Jodag.NET

This was my second consecutive Death Valley Marathon/30k (first one here) and it was just as good the second time despite; pouring rain, mud, the use of the alternate running course and a lack of my running companions from last year.

A few days before the race the race director sends out an email warning us about the incoming storm and the fact that the park service may close Titus Canyon due to the incoming rain/snow.  That was disheartening, because Titus is a stunning place for a run.  When you’re running in Titus you are never more than one more bend in the canyon away from feeling like you’re all alone in there. The canyon walls are so narrow and it bends so often you are occasionally the only person in view in a specific section, which is a really cool way to do a marathon.

The canyon walls are remarkable for their multi-colored beauty and there are multiple layers of historic use of the canyon from the Native American petroglyph to old mining camps. So you get geology, history and great competition all in one race. The runners that make the trek all the way out to Death Valley for the run, both the marathoners and the 30k’ers are great people.  As a whole, they are the best race people I’ve interacted with consistently, from the director (who gave me a ride in his van when the bus was too crowded last year) all the way down to the runners who will occasionally cheer you on while running.

Well, like I said we got an email indicating that Titus might be closed for the run. In that case there is an alternate route that starts near Furnace Creek on West Side road, it’s a dirt road in the middle of a broad valley, Death Valley is scenic almost no matter where you are but 3 hours at a snail’s pace in a big valley can’t compare to Titus canyon. The day before the race we get an email stating that Titus was officially closed and the alternate course would be the venue this year.

Gant wasn’t going to be running this year, due to a flare up of his TG but he was willing to play role of race support crew. He performed his job with the gumption of a Grant. I’m on the verge of promoting him to full “R” status if he keeps this work up. So we rolled up from Gorman on Friday night, got to Texas spring campground a little after midnight and despite years of experience telling us not to sleep in the truck, we slept in the truck. It turned out to be a pretty damn good decision . All night long the rain was pouring down, but I slept well and as far as I can tell, Gant slept soundly as well.

Dawn broke and we made our way to the check in at Furnace Creek. We got our bibs and followed the bus caravan down to West Side Road. At this point it was still drizzling and in the low 50’s, the clouds were solid and there was a slight wind to the south. The day looked dismal and grey; there wasn’t much to see besides the clouds and other runners. People were wearing trash bags to stay dry and kinda warm and the race director was giving his speech about snow in Titus canyon and that was why it was closed. At that point most people were more interested in starting the race and trying to get warm than in listening to the speech. Minutes later we were obliged.

The alternate course is a dirt road with a slight down slope on the way out. Due to the rain the dirt road was a sloppy mess. The rain didn’t really stop, it let up at points but the cold was constant. On the way out there was a tailwind, which in addition to the slight down slope made for a pretty good time to the turnaround point, 1:16 for me.  Unfortunately that meant there was a head wind on the way back to the finish line and an incline. The nice thing about hitting the turnaround point and heading back was all the racers behind me. Seeing them go the other way and hearing the occasional cheer from them really helped me keep my motivation and pace up as the road got sloppier and the rain and wind was now coming directly into my face.

Eventually, there were no more runners going the other way. I knew there were 12-16 runners in front of me and a few somewhat close behind me. I passed a few in front of me and was passed by a few as well. My legs were dreading the final mile as it was the steepest climb and I hit it like concrete wall. My pace went from a mid to low 8 minute mile to over 11 for that last mile. I was out of juice and it was cold, wet, sloppy and steep.

But it was over. The post race food was GREAT, just like last year – peanut filled pretzel bits, oranges, trail mix, water, Gatorade and of course the complimentary T-shirt. I started to cramp in the cold and quickly changed into some warm, dry clothes and relaxed in the truck while Gant tried to get an inside line on becoming a Junior Race Director.

Death Valley was indeed in the process of flooding, I’ve never seen a storm like that there, the roads were covered with water, Towne pass was a snowy sight to see and I was more than glad to be warm and dry in the truck with my chauffeur race support crew at the helm.

