Mountain Yellow Legged Frogs

Center Basin Party 2012

This past weekend was full of hiking and the frog crew's annual party at Center Basin, with arguably the best turnout of all Center Basin Parties. 

Center Basin Party Photos

I hiked out on Thursday, got some supplies at Bishop, and drove back down to Lone Pine to meet up with my friends Justin and Sam from Tucson.  Justin and Sam's birthdays are 4 days apart, so each year they try to do a birthday trip.  This year's trip?  To visit Kris during the Center Basin Party, of course! 

We camped off the Whitney Portal Road, had a great breakfast at a bakery in town, and got tied up with time as I did some preliminary internet stuff, hitting the trailhead a little late at 11:00am.  Now, Justin and Sam have not been hiking around for their job at high elevation for the past 3 months, so it took us until 8 or 9 at night to get to Center Basin - a long 15 mile slog, luckily with only one pass, but 10 of those miles are uphill.  They both did it without complaint (even though we were all hurting) - I was very impressed. 

Saturday we slept in and basically hung out at camp as people began to trickle in - the JMT hiker who knew three of my coworkers, 3 of the Rae Lakes trail crew and the girlfriend of one of them (from Yosemite), two previous frog crew members who are now on the lake monitoring crew, the girlfriend and two best friends of one of the frog crew, all of the frog crew, including Isaac and Mary, who are doing site assessments these days (Mary, my partner from last year!).  In total, 22 people arrived.   We had hotdogs, chips with dip, and homemade pizzas, with the food being cooked by Sean and Rosa - being awesome hosts of the party.  I had my speakers and everyone took turns putting on different playlists - music in the backcountry! - and there was some dancing.  It was a pretty fun night. 

Earlier, before the festivities, Justin, Sam and I went to one of the now fishless lakes in Center Basin and enjoyed the mountain yellow legged frogs there - because there are a bunch in Center Basin still.  We would throw ants into the watch and watch as the frogs would hunt them down - it was great fun.  I surprised them both by pulling out some slices of cake that I had bought in Bishop and hiked out - they seemed to appreciate the gesture.  :)

Sunday we had a pancake breakfast, made by Sean, and people began to leave - jobs await!  Justin, Sam, and I left at 10:00am and made it out to the trailhead by around 6pm or so - a much better hike out than in!  I had decided to hike out again mainly because I hadn't had a chance to download the next two weeks' worth of Bible classes, but also because I hadn't had a chance to do any job hunting and I wanted to say goodbye to Justin and Sam.  We ended up having dinner at my favorite place - the Still Life Cafe in Independence, which serves French food.  I had my favorite dish - braised filet of pork with caramelized onions, served on pasta - yum yum yum.  We then treated ourselves to a hotel room - showers, beds, and TV.  A great day! 

Today is Monday - we will soon get out of bed, have breakfast, and they will drive back to Tucson while I hike back to Sixty Lakes - I wonder who will get there first! 

Big Horned Sheep

Hello all!

I bet you didn't expect a post from me until two weeks from now!  I decided to hike out with my friends who visited from Tucson for the Center Basin Party, so have a few minutes to write before I pack my stuff back up and hike back up the Sierra Nevadas - making my total mileage for this weekend 57 miles - and my feet feel it!

The last two weeks of work were punctuated with moments of awesomeness and moments of challenge.  The challenges won't be described here - too personal!  But know that I am having a lot of chances to learn and apply doctrine while out in the backcountry - lots of falling and picking myself up again.  I just downloaded my next series of Bible classes for the next two weeks, and based on their titles alone, know that they will apply directly to what I have been pressured with this summer.  It's hard, but in the end it will be worth it. 

Moments of awesomeness:

