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I met up with a very old friend of mine, Vu Bui who I haven’t seen in about 4 years.  He asked me, “So no more APM’s?”  I had to explain to him how it has been more of a posting malaise, since I have been keeping active these last few months, just not writing or documenting much (any).  I’ve also had a few things that I’ve wanted to write about but I’ve just been reluctant to.

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I’ve heard it said that all that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.  If there’s a need and you have the capacity to fill the need and do nothing, you bear the responsibility for that failure.

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I respect Hugh’s spirit of adventure and hope to be half that spry when I reach his age.  Thank you Vu for forcing me to write again.  It feels good, though I may take this down if I even put it up.

White Mountain III, a long foretold return to WM by the original crew from White Mountain 2003 fame is on the calendar.  September 15-18, 2008 are the dates.  Aaron, Bonnie, Jarr, Lan, Vu, I and any others who want to roll are all on the roster this time around.  The first two trips were the definition of memorable events, thankfully in a largely good way.

The last time we did this was 2003, and it was so fun we did two of them.  Then we all went our seperate ways, trying to recover from the trauma that we all suffered at the hands of defeat that summer.

An interesting aspect of this trip is that there will be three professional photographers/videographers/wankers and then there’s me, so there’s apparently going to be way too many cameras here.  But, at the very least there should be good pictures everywhere, unlike when it’s only me and Gant, who’s pictures I never see anyway.  Though, you likely won’t be able to say anything stupid without it being caught on one or more cameras.  Since I put together the first WM03 movie and made everyone look like jackasses, I’m sure I’ll have to watch myself very carefully for the sequel.

Well, Lan has spearheaded this new attempt.  Within an hour of him sending out an invitation email there were dozens of emails flying this way and that.  I can’t wait for this, it’s just plain old White Mountain, but it’s beautiful to me.

So, Vu has started his Vegan program. As someone who really doesn’t care much about food (me) looking at Vu, I always thought he was silly for spending so much time, effort and money on “Good” food. He’s infatuated with food, he really is. So, him giving up what he knows and likes for two months to eat a strictly vegan diet seems impressive, since even I think Vegans eat shit for food.

You can watch him and his experiment here.

I also recently found out that Vu is also a Battlestar Galactica fan, like myself. If you haven’t seen the re-imagined series at all, you should give it a chance. Forget the big hair, plastic robots and spinning Baltar chair of the old series and immerse yourself in a very human drama wearing Scifi as a cover to tell the story. I’ve never been more attached to a tv show, I’ve bought all the soundtracks, bought all the seasons on DVD and watch it religously, when it’s on.

Which brings me to the SCIFI network in general and how assinine they are. The network that brought the world Mansquito, the movie dicks around with Battlestar more often than it would seem possible. Season three ends on something of a cliffhanger and season four won’t begin until at least 9 MONTHS after season 3 ended. SCIFI can suck a dick for that and all the other crap they’ve tried to foist (more standalone episodes in season 3 to draw in new viewers, instead of sticking with the main story arc and it’s substories) and the other delays in season programming.

If you haven’t watched it, there’s no better time than now, since you can just rent it or buy it on DVD. If you’re a severe cheapass on the order of the original Captain Budget, DGant, you can borrow my DVD’s anytime. Just make it through the miniseries (2 or 3 hours) and then the first episode; 33. After that, you will either be hooked to the show or possibly hooked up to a breathing machine because you are too stupid to breathe on your own if you don’t like it.

God I loves me some BSG.

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.

Gant, Vu and I went up with Dr. Dubowitz for some high altitude doctor crap.

This has been a shitty week, thankfully there’s only about 13 hours of it left. I can’t describe everything that is wrong in here, because it is after all a public journal. Anyone reading this knows enough about me to know that I don’t give out personal info easily if at all, but as far as stuff that I can and will discuss:

1) Sunburn, on my scalp, feet and ankles. I fucking hate sunburns because they are so easy to avoid and I know that I get them supereasy… so it’s really fucking stupid for me not to protect myself against them.

2) Poison Oak on my foreams and misc other places. 2nd on my hatred list is Poison oak, because again I’m super-susceptible to it and I know it. FUCK.

3) Backed my truck into a tree. Enough said about that I suppose.

I hope Vu would be proud of me for using the sidelighting correctly in this shot to emphasize the (new) textures of the tailgate. At least I’m learning more about photographic technique eh?

4) Tons of other shit that went down this week.

5) This is the last weekend I have off in August and it was largely wasted by me doing absolutely nothing exciting, new, or exploratory. That’s not like me, and I just have to blame it on 4.

Why am I so whiny lately?

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