Night of the Living Deer

Greetings!

I'm sitting here on my lunch break, writing a brief update on the weekend's backpacking trip, in a feeble attempt to be timely.

We never reached Tower Peak. In fact, we never saw it again after the first few miles in Leavitt Meadow. As Kenneth so profoundly put it near the beginning of the trek, "that looks far away".

Out intended, and unreached, destination. Yes, it does look far away.

But we did have a blast! We made it most of the way to our planned destination, sleeping in Piute Meadows instead of at Tower Lake, but the hike took it's toll on Amber and I, seeing as how we had done little hiking lately to get into proper condition. Still we charged hard, and did about 11 miles each day, "uphill both ways", with heavy packs.

Kenneth adjusting his pack in Piute Meadows

The need to be functional today for work precluded the sanity of any summit attempt we might have made. In addition, we experience an event we can only describe as "Night of the Living Deer" that motivated us to attempt to move camp or hike out on Sunday. Regardless, we had a lot of fun and Upper Piute Meadows was spectacular, and we can't wait to plan another backpacking trip (and maybe one a bit more leisurely).

A full trip report should be coming soon...

Related Posts:

• The Tower Calls...
  

Photo Gallery:

Piute Meadows Backpacking

And now for something completely different:

• Night of the Living Deer, Pt II
  

The Tower Calls...

As I write this, we are already on our way to the Sierra for a long-anticipated backpacking, peakbagging adventure. Kenneth, Amber, and I are off to attempt Tower Peak in the Hoover Wilderness, some 15 miles distance from the Leavitt Meadows trailhead.

Tower Peak in the far distance, this is taken from near where we will start

It was the sight of Tower Peak that 'piqued' my interest in climbing and mountaineering, though I didn't know it at the time. Researching the peak exposed me to many resources I now find invaluable. So, I have high hopes for this venture to be a sort of culmination of the other adventures we've had in the meantime, summit or not.

But there is one bit I'm a little apprehensive over. Backpacking.

Amber sporting a pack in the Los Padres

Though I camped a lot growing up, I never did any backpacking. Not until two springs ago when Amber and I went on a trek through the Los Padres near Santa Barbara. What a nightmare that turned out to be! Overgrown trails, bushwacking through steep canyons of Poison Oak (to which I am highly allergic), and a painful last two miles night-hiking out so as to be able to shower off the allergens.

Really the poison oak was only a couple mile-ish sections, with really beautiful trail the rest of the way. But it was enough to create psychological misery. And on top of all that, the camera broke after we passed the point we had dayhiked before!

Last year's backpacking camp, before the madness

Nope, we were beaten. And sick of hiking for a while after that. In fact, that is how we discovered rock climbing! But in the end we're very excited about this trip, even if we need to drag our asses a ways in there to get up this thing.

So wish us luck! And we'll report back!

Sierra Summer - Photo Albums Posted!

Our trip galleries are up on Picasa now.  We would have liked to have more pictures, but we forgot the battery charger.  It's amazing we were able to make it last so long! (turning the display off and using the viewfinder really helped)...  A few of the Mt. Dana pictures were taken with a disposable 35mm.

Bear Valley Adventure Sports Festival

Twin Lakes/ Matterhorn Peak attempt

Yosemite August 2008

Tuolumne / Mt. Dana

Day 6-7 Bear Trails

We were not able to post the last couple of days, because we were in the high country of Yosemite, and they don't have any internet access. On Wednesday night, we had another encounter with a bear! We could hear our campsite neighbors start banging pots and pans together, and yelling from all sides of the campground, so we knew we had a bear checking around for food.

After we went into our tent for the night, we heard rangers explain to the tent next to us that there was a "very large bear" in the area. Then we heard him say, "there he is!" and we realized that the bear was running full speed towards our tent! We heard him gallop by, but by the time we unzipped our tent, he was gone. The ranger said that the bear was about 400 pounds. WOW!

On Thursday we attempted to climb Mt. Dana, but we missed the trail by a long shot, and ended up following bear trails through the wilderness for about two hours. After realizing that we were nowhere near the trail, we gave up and spent the rest of the day at Tanaya Lake, soaking in the atmosphere. That night we enjoyed a fun campfire program at our campground, and learned all about bears, and hiking in the high sierras.

We finally found a ranger who explained where the actual trail for Mt. Dana started, so on Friday we finally were able to climb Mt. Dana. It was 3000 ft up to the top, and as one lady explained at the top, it was a puffer. When you climb up to 13,000 feet, the air is very thin, and it almost feels like you are drunk or something when you reach around 12,000 feet.

Once at the top, we signed the register, ate lunch, and enjoyed the view. It was amazing! We were the first people up there that day, so we got to watch all the other hikers come up the mountain after us. We were most likely the only people that day that had the peak to ourselves for about half an hour. It took us a while to get downhill though, because it's so steep. Mt. Dana was beautiful, and we got to see about a dozen Marmots!

