Chilling in Vegas for a few days and "recuperating" before we head to Wyoming. Utah was a mess. We finally got the roof rack key in the mail today but we haven't been able to get at any of the stuff up there for over a week now. I lost my tent. We got 2 flat tires within a week and had to blow $600 to get a new set of tires. We spent 2 entire days driving just to solve the problems listed above. We couldn't get to our trailhead in the maze because we encountered a sandstone cliff of sorts that we didn't think we would be able to get the car back up. We paid over face value for a crappy hotel on priceline and when we tried to cancel they called the hotel and told them we thought the place looked trashy and run down. Subsequently the hotel manager bitched me out when we checked in, and accosted me again in the parking lot the next morning.
We did see a ton of gorgeous areas. All 3 districts of Canyonlands NP, Arches NP, Capitol Reef NP, drove through Escalante NM, and hiked the "best 3 mile hike in the world" in Bryce Canyon NP, and climbed a 12k foot mountain.
All in all I am so tired of tourist crap, and am really excited to get back to the mountains and do hard things again. In the desert nothing is "hard", it is just too hot to do that much. And I stopped appreciating the scenery after the first 4 national parks. Which is too bad because Bryce Canyon was really spectacular, but I was completely over it at the time.
I'm going to be uploading mass quantities of photos tomorrow and hopefully getting flickr setup so I can have full quality images online (and as a backup in case anything happens to my laptop).
Friday, July 24, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
About to head out of Moab. We spent 2 days in Arches (hiked every inch of trail in the park and camped in the backcountry one night). Yesterday we drove to the "Island in the Sky" district of Canyonlands and then drove up to the La Sal mountains. We were trying to make it to the pass in time for the sunset but got a flat on the way up. Ironically the road was 100 times nicer than the roads we had been driving on in Colorado, but I guess getting a flat is just 99% bad luck. We climbed Mt. Tukuhnikivatz today (12,480) and just got some supplies to head out for a few days. We also managed to lose both our keys to the roof rack. So all of the gear we have up there is trapped until we ca figure out how to get a new key made for it... Tragic.
Total casualties: Tent, Tire, both keys to the roof rack.
Total casualties: Tent, Tire, both keys to the roof rack.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Leaving to head to Moab right now. Successful time in colorado. Rafting, Rocky Mountain NP, and climbing six 14ers in 6 days including climbing the tallest mountain outside of California and Alaska at night. Only one casualty; we lost my tent today, we think if fell out of the car window when it was opened by some gear that got piled on the window switch. Monster trip report for Colorado is in progress.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Facebook Photo Albums
Rocky Mountain National Park:
Backpacking Trip - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2201876&id=19700119&l=2333ec3984
Longs Peak - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2201884&id=19700119&l=034b5ae4d2
Colorado Miscellaneous (Independence Pass, Grays Peak, Torres Peak, Alma, Paris Mine, Etc...): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2201908&id=19700119&l=89fa49ecbe
Backpacking Trip - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2201876&id=19700119&l=2333ec3984
Longs Peak - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2201884&id=19700119&l=034b5ae4d2
Colorado Miscellaneous (Independence Pass, Grays Peak, Torres Peak, Alma, Paris Mine, Etc...): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2201908&id=19700119&l=89fa49ecbe
Friday, July 10, 2009
I have updates coming I promise. I have been in the land of no internet so I haven't had any way to hook up my laptop and put pictures online. Also, I'm going to spruce up the other trip reports with images where relevant.
We just got back from Rocky Mountain National Park, cool place. We have cancelled the other rafting trip and are going to do other stuff in utah instead. Colorado still for the next few days. I'll try to keep you posted.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Sawtooth Range
We got delayed a few extra days after graduation because I came down with a vicious sore throat/cold, making our already short trip in the Sawtooth Range even shorter. By the time we got there we had only 3 nights to spend in the area before we needed to head down to the Yampa to meet up with people for the river trip.
The Sawtooth Range in my opinion is more spectacular than many national parks. It is however largely undeveloped with no easy access to the majority of the range. This keeps it a relatively unspoiled wilderness. The area we decided to attack was the east side of the wilderness, west of the iron creek trailhead, around Sawtooth Lake.
