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.