We decided to put a cap on our trip and end it on Friday, so that we could beat the weekend Yosemite traffic. We had a great trip, with lots of excitement and adventure, and we can't wait to do it again sometime!

Day Five - Camp 4

After having a few hairy moments of our own on the Trans-Sierra highways earlier in the week, we couldn't help but rescue a stranded motorist last night on the Tioga Road. We were coming back from the valley pretty late, having cleaned up, and done some laundry and shopping, when we came across a the owner of a stalled Jeep Cherokee spraying it's coolant all over the side of the road.

I think a lot of people don't fully realize how often there isn't any cell coverage for an emergency in the high-country. Luckily for Miles, a San Francisco resident, Amber and I came along to give him a lift to the nearest pay phone. He was on his way to meet some friends for a three-week backpacking trip on the John Muir trail. We did learn one important tip from him, which is to carry a phone card, something we'll surely be doing in the future. He got a hold of AAA and was able to get a tow to Lee Vining that night. We hope he still was able to meet his friends and has a great journey on the trail.

When we woke up this morning we discovered our camping bin had been toppled over and rifled through. Apparently there was a bear making good work of White Wolf campground last night. One of our neighbors had his cooler stolen as they were unpacking and we found paw prints around our car! Luckily we had properly stored our food and the bear neither woke us, or caused any damage to any of our gear. So remember: BEAR SAFETY PAYS OFF!

We spent most of the day today bouldering, a form of rock climbing done on short boulders with a pad underneath instead of a rope. It's a great practice because it allows you to work on technique without the usual constraints of moving gingerly to conserve energy on a long route. We picked up a pad last night, and bouldered this morning all around Curry Village. We worked on only the easiest problems, but they were still pretty tough for us.

We took a break from bouldering to walk across the valley floor, grab some lunch, talk to the rangers about hiking in the high country, and got to check out a great rock climbing exhibit at the Yosemite Museum. After our break the technique really started to set in. We did sever easy problems at Camp 4 and Swan Slabs, and were much more sucessfull. Amber said she had the most fun so far at Camp 4 and Swan Slabs. The climbs were challenging in that you really have to read the rock for the best place to put your hands and feet. Hopefully this will turn into gains in our roped route climbing too!

So now we're chilling out in this posh lounge, doing some recon. for hiking in the high country tomorrow, and writing this post. Time for us to head out of the valley, back up to White Wolf, and grub!

Day Four - Poaching Internet

Hey Everyone! We found a great campsite just outside of the Valley, called White Wolf. Today we had coffee with a park ranger, and climbed a little in the Valley. A secret inside source let us in on the best place to poach internet, and it's one of the classiest establishments in the park! We are going to do some housekeeping type stuff and head back to our campground to get ready for tomorrow, another big day in Yosemite!

Day Three

After a close call with the oil fill cap lodged in the shift mechanism, and a fire near the Sonora Pass, we thought nothing else could go wrong yesterday, but the Twin Lakes area had the worst selection of campsites ever.

Our campground was plagued by demonic, intermittant wind gust which kept me up all night and made today harder thanit needed to be.

We were well short of summiting Matterhorn Peak. We got off trail a couple times and burned out all our scrambling energy before the real fun began. Regardless it as an epic, beautiful 8.5 hr. Hike!

A little beaten but not broken, we have decided we've had enough of Twin Lakes and are now headed to find some camping somewhere on the 120...

Day one and two

Hey everyone! We had a lot of fun playing frisbee golf, watching a little kid win the bouldering contest, and eating BBQ in Bear Valley on Saturday. Today we climed some amazing cracks, at Spicer Terraces. On the way to our new destination, we saw a fire in the Sanora pass, so we changed plans, and we're heading to Twin Lakes to dayhike Matterhorn Peak instead, which means we won't be backpacking Tower Peak this time around.

Sierra Summer - 'Live Blog'

Greetings!

We are headed up to the mountains for a week to squeeze in some fun before the summer's up and work and school start going full-tilt again for the two of us. We have some pretty ambitious plans and have spent a lot of time prepping in the evenings recently for this ridiculous camping trip.

We'll be visiting Bear Valley for their Adventure Sports Festival, then heading for a major hike to Tower Peak. After that we will step it down a notch and spend time rock climbing and relaxing somewhere in Yosemite National Park (midweek of course!). After that who knows? Not very much is set in stone besides campin', adventurin' and chowin' down on all the yummy camp food we've thrown together.

So the big announcement is we'll be 'live blogging' and posting updates during the trip as much as possible. We may even be able to upload a few pictures during the trip! Please tune in throughout the week to find out what we've been up to!

Here's a couple pictures to whet your appetite:

Yosemite Valley


View of Yosemite high country in winter (including Tower Peak in right side, extremely distant)