The first night we camped on national forest land near the trailhead. We woke up in the morning to sunny skies and a comfortable temperature. We drove over to the trailhead and started unpacking our gear from the car into our backpacks. Pretty much as soon as we got everything spread out it started to pour. We quickly threw everything back in the car and tried to wait it out. The only problem was that while we were packing before we had the car open and it had filled with mosquitoes. So now we were trapped inside with them. I think Justin nearly broke the windshield a few times trying to hit them.
We finally got packed up and started hiking up. Our plans were to either stay at Alpine Lake or Sawtooth Lake and to try to climb Mt. Regan. The standard route up Regan is a class 3+/4- climb. A ways up we passed two hikers coming down who had camped at Alpine Lake for two nights and attempted Mt. Regan twice, they were turned back both times due to weather. They told us that Sawtooth Lake was still frozen solid and that Alpine Lake had patchy ice. This pretty much made up our minds for us because we were depending on the lake to filter water to drink and didn’t bring enough fuel to rely on melting snow. In hindsight it was a really good thing we stayed at Alpine Lake, beautiful scenery, more protected, lower elevation, and we found a really fun route because we were staying there.
The whole day it had been drizzling on us, getting progressively heavier and heavier. When we found a campsite we used the tent footprint to setup a mini shelter from the rain. We cooked dinner and retired to the tent around 9 pm. We woke up in the middle of the night because the sound of the rain had changed. We looked at the skylight in the tent and noticed it was covered in snow and frozen water. We opened a door and looked out into the vestibule, which was covered on the outside in snow. The tent we were using is 3+ season but not really built to withstand or shed snow. We woke up a couple more times in the night and shook off various parts of the tent.
When we got up in the morning it was sunny, just like the day before… We immediately set to dry out as much stuff as possible in the sun fearful that it would change back to snow or rain at any moment. We had maybe a half an inch at our campsite (7500 feet) and could see substantially more higher up. At this point we ditched our plan to climb Regan because we didn’t want to be doing 4th class climbing without protection in the snow. Instead we opted to climb Alpine Peak which was looming over Alpine Lake. There was a snow gully that led up the west side of the peak to a broad saddle between Alpine Peak, Merritt Peak and Mount Regan. The hiking at first was really straightforward, a basic snow climb up in mellow grade. The top of this gully culminated in a couple hundred-yard stretch of 30ish degree climbing, nothing too dangerous or particularly strenuous. We topped out on the gully around 8800 feet, 1000 feet below the summit.
At this point we began to traverse across the southeastern face of the mountain, the original plan was to climb up the southwestern face, which was a straightforward class 2 snow climb. Partway through the traverse we opted instead to climb the southeast face. This was steeper and slightly more technical than the southwest face. The pitch we climbed was approaching 50-60 degrees; there are some pictures I took from partway up where you can easily gauge the slope. This was the steepest snow climb I had ever attempted but was relatively safe because except for one rock partway up it would have been a clean fall, down soft snow, in which you could easily self-arrest. This portion of the climb was really fun and we had a great view the whole time as we got higher. This topped out on the summit ridge about 100 vertical feet below the summit.
The rest of the summit ridge was really corniced and it was hard to tell what was fresh snow and what was older soft snow. It looked like there was about 6 inches of new snow up there, more in places where it had drifted. Because snow melts in different patterns than it accumulates we were left with an awkward walk along this ridge. Trying not to be too close to the cornice, but at the same time not getting to close to the gap where the snow had melted away from the rock. The last 20 or so vertical feet was more sketchy scrambling across ice-encrusted rocks. The type of stuff you don’t want to do in crampons, but don’t want to do without crampons. I finally made it up to the summit and explored and hung out for an hour or so until Wagner got up. We chilled on top for maybe another 40 minutes taking in the mid winter view on June 21st. If I saw a picture and was asked to guess the date my guess would have been mid April, not late June.
We decided to descend via the regular route. Partially because it would be easier and partially because it would afford us great views of a different part of the wilderness we hadn’t seen before. The hike down was uneventful, we had some fun glissading down the steeper part of the regular route, and a great view as we skirted Sawtooth Lake back towards the trail to Alpine Lake. We got back to camp around 7 and tore everything down as quickly as we could. We were out of the camp by a little after 8 and headed back towards the trailhead. We got to the trailhead just after dark around 10 and drove back to our campsite from the first night. Crashed there, and headed out in the morning.