A few hours later I was home and Gant was on his way to a half marathon in San Diego. I found out that I took 1^st in my age group and 20^th overall with a finish time of 2:40 which I was pretty stoked about.  I am definitely looking forward to my 3^rd consecutive DVM(e) next year. I’d even run the alternate course, It’s really that worth it.  Good job to my support crew and happy hypothermia homeboy as well, excellent job as a matter of fact.  The picture collection is incomplete for various reasons, don’t ask unless you’re curious in which case go ahead.

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As a parent I get many different types of adventures. This was Jacob’s first time really sledding on his own and it was fun to watch. He even led me around the yard looking for “fast hills papa”.

Gant has had some stupid ideas in his time, but a recent one is a real winner; he wants to run a marathon in Death Valley. Yeah, that sounds great. It gets better though, after the marathon, he wants to spend a couple of days in DV hiking and peakbagging. I’m sure that the next stage of his plan is to propose we do the entire trip in wetsuits or with no water, or maybe even both.

In other stupid idea news, an idea I floated on this website here in ‘03 is about to start coming together. I have crew who is willing to accompany, enable and document the potentially retarded plan to make a first descent on a certain mountain here in California. This mountain wouldn’t be hard to figure out for any long time reader here, it’s a high mountain, remote and during the winter is extremely difficult to get to.

Those that have volunteered their time for the Winter of ‘09 trip include an up and coming new media specialist to document it for posterity (and comedy in all likelihood). One other person who will be the sherpa of the trip, carrying the heavy loads up high for glory and contributing witty commentary to the documentary like a young John Madden and then one other person who may or may not make the descent attempt with me, but who will nonetheless add the comedy section to the film.

I’m not going into specifics, about where and what or anything like that because as the time draws nigh, I don’t want any unscrupulous charlatans to steal this idea from me. In all likelihood, this will be the highest mountain ever descended on snowboard in California and I want to be the first to do it.

I’m also looking for sponsors, so fork over some cash, cheapasses.

Thirty degrees and windy.

There were five people invited to White Mountain, October of ‘07. This was a short lived tradition I had to hit WM every October to celebrate my birthday. It has always been cold up in the highlands in October, but I do personally enjoy the cold so it has always been fine by me. Of the four invitees, two showed up. Of the two who couldn’t make it, one actually let me know ahead of time. The other one just ignored the entire situation, and as a matter of fact on our summit day was fawning over himself, as usual. Of the three of us who were there, none made the peak.

We knew it would be cold, we knew there would be snow on the ground and we knew that Scott had never been higher than Telescope peak at 11,049 feet. This hike would be starting higher than that. Scott’s been training hard for this trip for a while now, while Jared and I are still up at a pretty good level after getting ready for the triathlon last week.

Jared drove us all to Grandview, it was dark and freezing by the time we got there. I started the fire, Jared setup his rarely used 6 man tent and realized that zipper on the door wouldn’t zip closed. Scott, meanwhile was trying to put on more layers than a polar bear. After the three of us were done with our respective tasks we started cooking. Scott had rigged up a nice little contraption made of tape and sticks to roast his food on. At 10pm it was 34 degrees and dropping. The tent door wouldn’t close and we had a long, cold way to go until the sun was up again.

Dawn eventually came, with Scott not sleeping much, but Jared and I putting down some good Z’s with the new cots. After warming up by the fire and a light breakfast we made our way to the trailhead and prepared for the hike.

There are essentially four uphills on the way to the peak. The first one is short and steep, and starts as soon as you get out of the truck and continues for about a mile. The second one is shorter and steeper, the third one is long and slow and the fourth and final one is very steep and sort of short. We ran across our first substantial patches of snow on the second uphill and took a nice long break at the telescope. The temps were in the forties so it didn’t feel too bad when we were hiking, but during breaks we would get cold very quick.

As we continued on the air got thinner and the snow got thicker. Still nothing that would really impede our progress, but it was there. We were above 12,000 feet and Scott’s first time up high was getting tough. Jared was cruising right along and passed us up. Along came another herd of Bighorn sheep and Scott made a very mature decision to turn around. Scott sat down while we waited for Jared to come back.

So, we hiked back; tired, hungry and cold. Scott’s new high point is about 13,100 feet or so. When we got back to the truck, we decided to bypass Scott’s promise of cooking up some steak fajitas in order to get down to town and get some food, as fast as possible. After the food, we also decided to stay in a hotel with a working door.