• While e-fishing one day, two hikers came up to my partner and I and mentioned that they had just seen seven big horned sheep up near the pass that goes into Gardner Basin.  So Christi and I took work off early and hiked up to see if we could see them too - and lo and behold we did!  First we only saw two, which was good enough, and decided that since we were already up there, we might as well hike all the way to the pass to look into Gardner Basin.  Along the way we looked down after getting onto a small ridge, and below us were five more sheep - two with radio collars!  They stood around a while for pictures and then ran away so that I could get a nice video of them.  Super cool.
• I bought a fishing pole, and this past hitch we taught ourselves how to use it.  It was great fun, and we ended up catching about 4 fish worthy of eating - maybe 6 to 8 inches long?  
• The trail crew at Rae Lakes had a homemade pizza party at the Rae Lakes Cabin - and invited us to come along!  The cabin has an oven, which is awesome.  We ate pizza all night, and had the additional good company of the ranger's wife, who was visiting, as well as his nephew and his wife, who were hiking through.  Pizza in the backcountry?  Don't mind if I do.
• Trail crew has a normal 5 on 2 off schedule, so on one of their days off two of the trail crew guys hiked over and carried a bear box from the hill near our camp to our camp - a job that we were supposed to do during our demobilization in Sept, and I at least was not looking forward to.  It was pretty cool - the bear box was super heavy and it would have taken Christi and me a long time to carry it the 1/4 mile down a hill, over a stream, through rocky paths, up a hill, to our camp.  The trail crew guys did it in excellent time though, and saved us a lot of work.  I rewarded them with hot tea and chocolate - the currency of the backcountry.
• Two of Christi's friends were doing the John Muir Trail and stopped by Sixty Lakes during the last hitch.  We hooked them up with a large dinner, extra food, extra tea, a dry place to wait out the rainstorm that day, and a potato breakfast the next morning.  I also took all their trash.  They seemed to really enjoy the hospitality, and said it was the first time they had gone to bed and not still been hungry.  

The not fun?  Part of it was the weather, which continued to be cloudy, cold, and rainy all hitch long.  Yuck.  One morning, around 3:00am, I woke to a thunder and lightning storm, with pelting rain, that lasted until 5:00am or so.  All around my tent were flashes of light followed soon after by claps of thunder.  At first I was a bit nervous and then realized the worst that could happen was that I would get hit and die - and that death was not something I was afraid of.  So I went back to bed.  It was a pretty cool experience.  

Short Post - Mainly Photos

I have to hike out in a short while, so no time to write a blog!  Enjoy the photos, and the video!  Highlights of this past hitch included seeing Sierra big horn sheep for the first time, learning how to fish, and having a pizza party at the Rae Lakes cabin with the trail crew, ranger, and his wife.  Good times!

Photos!

Camp Life

Photos of Camp

So my mom commented that I show a lot of photos from camp, but none of camp. And then I realized that I talk a lot about what goes on in addition to work, but not what a normal day is like.  So here goes - this is for those people who might want more than two blog posts a month.  :)

6:00am - I wake up and put on an hour's worth of Bible class.  Sometimes I hit the snooze button, which always makes class go "late" and I have to eat breakfast a little faster.

7:00am (or 7:20, or 7:30) - Breakfast/morning ritual before work.

8:00-9:00am - we turn the radio on, whether or not work has started or not.  This is the only time we are guaranteed to have the radio on, and this is the time when our bosses can contact us.

We usually start work at 8:00am and work an 8-9 hour day, sometimes longer if we are mending a net and want to finish it before ending work.  The work week (our ten days) at a minimum, consists of cleaning and pulling out any fish from the nets in our 6 lakes (3 days) and electrofishing all our 8 reaches of streams at least once.  My goal for each work week is to do all this twice, which time-wise isn't possible, so we prioritize what lakes we want to target (have the nets cleaned more often) and which stretches of stream we want to shock more often.  Once a month we also do frog surveys of a bunch of lakes in the basin (2 days).

11:00 am - we turn the radio on again and listen to Wilderness Roundup, where the wilderness office calls each backcountry ranger on the radio, as well as any other employees who might need their location tracked through the week (ie, employees who don't stay in one location, like Sixty Lakes Basin, all summer).  This gives us a chance to know where our backcountry rangers are that day (the Rae Lakes and Charlotte Lake rangers) as well as give a feeling like we aren't the only ones out in the backcountry.  It's nice, to me, to hear familiar radio call numbers and voices on the radio, even if I probably won't meet most of the people on roundup.  Wilderness Roundup also gives the daily weather forecast and what the weather is supposed to be the next day.  If there is any percentage chance of rain that day or the next, it usually is a 100% guarantee of rain in Sixty Lakes. 

My sanctuary in camp is my tent, which has a box of books, a box of clothes, and a box of misc stuff in it (art supplies, binos, toilet paper, etc).  I have a small lantern in it (LED, not gas) and try to keep it tidy as much as possible. 

I think that might cover everything. 

Rain and Homesickness

Photos from the first two weeks of August

I’m a little gloomy today due to some pretty intense homesickness.  I miss my family, my friends, my cats, having like-minded people to talk to on a regular basis.  I really miss cats.  However, I will try and focus on the positive that has happened in the past two weeks. 