The Sawtooth Range in my opinion is more spectacular than many national parks. It is however largely undeveloped with no easy access to the majority of the range. This keeps it a relatively unspoiled wilderness. The area we decided to attack was the east side of the wilderness, west of the iron creek trailhead, around Sawtooth Lake.
The first night we camped on national forest land near the trailhead. We woke up in the morning to sunny skies and a comfortable temperature. We drove over to the trailhead and started unpacking our gear from the car into our backpacks. Pretty much as soon as we got everything spread out it started to pour. We quickly threw everything back in the car and tried to wait it out. The only problem was that while we were packing before we had the car open and it had filled with mosquitoes. So now we were trapped inside with them. I think Justin nearly broke the windshield a few times trying to hit them.
We finally got packed up and started hiking up. Our plans were to either stay at Alpine Lake or Sawtooth Lake and to try to climb Mt. Regan. The standard route up Regan is a class 3+/4- climb. A ways up we passed two hikers coming down who had camped at Alpine Lake for two nights and attempted Mt. Regan twice, they were turned back both times due to weather. They told us that Sawtooth Lake was still frozen solid and that Alpine Lake had patchy ice. This pretty much made up our minds for us because we were depending on the lake to filter water to drink and didn’t bring enough fuel to rely on melting snow. In hindsight it was a really good thing we stayed at Alpine Lake, beautiful scenery, more protected, lower elevation, and we found a really fun route because we were staying there.
The whole day it had been drizzling on us, getting progressively heavier and heavier. When we found a campsite we used the tent footprint to setup a mini shelter from the rain. We cooked dinner and retired to the tent around 9 pm. We woke up in the middle of the night because the sound of the rain had changed. We looked at the skylight in the tent and noticed it was covered in snow and frozen water. We opened a door and looked out into the vestibule, which was covered on the outside in snow. The tent we were using is 3+ season but not really built to withstand or shed snow. We woke up a couple more times in the night and shook off various parts of the tent.
When we got up in the morning it was sunny, just like the day before… We immediately set to dry out as much stuff as possible in the sun fearful that it would change back to snow or rain at any moment. We had maybe a half an inch at our campsite (7500 feet) and could see substantially more higher up. At this point we ditched our plan to climb Regan because we didn’t want to be doing 4th class climbing without protection in the snow. Instead we opted to climb Alpine Peak which was looming over Alpine Lake. There was a snow gully that led up the west side of the peak to a broad saddle between Alpine Peak, Merritt Peak and Mount Regan. The hiking at first was really straightforward, a basic snow climb up in mellow grade. The top of this gully culminated in a couple hundred-yard stretch of 30ish degree climbing, nothing too dangerous or particularly strenuous. We topped out on the gully around 8800 feet, 1000 feet below the summit.
At this point we began to traverse across the southeastern face of the mountain, the original plan was to climb up the southwestern face, which was a straightforward class 2 snow climb. Partway through the traverse we opted instead to climb the southeast face. This was steeper and slightly more technical than the southwest face. The pitch we climbed was approaching 50-60 degrees; there are some pictures I took from partway up where you can easily gauge the slope. This was the steepest snow climb I had ever attempted but was relatively safe because except for one rock partway up it would have been a clean fall, down soft snow, in which you could easily self-arrest. This portion of the climb was really fun and we had a great view the whole time as we got higher. This topped out on the summit ridge about 100 vertical feet below the summit.
The rest of the summit ridge was really corniced and it was hard to tell what was fresh snow and what was older soft snow. It looked like there was about 6 inches of new snow up there, more in places where it had drifted. Because snow melts in different patterns than it accumulates we were left with an awkward walk along this ridge. Trying not to be too close to the cornice, but at the same time not getting to close to the gap where the snow had melted away from the rock. The last 20 or so vertical feet was more sketchy scrambling across ice-encrusted rocks. The type of stuff you don’t want to do in crampons, but don’t want to do without crampons. I finally made it up to the summit and explored and hung out for an hour or so until Wagner got up. We chilled on top for maybe another 40 minutes taking in the mid winter view on June 21st. If I saw a picture and was asked to guess the date my guess would have been mid April, not late June.