Good trip, good fun.

Album of pictures from trip

What would Leonidas do?

This trip, like all of them was planned out to be quite unique. Mr. Gant is a world renowned kayaker, he’s guided trips in Alaska and Baja, he’s rescued oil tankers and towed aircraft carriers, he’s done surgery on sperm whales and midwifed for a turtle pregnant with twins. Long story short, he’s good and he has thousands of dollars in his Kayak and associated gear. So for quite a while now he’s been trying to setup a kayak type trip and to be honest I’ve been stalling. One of my fears is deep water, I’ve spent over a year or so on naval vessels traversing the Pacific and other godless oceans across the world and I’m deathly afraid of deep water. I can swim for hours on end, or I could when I was in better shape as long as it’s in a pool. But I can’t even walk out on a pier without trepidation tearing at my heart.

Well, the plan was to get up to Mono lake on Tuesday, camp on the shore paddle around the tufa formations and then on Wednesday morning paddle out to Pahoa island, camp there for the night and awake on Thursday to paddle back to shore and then drive back down to Socal. For regular readers, you’ll know that’s now quite what happened, the best laid plans of mice and men and all that.

The first challenge was loading three kayaks onto one little bitty Subaru, while it rained. Once that was done and we were on our way we had some beautiful views of snow capped Sierra peaks along the way which made for a great drive up to Mono Lake. Once we got there, the temperatures were fluctuating between the low 40’s and high 30’s. We explored for a bit, setup our tents and then launched our kayaks to explore the southern tufa field. It was great, the water was calm, the sky was red with sunset and the tufa were otherworldly indeed.

So, we got back to shore, bundled up a bit more and then lay down in our tents to snore. God knows what time it was but I awoke to the sound of someone outside my tent scraping it. It was Gant, scraping the snow off of the tent. I fell back asleep and when more broke I looked out the tent to see a few inches of snow covering the ground. The lake was choppy with wind and cold, so we decided to puss out and not make the 4 or so mile crossing to the island.

Instead, we drove around Lee Vining and the lake in general. Jared became a proud card carrying member of the Mono Lake Committee and Gant met a new girlfriend in the visitor’s center there. Then we hiked up to Panum crater and listened to the Earth’s deep volcanic rumblings from the rim. We also found a great cache of obsidian. After all this was done we decided that it was too cold, too windy, too choppy and too risky to chance going to the island in the small kayaks Jared and I had. So, we packed up our camp and headed south.

We got to Bishop and caught the 7pm showing of 300, which was a quite entertaining movie at least. After this we continued south to Independence to take part in the hospitality offered at Ray’s Den, a small motel owned by an old friend. We slept and then continued to drive south the next day, we got to Pyramid lake and paddled there for a few hours which again, despite the deep water was quite fun. I’m still stalling on future kayak trips though.

Album of pictures, located here.

Has anyone seen my shoes?

So, the triple digit crew was off on it’s last adventure before the High Sierra Trail trip. This was a final shakedown, a high altitude gear and personal test for all of us. We planned to go up to the Cottonwood lakes area and bag Mt Langley and Cirque peak, spend three days and two nights on trail and then be done. It was going to be a good trip, but something happened.

When Gant showed up (late), we found out that he hadn’t slept in 24 hours. No problem, a tired Gant can usually outpace Jared and me anyway. So we got in the car and started driving while Gant slept in the back seat. When we reached the beautiful trailhead, we were all suiting up when Jared asked, “Has anyone seen my shoes” The trip went downhill from here. We looked around trying to find them, but had no luck. Jared realized he must have left them in his truck so that he could wear his cool as hell crocs and impress us. He almost went full metal jacket on us when he couldn’t find his shoes, which was kinda scary since he has a striking resemblance to Pvt. Pyle from certain angles.

With no shoes, we couldn’t go up to Langley, we couldn’t do much at all really. So Jared said he’d buy a cheap pair of shoes in Bishop and then since we would be that far north, we could just hit up White Mt and tool around at high elevation for the rest of the trip. So, that’s what we did. We got in the car and drove a few more hours, stopped in the Mountain Light gallery which is always inspiring and got Jared a 90 dollar pair of cheap shoes elsewhere in Bishop. Then we started driving more to get to the gate on White Mt Rd where we would setup camp and get an alpine start in the morning.

