josh’s truck after it broke down on the way home: $2700

Yeah, the trip started off rough with an accident and then two tickets and it ended rough with my truck dying on I5 less than an hour from home, but the trip itself which took place between all that nonsense was pure High Sierra magic.

I sometimes lament the fact that I was born when I was. Too late to get in on the good worldwide exploration that took place between the 1600’s and 1900’s and seemingly too early for any exploration of other planets. Sure there are unclimbed faces and peaks around the world, but the majority of them are in inhospitable places like Iran or Antarctica. Neither of which will I likely ever get a stamp on my passport from.

What is new under the sun? Where can I be the first to see an untouched expanse of earth, where can I be the only one to have reached the top of a peak? What is left to explore, it seems that all we are doing now is refining our exploration. All I’m doing is following in the footsteps of those greats who came before me.

Here are some basics:

I weigh: 176.4 lbs

My pack weighs: 58 lbs. Of which 9 pounds are camera/gear. Maybe I’ll give up photography after this trip, holy crap.

Either way, I’m still in the optimal range for weight… your pack should weigh no more than 1/3rd of your weight. 1/4 of your weight is a great goal, I’m just glad that I’ll be under the 1/3rd weight range.

When I get back I’ll go over the basic weights again, to see what changed.

Tuesday begins the trip. Jared, Gant and I have been planning, training and waiting for this trip way back since the second Split Mt trip last year. Jared borrowed my Lonely planet Sierra Nevada book and saw the High Sierra Trail entry in there. That’s how this all started. Hundreds of emails, thousands of dollars (between the three of us), many more hours and days on various trails, mountains in all kinds of conditions to train up for it and it’s finally here.

10 days on trail, heading from the West side to the East side of the Sierra Nevada. We’ll be self supported, with the potential for hitting a good half dozen or more peaks and about half the trip off trail entirely, up through variously beautiful areas of the High Sierra. There were originally 8 potential people that were on the invite list. Various reasons later, we are down to three people doing the trip.

So, my next entry will just have some basic info about my stats before the trip, if I get the time to post it. If not, I’ll see you on the other side of the Sierra.

After getting some crushingly bad news earlier this week and being pretty bummed today turned up pretty well. First of all, El Presidente will be re-invigorating the space program by endorsing a manned lunar base as a stepping stone to manned missions to Mars. I personally could care less what social programs get cut, gutted or axed, I don’t care if you don’t have a job and need food, I don’t care if your twelve kids are hungry. Governmental funds should be spent on the common good, and I don’t see how feeding you or your damn kids is the common good.

I do however see how cordless drills, cell phones, microcircuitry and CCD’s benefit the entire world. I do see the human spirit needing frontiers to push back, unexplored horizons to find and adventures to embark upon. I do see America as the one and only nation on the Earth with the technology, knowledge, financial capacity and now political will to do something so bold and audacious. I hope my offspring will see man on Mars, I hope to God I’ll get to see it.

This has been and will be a huge year for exploration, I’m sure everyone knows Spirit has touched down on Mars already, Opportunity will be doing so in a couple weeks and Stardust has collected some of the primordial soup from the tail of a comet. In the middle of the year Cassini will arrive at Jupiter and hopefully this is the year that the X-prize is awarded to the first privately funded and developed space launch platform.

Bring on the stars.

Ohh the other thing I am excited about, going backpacking (even though it’s a gimped solo mission) will be great. Snow, cold and loneliness are on the menu for this weekend.

Bring on the snowshoes.

For the next few days Jarr and I will be taking part in a high altitude physiology study.  The doctor doing the testing seems really cool, he’s even promised to pass along some movie loops/jpg’s of our heart/lungs.  Should be interesting to find out, well anything.

We should be done with the studies by Saturday afternoon, which means we have Saturday night to do whatever.  Jarr and I decided to hike to the top of the research station facility and camp on top of the peak at 14,246ft.  Should be colder than shit, so I was unpacking some of my snowboarding gear for the trip - baclava, thick winter gloves and since this is about the first time I’d opened my snowboard bag since last season ended so violently (see movie 11megs) it brought back a lot of good memories, the smells of my bag (probably needs to be aired out) just made me think of the long day trips to Mammoth, and the crappy conditions at the SoCal resorts.  It made me wonder what new stuff this year’s snowboarding will bring.

Aside from my new crash helmet that is.

10.8.03

Packing for a backpacking trip is always interesting for me.  You know that chances are you’ll forget something, so you put into place various systems that help you minimize any damage from the forgotten item(s).  Packing lists, double checked by someone, marking off the list as an item goes into the pack and other little helpful processes that have been fine tuned after years of mistakes.

Despite all these scientifically formulated plans, on the first real break you take or when you reach camp 1 and start looking for relatively important item B, you’ll realize it’s not there.  I don’t think I’ve made a trip yet, without forgetting something, though it is a goal of mine to do so eventually.  Maybe this trip will be the one, and if my processes and procedures turn out to be foolproof, then voila - half the fun will be taken out of packing.  If I know that I won’t forget something, wouldn’t that be boring and at least a bit un-interesting, to pack a perfect pack?

I’m sure I’d appreciate not ever forgetting my gloves again, or filling up the fuel bottle for the XGK (stove) before leaving, but do I really want such a stale and secure system that I won’t have to worry about it?

To be honest, I doubt it.  If I ever do introduce a foolproof system, I’ll just do my best to become a better fool.