We decided to descend via the regular route. Partially because it would be easier and partially because it would afford us great views of a different part of the wilderness we hadn’t seen before. The hike down was uneventful, we had some fun glissading down the steeper part of the regular route, and a great view as we skirted Sawtooth Lake back towards the trail to Alpine Lake. We got back to camp around 7 and tore everything down as quickly as we could. We were out of the camp by a little after 8 and headed back towards the trailhead. We got to the trailhead just after dark around 10 and drove back to our campsite from the first night. Crashed there, and headed out in the morning.
Mt Shasta
Justin and I stopped in Sacramento on the way back up from Yosemite for the Saturday finals at the IRA and to pick Will Gustafson (Guff) up. Our plan was to camp at the trailhead Saturday night, camp at Helen Lake Sunday night, and get back up to Corvallis Monday night in time for Guff to take a final on Tuesday morning.
We stopped in the bustling metropolis of Mount Shasta City to do some laundry, get dinner, buy some groceries, and for Justin and Guff to waste 40 dollars each renting snowshoes that wouldn’t make it more than ¼ mile from the trailhead. It should also be noted that they played around with the idea of renting avalanche beacons because there had been 4 inches of snow a few days previous. Needless to say, I am glad for their wallets sake that they forgot those.
We made our way up to the trailhead and after a few beers and some spirited intellectual discussion we setup camp. When we arrived around 10 pm we saw some guy sleeping on the ground next to his car. We think he started hiking around 1 and by the time we woke up and started to break down camp in the morning he was on his way back to his car, having hiked all the way up and skied back down before 10 am. We felt lame.
We started hiking from the Bunny Flat Trailhead (~ 7,600 feet) around noon, with the goal being to make it to Helen Lake (at 10,500 feet) in time to setup camp and make dinner before it got dark. About a quarter of a mile past the trailhead, Guff asked some people coming down if the snowshoes were necessary. They assured him that he would not need them and he ran them back down to the car while Justin and I proceeded.
We stopped at Horse Camp, a Sierra Club lodge (at 8,500 feet) momentarily to let Guff catch up. While we were there we talked to the caretaker who said that someone up higher had fallen and they were trying to get a helicopter in to airlift them out. It was super windy on Sunday and it took them four tries to get the helicopter low enough to drop a hoist that the rangers could get the injured person in. After talking to more people coming down we found out that he had been glissading with his crampons on, his crampons caught the snow, and he compound fractured his tibia and fibula (11,500 feet). The ranger had to get him down to Helen Lake where the helicopter would more easily be able to swoop in to pick him up.
We slogged up the next 2000 feet through intermittent fog. It made the hike really drag on because there was absolutely no sense of progress. Finally around 10,000 feet we broke out of the fog and could finally see where we were headed. We met the ranger who had helped the injured party earlier; he was cruising down and proclaimed it “Miller Time”. He also mentioned to be sure to anchor our tents well, explaining that the previous night several tents had been blown off the mountain.
We arrived at Helen Lake by mid afternoon and tried to find the most suitable spot to make camp. Part of the beauty of snow camping is that you can make whatever you need. In this case, the night before tons of people had dug shelters into the snow wall below Helen Lake and we were more than happy to take over an abandoned one. Of course because we had great shelter there wasn’t a breath of wind. There were four other tents up there Sunday night. Two of them were not attempting the summit the next day and two were.
We built a snow kitchen, cooked dinner, and were asleep by 9 pm. We woke at 3 am to start our summit attempt. The moon was up and we had a great view through the night down the mountain and into the nothingness that surrounds Shasta. We made good progress up for the first 1000 vertical feet without crampons. When the slope steepened we decided it was time to put crampons on. Unfortunately, Justin decided it was also time to drop a Nalgene bottle and his climbing helmet.
After this mishap Guff and I pressed on and Justin waited for someone else to bring his helmet back up. As we passed people going up we asked them when and where they had started, the answers got earlier and earlier with the majority of people starting from Horse Camp between 2 am and 11:30 pm. We climbed up through the Red Banks (12,500 feet) just after sunrise. There was a cloud layer covering the valley and the reflected colors as the sun rose were pretty phenomenal. On Shasta once you get past the Red Banks you change directions and proceed up “Misery Hill” over a series of false summits before you get to the final relatively flat stretch before the summit. Guff and I weren’t feeling so miserable, but other people were definitely feeling the effects of altitude.