So, in the morning we didn’t quite get an alpine start, more like a Ventura start, as in we didn’t step off until about 9:30 or so. Jared realized that he forgot his sunglasses too, I let him borrow my spares. Beautiful weather to start the hike. A few clouds, we knew the thunderstorms were on the way in, hopefully in the afternoon, but at the moment it was beautiful. We made great time, full packs, high elevation, almost 3 mile an hour pace. It was going so well, but something happened.

When we got to the telescope, we took a break. We were there for no more than 15 minutes when the skies started to fall. It started off slow, I didn’t even plan on putting my jacket on. Then the rain started getting cold, when it hit your skin it would actually burn. So, I got my jacket out while the others were getting their wet weather gear on as well. Then it started to hail. Then it started to thunder. Then we started to run.

I swear, I heard thunder and looked up, straight up and saw nothing but light above me in the clouds. I started to run faster. We were on something of an exposed high point with a very steep downhill between us and safety of the lower elevation it represented. Once we cleared the downhill and were (relatively) safer we stopped running and just hiked, while it continued to rain. From our perspective, it looked like the Sierra crest was getting hammered too, so even if we had attempted Langley, it looks like we would have had very similar results.

So, our final shakedown hike went well and poorly all at once. It was fun though, and everyone came back without injury so it was sucsessful. We also all realized that we had to re-treat our waterproof gear and make some changes to the way our gear was packed to allow easier/quicker access to certain items (raingear), as well as making sure we remember to bring certain items (boots).

When we got back to the car, we got a long, georgous look at the mountains we’ll be in during the next trip.

A quick, unrelated question for the readers, who will Search and Rescue find first in this picture?

Next is the big trip, where we can’t run back when the skies open up will be quite interesting indeed.

Triple Digits

Triple digit temperatures. That’s what was forecast for Death Valley during the two days that we planned on being out there on May 3rd and 4th. There are three of us who have been training together (Gant, J$ and I) to get ready for the HST trip later this year and one new addition (Gant’s roomate, Charlie). We got up there a bit later than expected on Wednesday, but that was ok, since it got us to start our hike after the hottest part of the day. Our plan was to carry our backpacks out a few miles, setup a basecamp and spend the night there. Then in the morning, tag the peak fast and light with just daypacks.

The plan was going well on Tuesday, the temperatures were in the 80’s at most, nice clear, cloudless sky. Telescope peak had a nice coating of winter snow up top and Gant broke his already broken cool guy shades, Charlie was pounding water and Jared was pounding some tunes. We hit a few patches of snow, threw some snowballs and just hiked along.

About three miles in, we found ourselves at our first goal. We had gone off trail to bag a nondescript peak named Bennett. At the top of it, we decided that this was a great spot to setup camp to see the sunrise/set over the sierra crest and badwater. So we setup camp, cooked some dinner and it started to get cold. Did I mention that it was going to be so hot that I didn’t even pack pant legs that weighed less than a pound? Yep, that’s right, I was wearing shorts and it was cold. Great sunset and fun to sit around watching it in 30 degree temps.

Wednesday morning we slowly got out of the tents, it was cold and windy so we didn’t really start the day until about 9 or so. Gant apparently used some of his W. connections to get us a mini-airshow first thing in the morning. A couple of A-10’s on a refueling run and the CHP bird all swung by to say hi.

Eventually it was time to move out, bag the peak and get on outta there. So we started hiking. It was overcast and obviously snowing (this picture also shows the ridge you follow to get to the peak) on the peak, though it didn’t look too major. As we climbed higher and higher the snow got thicker on the ground and heavier from the sky, along with the temps still dropping, though it was in the 40’s, perfect short weather. Eventually we got to a point where there was no more ground without snow cover. This was basically the point where Charlie stopped.

Gant, Jared and I kept trudging uphill. The final section of Telescope is a notoriously steep climb, add in about 3 feet of snow to slop through, a few inches falling from the sky and a pair of shorts and you have a good idea of what I was feeling like. Jared took the shortcut, and after a few hours of crawling up this snow covered steepossity, we were at the top, where we each did our own thing (DG, JG, JM). This is where the adventure actually begins.