Work is going well.  My field partner and I are doing a great job at checking gill nets and electrofishing to the point where we are hopeful of removing the majority, if not all, of the fish in most of our lakes this summer.  It’s a pretty cool feeling.

My field partner and I hiked after work one day and found a pretty spectacular waterfall in the Mt. Clarence King area.  The Rae Lakes trail crew guys came and visited us the next day, and we hiked over to this same waterfall again to show them – it was that cool.

As mentioned above, we had guests!  The trail crew gets weekends off (just Sat and Sun) and while this is hardly any time to hike out to the front country, most elect to stay in and explore instead.  So last weekend three of the trail crew at Rae Lakes came over to visit us Sixty Lake girls(don’t get any ideas; they all have girlfriends), and we were all thrilled at having other people to talk to for a while.  At the beginning of the hitch two of Christi’s friends also hiked out to Sixty Lakes for a few days, which was also pretty neat. 

I bought a fishing pole and Christi worked with it for a while to try and figure out how to catch fish, with no luck.

We had dinner with the Rae Lakes Ranger, Dario, again, which is always a pleasure, and got to sleep in the loft of the cabin again, on temper-pedic mattresses – very fun.  The trail crew guys came over for beverages afterwards – tequila in lemonade – which was also pretty fun.  It’s a bit essential out in the backcountry to break up the monotony of the day to day tasks, especially when the number of fish caught each day starts to decrease. 

The weather in the backcountry for the past two weeks has been pretty crummy.  I think the only day that was sunny throughout was the first day we hiked to the waterfall.  The rest of the days were cloudy and cold at some point in the day (usually at the end of work, which is the best time to clean off in the lakes), often drizzly at some point with occasional thunder and lightning.  Ick.  Give me a nice hot, cloudless day for a change – that’s the Sierra Nevada Mountains that I know and love from last year.  On the plus side, since all the rain in the Sierra Nevadas comes from the southwest, I’m pretty sure that AZ has been getting rain this summer.  On the negative side, the forecast for next week calls for more rain, every day.  Alas. 

For our hike out, Christi and I hiked to Charlotte Lake on Thursday and then out to the front country on Friday.  We had to work 5 hours on Thursday, so left Sixty Lakes at 2:00 pm or so.  It threatened to rain, but we were pretty determined to make good time, so hiked to about a mile before Glen Pass before stopping to let the thunder and lightning pass by.  I had hiked in my rain pants and rain coat, and was thoroughly soaked with sweat by this time, so while we waited for the storm to pass I was mainly cold because of sweat, not rain.  Ironic.  I found a neat spot in a small patch of white bark pines that was mostly sheltered from the rain, and must have been there for an hour or two before the booms of thunder no longer sounded in the Glen Pass area.  We got to the top of the pass around 5:30pm, and got to the Charlotte Lake Ranger Station around 7:00 pm.  The ranger there, Rick, was expecting us, and already had company in the form of the Rae Lakes ranger and his wife.  We were fed tacos – delicious – with red wine and chocolate for dessert.  After dinner the Rae Lakes ranger and his wife went to bed, and Rick showed Christi and me some tricks of the trade when it comes to fishing for rainbow trout.  Turns out we didn’t have the right lures or equipment, or the right fishing knot, so I am looking forward to getting some of that equipment this weekend in Bishop and trying to fish again. 

So far in Bishop I’ve gone to two movies with Emma and Rosa – The Bourne Legacy (awesome movie, would definitely see it again) and Total Recall (more of a movie to rent then see in the theaters, but definitely entertaining).  The movie theater here is a two screen one, so that’s all there is to see this weekend.  :)  I’ve done all the usual things – shower, laundry, check email, eat out, buy chai lattes – and also found a really neat used book store here – East Side Books – that I would recommend anyone stop by and peruse if they are ever in Bishop. 

So things aren’t that bad, but I can’t wait to go home.  I know this is where God wants me right now, for the next two months, and have no idea what is in store for me after September 28, but I know that God has that under control as well.  Next weekend (in two weeks) is our Center Basin Party, where I will be hiking out Thursday, helping buy supplies, and hiking in Friday for the party Saturday, so I may not have time to update the blog, but I will give it a shot. 

If anyone knows someone in Bishop who has a cat, please let me know ASAP.  Dogs just don’t cut it in my world.  :)

I will post photos tomorrow.  Time to sign off and find a camping spot tonight.