We charged up with another small group and summited around 9 am. It was remarkably warm and calm on the summit so we took advantage of that and hung out for a half hour while we snapped some pictures and I changed into the snowboarding gear I had lugged up the hill.
On my way down a hundred feet or so from the summit I saw Justin coming up. He made really good time considering how long he had to wait for his helmet. I told him I would wait for him at the top of Misery Hill and continued snowboarding down. Now I needed to wait for the snow to soften up to be able to have a fun ride down, and I wanted to walk down the top part of Misery Hill because there was not a lot of snow cover over some sharp rocks, so I really didn’t mind waiting for Justin. In fact, I decided this would be a nice spot for a nap, so I laid out my snowboard and napped in the sun at 13,500 feet for about an hour while I waited for him. Best nap of my life.
Once he got back down to me we continued back down Misery Hill until I got to the point where I felt comfortable with the rockiness. The snow was still really firm so I powerslid (the high-speed equivalent of sideslipping) down through the rest of the sketchy parts. At this point I traversed right, over to the top of “The Heart”. I however missed the headwall by about 20 feet and really didn’t feel like hiking back up over some exposed rock ridges in snowboard boots without crampons. The only other option was to drop into one of the chutes in the Red Banks. Let’s just say I feel much more comfortable on sketchy terrain with a snowboard on, than carrying a snowboard. I bombed through the top chute in the Red Banks and flew out into the open bowl named “The Heart”. The snow was just soft enough that I could hold an edge but otherwise was very unpleasant to ride on. I sliced a few huge arching turns down through the heart, narrowly avoiding rocks several times. The bowl was pretty moderately pitched (~30 degrees) with not much in the way of danger below it so I flew down – loosing control a couple times and sliding out before I could get an edge to dig back in. As I got back down towards Helen Lake the snow started to soften up more and became reasonably fun.
I got back down to camp in about 5 minutes just in time to see Guff taking a nap in the tent, naked, with the tent doors open. Interesting. We hung out in the sauna that was Helen Lake for about an hour while we waited for Justin to get down. The clouds were rolling in and out of the basin that Helen Lake sits in and with the sun baking the clouds it was 70 or 80 degrees with 100% humidity, completely unpleasant.
When Justin got down to camp we packed up the tents and loaded as much as possible onto my backpack because I was snowboarding down and didn’t need to carry it for as long. I took off and bombed down towards Horse Camp. As I got farther down the snow quality rapidly deteriorated. By the time I got to horse camp I was exhausted from trying to shred the foot deep boot holes and suncups. But the whole trip, which took us 4 hours to get up, took 6 minutes to get down. I hung out at horse camp for a few minutes and asked the caretaker what the best route down on a snowboard was. She said there was a gully that usually held snow pretty well but she hadn’t been over there in a few weeks and had no idea how it was holding up. I traversed over there and was pleasantly surprised how much snow there was. It got progressively sketchier for the next couple miles until it was just not worth it to try and snowboard anymore. I unstrapped and made my way back to the main trail. A quarter-mile later I was back in the parking lot. I hung out in the parking lot for an hour or so until Wagner and Guff got back down. We packed up the car and headed back to Corvallis.
We stopped in the bustling metropolis of Mount Shasta City to do some laundry, get dinner, buy some groceries, and for Justin and Guff to waste 40 dollars each renting snowshoes that wouldn’t make it more than ¼ mile from the trailhead. It should also be noted that they played around with the idea of renting avalanche beacons because there had been 4 inches of snow a few days previous. Needless to say, I am glad for their wallets sake that they forgot those.
We made our way up to the trailhead and after a few beers and some spirited intellectual discussion we setup camp. When we arrived around 10 pm we saw some guy sleeping on the ground next to his car. We think he started hiking around 1 and by the time we woke up and started to break down camp in the morning he was on his way back to his car, having hiked all the way up and skied back down before 10 am. We felt lame.
We started hiking from the Bunny Flat Trailhead (~ 7,600 feet) around noon, with the goal being to make it to Helen Lake (at 10,500 feet) in time to setup camp and make dinner before it got dark. About a quarter of a mile past the trailhead, Guff asked some people coming down if the snowshoes were necessary. They assured him that he would not need them and he ran them back down to the car while Justin and I proceeded.