Downhill was carefree for an hour or two too long. We partied on the peak and threw snowballs for almost two hours total time. Throwing the snowballs had the double plus good effect of drenching our gloves as well as slowing down our rate of descent. This wouldn’t have been a problem if it weren’t for the storm, nay let me re-phrase that, the thunderstorm, nope not quite right yet, the snowstorm thunderstorm that was rolling our way.

We first heard random thunder from the north, much further away than would be worrisome to us, except that we were headed north and the thunder was generally heading south. By the time we got to the saddle between Telescope and Bennett lightning was visibly hitting Bennett peak. We hadn’t run into Charlie on the way down as of yet and with our camp still setup at the top of Bennett, we figured he must have went back to camp and hopefully packed his shit and ran for lowlands before the storm hit him.

Thinking that Charlie was safe, and knowing that ascending the highest point around with no cover in a thunder/snow storm would be a terribly stupid idea, we dropped off the trail, down into a low lying grove of trees and found one to hide under. During the hour that we waited out the storm the following happened:

• Temperature dropped from 46 to 36 degrees.
• Snow kept falling
• Lightning struck 1-2 seconds away from us (1/5 - 2/5 of a mile away)
• Snow kept falling
• Scorpion was found under a rock I was sitting on.
• Snow kept on falling

Lightning was striking all around us, it was cold, Gant was starting to feel sleepy in the cold and our wet gloves weren’t helping the situation, neither were my shorts to be honest. But, like all things, the core of the storm eventually passed us and we made a run for our camp. This is when we discovered that Charlie had actually sheltered in his tent, on a peak in a snowstorm. He is a lucky man not to have been hit. We made the decision to pack camp and make a quick run to low ground as the storm was flattening Charlie’s tent and we didn’t know how long it would last.

Charlie had called 911 to report us as missing as well. So, we bagged our shit up as quickly as we could. My legs were starting to feel the sting of a full day of cold, wet snow. We started downhill and by the time we got to below 9,000 feet or so the storm abated and we had time to actually look back at what we had been through. Of course by this point my CF card was full so I got no pictures (a problem to be rectified by the HST trip).

So we made it back to the truck safely after all that. I’ve not been that close to that big a storm without any safety gear, ever.

So to recap the adventures I have had while Mr. Gant has been there:

1. Broke my finger on Split
2. He almost died numerous times climbing out of Ubehebe crater
3. Me, him and Jared damn near bit it on Telescope.

Am I sure the HST trip is a good idea?

Well then, it’s about time I get back in the saddle again, the horse being this here jodag.net site of mine. It was down, but not out, it’s slow but not quite dead. I’ve just been busier than I can keep up with, my todo list gets longer instead of shorter every day and it’s getting to the point where it’ll be problematic. Thankfully today was a day off, so I’ve been able to catch up a couple of things, just a couple though, there’s still more on my plate than I can finish off with two weeks off.

Overnight we got over a foot of snow, so at work today we didn’t have alot to do, the park has been closed due to weather for the last week or so, and with the storms rolling in like they are looking like they will, the park will be closed for a while longer. My house lost power and a bunch of branches to the trees, my truck almost got stuck a couple times trying to get out of the driveway and check out the local area and the work trucks were so frozen over that they wouldn’t shift into park. Good times nonetheless, good times.

Christmas was good, work is good and there’s snow on the ground. I don’t have much to complain about, except for the fact that I still have no TV at my house, which isn’t really all that bad of a thing the more I get used to it. I guess life is good for all intents and purposes, and for that, I’ll leave you with a couple of pics.

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Our overall plan was to get up to the Big Pine lakes basin and remain there until Sunday morning when we would pack back to the truck and head home. Once we got to the basin there would be plenty of scenery and potential areas to explore, while leaving basecamp right in the middle, or packing it with us on a daily basis. This plan was to change though, because of one route-finding mistake.

