I am feeling a little odd – apprehensive? Scared? – today as I leave to drive around to the east side of the Sierras, where I will hike back up to Sixty Lakes Basin tomorrow. I think it is in part because it will be the first time I have camped alone (tonight) and the first time I will hike 16+ miles alone. Probably most of it has to do with all the snow on the mountain passes, and snow scares me.
This past weekend was lots of fun. This time we are staying in a “dorm,” which is really a woman’s house that has 3 extra bedrooms with two beds in each. The woman has an extensive dvd collection, and the first day back we spent the entire day vegging out and watching movies. The woman also stocks her refrigerator for her dorm guests, so we didn’t have to buy any food. Movies and food – doesn’t get much better than that. In the dorm was me, the Punster, and the two girls from the girl/girl group. One of the girls is from Washington and has been a rafting Guide in the past – going down rivers all over Washington and going down the Grand Canyon at least once. She went to one of the river trip places in Three Rivers and managed to go on a rafting trip this weekend for free in exchange for her helping guide the raft – pretty cool. The other girl is from California and has a twin sister who also does field work type of stuff. She is always super energetic and happy to be out hiking, or really doing anything, and is really fun to be around. She is known for the flannel shirt that she wears, as well as the one piece flannel outfit that she recently bought at Goodwill. J
The Punster, Flannel, and I went to the Visalia Farmer’s Market again on Saturday and did some random odds and ends around town. When we got back to the Park, we met up with the Guide and we all went to a swimming hole recommended by my boss to go find western pond turtles. He had also given us snorkeling gear, and though the water was freezing, we had a lot of fun and found two turtles! One the way back we stopped briefly at a post office built in the early 1900s.
Yesterday Flannel, the Guide, and I went to do touristy things in Sequoia National Park. We took a tour of Crystal Cave (very awesome), hiked up to Moro Rock (large rock with some 800 stairs to climb to get to the top), to Bobcat Point (amazing view of the valley below), Crescent Meadow (mountain meadow), Tharp’s Log (where a guy named Tharp built a hope out of a hollowed out fallen sequoia), the Senate (a bunch of giant sequoias all in one place), the President (one big tree), and finally the Giant Sherman Tree (the largest tree in the world by volume). Along the way we saw at least two bears (we think we saw the same one twice) and a weasel. One of the bears we saw when a bunch of tourists started acting really excited on the trail – the whole family, who we think were from out of the country – jumped up on a fallen log and excitedly started taking photos. To my amazement a bear popped out of the ferns about 20 feet ahead and began meandering its way toward us! Flannel told us, and the tourists, that this was bad – bears should not feel okay with being near people, because then the bear becomes a “problem bear.” As a result, we needed to haze the bear. I don’t know if the tourists understood us or not, but they certainly acted as if they hadn’t heard us. At this point the bear was about 6 feet from the tourists on their log. Flannel yelled at the bear and the Guide and I threw sticks at it until the bear ran away. The tourists scowled at us – we had obviously ruined their day by scaring away the bear that had been so close. Sigh
All in all, we had a great day being tourists.
As I said before, today I am driving to the east side where I will camp somewhere near Onion Valley and start hiking up Kearsarge Pass. I will make a brief stop at the Rae Lakes Ranger Station, and, depending on the time, camp there or continue on to Sixty Lakes Basin. Should be fun! I also recently bought a new camera battery, so hopefully I can take more photos without fear that they will die mid stint. Hopefully I will get another post out after this next stint in 11 days!
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