We stopped at Horse Camp, a Sierra Club lodge (at 8,500 feet) momentarily to let Guff catch up. While we were there we talked to the caretaker who said that someone up higher had fallen and they were trying to get a helicopter in to airlift them out. It was super windy on Sunday and it took them four tries to get the helicopter low enough to drop a hoist that the rangers could get the injured person in. After talking to more people coming down we found out that he had been glissading with his crampons on, his crampons caught the snow, and he compound fractured his tibia and fibula (11,500 feet). The ranger had to get him down to Helen Lake where the helicopter would more easily be able to swoop in to pick him up.
We slogged up the next 2000 feet through intermittent fog. It made the hike really drag on because there was absolutely no sense of progress. Finally around 10,000 feet we broke out of the fog and could finally see where we were headed. We met the ranger who had helped the injured party earlier; he was cruising down and proclaimed it “Miller Time”. He also mentioned to be sure to anchor our tents well, explaining that the previous night several tents had been blown off the mountain.
We arrived at Helen Lake by mid afternoon and tried to find the most suitable spot to make camp. Part of the beauty of snow camping is that you can make whatever you need. In this case, the night before tons of people had dug shelters into the snow wall below Helen Lake and we were more than happy to take over an abandoned one. Of course because we had great shelter there wasn’t a breath of wind. There were four other tents up there Sunday night. Two of them were not attempting the summit the next day and two were.
We built a snow kitchen, cooked dinner, and were asleep by 9 pm. We woke at 3 am to start our summit attempt. The moon was up and we had a great view through the night down the mountain and into the nothingness that surrounds Shasta. We made good progress up for the first 1000 vertical feet without crampons. When the slope steepened we decided it was time to put crampons on. Unfortunately, Justin decided it was also time to drop a Nalgene bottle and his climbing helmet.
After this mishap Guff and I pressed on and Justin waited for someone else to bring his helmet back up. As we passed people going up we asked them when and where they had started, the answers got earlier and earlier with the majority of people starting from Horse Camp between 2 am and 11:30 pm. We climbed up through the Red Banks (12,500 feet) just after sunrise. There was a cloud layer covering the valley and the reflected colors as the sun rose were pretty phenomenal. On Shasta once you get past the Red Banks you change directions and proceed up “Misery Hill” over a series of false summits before you get to the final relatively flat stretch before the summit. Guff and I weren’t feeling so miserable, but other people were definitely feeling the effects of altitude.
We charged up with another small group and summited around 9 am. It was remarkably warm and calm on the summit so we took advantage of that and hung out for a half hour while we snapped some pictures and I changed into the snowboarding gear I had lugged up the hill.
On my way down a hundred feet or so from the summit I saw Justin coming up. He made really good time considering how long he had to wait for his helmet. I told him I would wait for him at the top of Misery Hill and continued snowboarding down. Now I needed to wait for the snow to soften up to be able to have a fun ride down, and I wanted to walk down the top part of Misery Hill because there was not a lot of snow cover over some sharp rocks, so I really didn’t mind waiting for Justin. In fact, I decided this would be a nice spot for a nap, so I laid out my snowboard and napped in the sun at 13,500 feet for about an hour while I waited for him. Best nap of my life.
Once he got back down to me we continued back down Misery Hill until I got to the point where I felt comfortable with the rockiness. The snow was still really firm so I powerslid (the high-speed equivalent of sideslipping) down through the rest of the sketchy parts. At this point I traversed right, over to the top of “The Heart”. I however missed the headwall by about 20 feet and really didn’t feel like hiking back up over some exposed rock ridges in snowboard boots without crampons. The only other option was to drop into one of the chutes in the Red Banks. Let’s just say I feel much more comfortable on sketchy terrain with a snowboard on, than carrying a snowboard. I bombed through the top chute in the Red Banks and flew out into the open bowl named “The Heart”. The snow was just soft enough that I could hold an edge but otherwise was very unpleasant to ride on. I sliced a few huge arching turns down through the heart, narrowly avoiding rocks several times. The bowl was pretty moderately pitched (~30 degrees) with not much in the way of danger below it so I flew down – loosing control a couple times and sliding out before I could get an edge to dig back in. As I got back down towards Helen Lake the snow started to soften up more and became reasonably fun.