Once we stepped off, right out of the parking lot the snow was deep. It was still relatively early in the day, so it was still hard from freezing overnight but was largely unconsolidated, which is hard to walk through even with snowshoes. We took an early break to setup a “before” picture right after the first falls, this break was a bit on the long side and hadn’t really been earned, since we were only hiking for about 20 minutes to get to this point, but it did feel good. The sun was warm and the air was cool, the view of the palisades was inspiring and the young day was looking promising overall.

As we hiked on we missed, more appropriately I missed, the critical junction of the trail we were on and the one that would take us up on the east side of the creek we were following. Mistakenly, I identified a pair of ski tracks heading over to the west side of the creek as the trail we should follow. I knew the trail we wanted was on the east side, but since I saw no sign of it we followed those tracks, which appeared to be at least a week old. On the east side of the river, we faced a horrific climb; over just more than 1/10th of a mile, we climbed over 140 vertical feet. Needless to say, at the top of that rise we were both spent.

So, at just over 3 miles and 3 hours into the day we found ourselves well short of my original goal for the first night, but too tired to continue on. We dropped our packs in a grove of trees with relatively shallow snow and took a well deserved break. After a little while we decided to explore the surrounding area a bit to see if we could find a good spot to setup camp. The winds had really been howling that day, so we were looking for a spot that offered as much protection as possible. Leaving our packs behind, we hiked north along the trail we were pioneering, since the ski tracks had long since disappeared.

After a small, very nice hike without the packs we figured that we could move further up in the canyon without too much difficulty. For the most part it was flat up there and as tired as we were, it didn’t look too insane. So after much gnashing of teeth, we put the packs back on and continued on through the snow, which had softened throughout the day which allowed us to sink in even deeper with each step. We only made it a couple more miles before finding an excellent spot in a place called Cienega Mirth. This spot had great access to the creek for fresh water; it was shielded from the wind and was well off the trail (since we had been well off the trail all day long…).

We dug out a tent pit, a kitchen, a bathroom and a shoddy system of trails between each spot and then fired up dinner. After eating there wasn’t much to do as we were both tired, beaten down and completely wore out after our hike up the hill. We got into the tent, got situated, realized the floor we had dug out wasn’t as flat as it could have been but didn’t care enough to do anything about it. We were asleep within minutes.

Friday

Friday morning arrived, right on schedule and we dragged our sorry asses out of the tent and back into the world. Since it would take a terrific amount of motivation and effort to move our campsite into the basin where we had planned for it to go originally, we made a change to the plan. What we would do instead was to just dayhike up through the canyon we were in and into the Lakes Basin to see the lakes, the Palisade glacier, the Palisade Crest and anything else that looked entertaining. Sounded easy enough, no packs on our backs, just snowshoes, camera gear and some grub.

We left camp and followed the river up less than a 1/3rd of a mile and found a summertime Ranger cabin. We crossed the river on a convenient log at that point and found the trail that we were supposed to have been following since yesterday. We followed this trail as far as it went, before it petered out too, there really isn’t much if any traffic up there during the winter, so the trails are quite indistinct.

Eventually, we found 1st lake; saw where 2nd lake was and the general layout of the basin. The Palisades were unfortunately just out of view, behind Temple Crag, the Inconsolable range wasn’t showing us its highest peak, Cloudripper and the lakes themselves were pretty solidly frozen over. Nevertheless, it was a fine spot to stop and enjoy the thin air, clear skies and empty shores of the lake. We were perched on some old structure, but we couldn’t figure out what it had ever been used for. Not too long into our break, we saw the only other human we would see on this trip. His name was David and he was ski mountaineering with his dog, Teton up to Mt. Sill. With his skis on and being able to follow our freshly broken trail he had made it to 1st lake in less than a day and had another four or five miles to go before he’d set up camp.

He broke with us for a bit, and then set off again over the frozen lake. After he was gone, we followed his tracks out onto the lake, took some pictures and started the uneventful hike back. The only thing left to consider was what we were going to do on Saturday. Since our camp was in a canyon, miles from the lakes basin, we only had one direction to go for dayhikes and no desire to move camp up to the basin. The one direction we had to go was how we had just got to first lake. If we wanted to follow our same tracks, that would be no problem, but then we’d just be seeing the same scenery (not that I have anything against any scenery in the Sierra) over again.