I got back down to camp in about 5 minutes just in time to see Guff taking a nap in the tent, naked, with the tent doors open. Interesting. We hung out in the sauna that was Helen Lake for about an hour while we waited for Justin to get down. The clouds were rolling in and out of the basin that Helen Lake sits in and with the sun baking the clouds it was 70 or 80 degrees with 100% humidity, completely unpleasant.
When Justin got down to camp we packed up the tents and loaded as much as possible onto my backpack because I was snowboarding down and didn’t need to carry it for as long. I took off and bombed down towards Horse Camp. As I got farther down the snow quality rapidly deteriorated. By the time I got to horse camp I was exhausted from trying to shred the foot deep boot holes and suncups. But the whole trip, which took us 4 hours to get up, took 6 minutes to get down. I hung out at horse camp for a few minutes and asked the caretaker what the best route down on a snowboard was. She said there was a gully that usually held snow pretty well but she hadn’t been over there in a few weeks and had no idea how it was holding up. I traversed over there and was pleasantly surprised how much snow there was. It got progressively sketchier for the next couple miles until it was just not worth it to try and snowboard anymore. I unstrapped and made my way back to the main trail. A quarter-mile later I was back in the parking lot. I hung out in the parking lot for an hour or so until Wagner and Guff got back down. We packed up the car and headed back to Corvallis.
Yosemite
Yosemite Trip Report
There really isn’t a whole lot you can say that does justice to the scale of everything at Yosemite. Even the hundreds of pictures I posted don’t really capture the enormity of everything. So presumably if you are reading this you fall into one of two categories: you have or have not been there. If you have you understand what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, you should go.
The day before I left Corvallis I got an issue of Backpacker magazine, and skimming through it quickly one article caught my eye. It described a “secret” trail at Yosemite, one that hasn’t been on maps for some 20+ years. I sort of felt guilty using a trail that was formerly only known to locals (until some guy’s trip report blew it up) on my first visit of my adult life to the park. I realized though that as far as this trail went, the cat was out of the bag (so to speak) and I wasn’t the one who published it, and even if I didn’t take advantage of it hundreds of other people would.
We got to Yosemite Monday night and did the typical tourist crap, stopping every 50 feet to take pictures and gape at the walls, cliffs, waterfalls, and other tourists. We finally got into the Valley around 7 pm and cruised over to the Visitors Center. As soon as we walked in you could see the sign with the status for all campgrounds – they all read “full” or “closed”. Lame. We spoke with the ranger at the desk and she said the closest place we would be able to camp was the town of El Portal, which was back outside the park and about 30 miles away. Fortunately for us, El Portal is the home of the “most expensive gas station in the country”, and not just the continental US. We paid our 3.35/gal because we had very few other options and moved on to our campground. The two campgrounds that the ranger told us about were both full, bear in mind this was a weekday night before the peak season. The people at the second campground mentioned that there was an overflow campground farther down the road. This “campground” was actually a day use area, but we still had the privilege of paying $20 to camp there.
It turns out that there is a backpacker campground in the valley, which is a relatively closely guarded secret. You can only camp there the day before or day after your wilderness permit. But, it is $5 per night. If we had known this, and gotten into the Valley early enough to get a wilderness permit that night, we could have saved an hour of driving, $20 of gas, and $15 in camping fees. Live and learn, and then get loves.
We got our permit and bear canister, and only sort of got laughed at for wanting to do the trail that was in Backpacker. We parked in the main trailhead parking lot and had to take a shuttle over to our trailhead. For some reason packing always seems to be a huge fiasco, and ultimately we end up with 50% more gear than we need. We took the main park shuttle, transferred to the El Capitan shuttle, and then walked the last mile to our trailhead. It isn’t so much a trailhead as finding an old abandoned road from a small network of other service roads.
The “secret” trail we were going to take was the aptly named OBOFRT (Old Big Oak Flat Road Trail). It was the original road into the Valley, no longer in use mainly because it was built directly in the path of a set of very active rockslides. The road definitely felt more like a secret trail than the parks other main trails. It was really nice to walk out of the valley on a road grade as opposed to a trail with endless switchbacks climbing straight up a wall. The views as we got slightly off the Valley floor were great, and it was kind of fun to hike on this historic, mostly long forgotten, old road, with its pavement still intact in places.