In the end we decided that packing up camp and hiking back to the truck to call it an early weekend was a good plan. Along the way home we would travel through Death Valley though, to take a look at some completely different landscapes and experience wildly different temperatures than what we had been through for the last two days though.

So Friday night we took some time to take sunset pictures, none of which really came out (for me at least), had some dinner, some hot chocolate and just relaxed with fresh socks and booties on in the kitchen area. As night came it got colder and colder, so we eventually got into the tent and tried to sleep. I did learn a new trick at this point though, in the past I would boil some hot water and fill my Nalgene with it then put that in my sleeping bag to warm it up before I got in. This time, I boiled water and partially filled up my CamelBak bladder and put that in my sleeping bag. When I got into the bag, I noticed that this worked extremely well as a hot pad on sore muscles and bones.

Saturday

Saturday morning again came on time, we had been in our sleeping bags for exactly 12 hours when we got out and I had successfully used a piss bottle so I didn’t have to gear up, go outside into the howling cold night and piss. Anyway, after those long 12 hours in sleeping bags in the tent we once again moved back into the real world. We broke camp and started following the real trail back to the truck. Along the way we noticed that I missed the trail junction by only 10 or 20 feet. The trail we followed back to the truck had some fresh mountain lion tracks heading in our direction. They continued all the way down to the parking lot, where we were able to get into regular clothes, shoes and relax for a bit.  We never did see the cat though.

We took the drive out to Death Valley, met some interesting people, were afraid of other people and took a hike up the Eureka sand dunes. We then tried to get to Scotty’s Castle, but it was closed by the time we got there. After this we drove back to Orange County.

Photo Album of trip

Friday

It was Friday afternoon, Vu and I were slated to leave from for Yosemite at around 2:30pm; it was about 2:00 when Vu called to let me know he was having trouble picking up the rental bear canister from REI. Earlier in the week I had gone to pick up some last minute supplies and I reserved the canister for the weekend and asked Vu to pick up on Friday before we left for Yosemite. The guys at the rental-counter said it would be fine to have someone else pick it up, little did they know the incompetence of their co-workers.

Without getting into details, suffice to say someone at REI doesn’t know the difference between rental and purchase. Soon enough the whole deal was sorted out and Vu was pulling into the parking lot to pick me up. I threw my gear in the back of his car and we were off to the bank to deposit our well-earned paychecks. Little did I know how low Vu was on gas. As we were pulling out of the bank, his car stuttered and stalled. Thankfully, it started right back up again and we made it across the street to the gas station. After that, we were truly on our way to Yosemite, for me the first time in over a decade, and almost the same for Vu.

The drive up was largely uneventful, until we got into the park itself. There it began raining and snowing at higher elevations, there was fog in the valley and cold in the air, welcome to Yosemite. After the 25 or so miles of park driving we arrived at the Badger pass trailhead. At this point we drove around looking for the ranger station for awhile, without success. We did find that the employees of the lodge liked to stare at cars driving around after the place is closed though. So, instead of entering into a staring contest with the locals, we parked in the backpacker’s section of the parking lot and slept in the car.

Saturday

When morning came, we found the ranger station got a self issued backcountry permit and Vu remembered he had no fuel for his stove. So we drove back down to the nearest gas station, which was a bit over 20 miles away. Luckily the gas station had a clean, heated bathroom which was an unexpected treat. After this luxurious stop over, we returned to Badger pass and got ready to step off onto my second and Vu’s first snowshoe trip. We got our packs out, double checked all our gear, strapped on the snowshoes and left for Dewey point at about 9am.

About a half mile into the hike we see a trail sign that’s not marked on the topos, it says something like, “Most difficult ridge trail” to Dewey point. Neither of us being the kind of person who’s intimidated by some stupid inanimate sign, we took the difficult route. Well, the sign was right, it was difficult. We took many breaks and were breathing quite heavily in the cold, thin air of Yosemite’s high country for the next few steep miles. The snow was pretty well consolidated and that made it a bit easier than the powdery conditions I had in the Schulman grove area a couple of weeks prior to this though.

Upon arrival at Dewey point, we realized it was much more crowded than we expected. We hung out with the crowd, took some pictures and then setup camp. There was a tent hole already dug out for us, with nice wind blocking walls and a kitchen pit. Then we tried to fire up the stove for a little lunch time meal. The only problem was that Vu apparently believed that a piece of military issued gear would be good enough for that, as he had a pack of matches from an MRE. Well, after realizing those were a bad idea, we also learned that his lighter was also faulty. Luckily I had God’s own gift to fire-making; storm proof matches. If only those matches had been the only thing that would have gone wrong with that stove on the trip…

After lunch we took some more pictures and Vu wandered off to another, less crowded section to get some new angles on Yosemite Valley. At this point, I ran into Dr. Dubowitz, from the White Mountain research trip Jarr and I had done a few months ago. He is quite an accomplished mountaineer, but it was still shocking to see him out there, it’s a small world I guess. We chatted for a bit, his wife and parents were there along with a couple other people who I met for the first time and then I went off to make sure Vu wasn’t off somewhere plotting to mug tourists for their cameras…

Upon finding Vu, I noticed he was trying to body slide down a cliff. After talking him out of it, we hung out in the area for awhile longer and the sun began to get low in the horizon and the crowds finally began to disperse. I hung around to take some more pictures up at the point, while Vu returned to camp to start cooking up dinner. This is where things start to go wrong with that stove.

The clouds had been rolling in for a good while and the temperature is in the low 30’s, no big deal yet. It’s what we were expecting for the most part, as I start to return to camp Vu yells something about his stove being broken. Hmmm… this doesn’t sound too good, as we needed the stove to boil water for dinner, boil water for breakfast and to melt snow so we have drinking water for the hike back. A non-working stove would be a bad thing at this point.

So, after trying to duck tape, jerry rigging and focusing our combined mental energies on it, the stove still refused to pump, so we couldn’t pressurize it. Thankfully, it did still have a significant amount of pressure from the lunch meal that was cooked, so we fire it up and cooked dinner. It worked, it wasn’t pretty and it definitely didn’t inspire any confidence in me, but it worked. After dinner, we tried out a new Mountain House Blueberry Cheesecake meal. That was about the best meal I’ve ever had in the backcountry.

So, at that point it’s dark, about 6pm, the temperature is in the 20’s and lightly snowing. We notice the cameras had a good bit of ice on them, but still worked fine, thankfully. I head up to the point to take some nighttime photos of the area and Vu starts getting into the tent. After I was done with my photo excursion, I entered the tent as well. Unfortunately, since neither of us brought Uno cards or anything else to do in the tent, all we could do was check out the pictures we took on the cameras that day and then fall asleep, which we did right around 8pm. Knowing the sun wouldn’t come up until about 6 or 6:30 we had a long night ahead of us.

Sunday

Finally, daybreak came with a thoroughly disappointing sunrise. The sky was locked solid with high clouds so there was no morning light show over the granite valley walls of Yosemite. As the temperatures warmed up to the 30’s we started packing up camp and began the hike back. Since the stove was out of pressure, we only had about half a nalgene bottle of water each for the trek. Since the trail wasn’t all that long we weren’t too worried about it though.

On the hike back, we planned to avoid the “Most difficult ridge trail” and take the summit meadow route back to Glacier Point road and the parking lot. We made great time back, what with trying to outpace a crazy weirdo guy that had been trying to talk to us all weekend following close behind.

As soon as we got back to the car, we dropped those crazy packs and proceeded to return to Sunny Orange County. Before we got too far through Yosemite, we noticed a couple nice spots to take some photos (though really I just wanted to get out of the car for a bit to stretch my legs out). So we stopped at the Merced River, and then at an open meadow that used to be an airfield to flex some photographic muscle and to stretch some physical muscle, both of which turned out to be less impressive than Jarr’s muscles though.

Another six hours of driving later, we were back at the parking lot where Vu dropped me off and we went our separate ways.

Epilogue

Good trip, it needed a full day of exploration in between hiking out and hiking back though, as almost all trips do. The blueberry cheesecake meal was very good; I must buy more for future trips. I need to go to Yosemite more often, the place was astoundingly beautiful.

My pics from trip (note Vu’s site likely has many pics as well)

Vu’s take on the trip