That night brought us to Cascade Creek. There were a couple prime campsites, both of which were taken. So we spent an hour or so looking for anywhere that had a few square feet of flat ground. Eventually we hiked up the trail a little farther and over another smaller stream and found a nice campsite set farther back off the main trail.
The next day we hiked farther up the north rim of the valley towards El Cap. Justin thought it might be a good idea to hike as quickly as possible for a little to “get his heart rate up”, thinking we could just cruise the rest of the day and build some semblance of fitness. Unfortunately, instead of leveling out like he was expecting, it kept up a pretty good grade for the next 3 miles. So the strategy totally backfired and he was toast after the first 30 minutes of hiking in the morning.
We finally leveled out and started to get some views as we worked closer to the rim. We stopped to have lunch near Ribbon Stream, where, while I was filtering water, another pair of hikers passed us and said there was a bear about 50 feet up the trail from where we were making lunch. That was the closest we got the entire trip to seeing a bear.
After lunch we headed across towards El Cap, making one brief excursion towards the brink of Ribbon Falls to take some pictures. An interesting decision on my part found me on the wrong side of Ribbon Stream with no easy way to get back. I walked back up the stream looking for an easy place to cross, but there was none. After maybe 20 minutes of searching I took off my shoes and socks and waded through a slower part of the stream.
We finally made it up to the top of El Cap where the views were, as was to be expected, ridiculous. You really don’t get a feeling for how huge a rock formation it is until you are standing on top of it. We snapped some pictures and headed on. The next destination was Eagle Peak.
By the time we were at the junction for the spur trail up Eagle Peak we were pretty tired and had already covered almost 10 miles so the prospect of hiking up 400 additional feet didn’t sound too appealing. When we got up there we felt immediately justified. The views from Eagle Peak were hands down the most incredible I have ever seen. Even a sixteen-picture panorama doesn’t do it justice. It is impossible to capture enough of the view in one shot for it to make sense. We had a completely unobstructed view up the valley towards Half Dome and the John Muir Wilderness, and the only thing blocking our view out of the valley was the hulking mass of El Cap to the West. The entire valley floor played out below us and we could see the other tourists lining up at the viewpoints. The most appropriate way to describe it is the way Justin phrased it: “it’s so beautiful that it hurts”.
We cruised back down to the trail and on towards our camp. The only problem was finding a camp. All we were going by for where to camp this night was “by the river” from the trip report in Backpacker. We had no idea what side, or how far up or down. I walked all the way down to the top of the Yosemite Falls trail before I realized how far I had gone and that we needed to be almost a mile upstream from there to be out of the no camping zone.
While at the top of the Yosemite Falls trail I ran into a guy in sweatpants and a t-shirt who looked a little lost. By this time it was 7:30 and he asked me if I thought he would be able to make it back to the trailhead by dark. I knew it was about 3 miles down to the Valley, but had no idea how long that would take and he had about an hour before dark. He pointed out that he didn’t have a flashlight, but he did have a glow stick… I presume he didn’t die because we didn’t hear anything about it in the news.
After more exploration we found a campsite on the West side of Yosemite Creek, on a small perch a couple hundred feet or so from the river. The spot was just big enough for our tent, and if we dropped anything it was going for a ride down the hill towards the river.
That night it started pouring on us during our water filtration/dish washing efforts after dinner. Only to clear up as soon as we got everything put away and were in the tent for the night.
The next day we ventured up to Yosemite Point, which was a relative let-down after Eagle Peak. On the way back down we stopped at the Yosemite Falls overlook and took the obligatory tourist photos. After we’d had our fill we headed back down the Yosemite Falls Trail into the valley. The funny thing we noticed was that the tourists that made it up to the top of the falls were 5:1 foreigners to US citizens. We hypothesize that this is because it is actually a hard hike up and that Americans are all too lazy to make the trek when there are so many nice places they can drive.
The hike down was not one I would want to make in the dark – the trail was obvious and well worn, but it was steep and parts of it were wet with spray from the waterfall. It took us 2+ hours – I can only imagine how dark it was when Mr. Sweatsuit made it down.
Once we got down, we hopped a shuttle back to our car and started trying to unpack. We were eligible to stay at the backpacker campground so we quickly made our way over there and set up our tents.
That night we drove up towards Glacier Point and watched the Sunset from Sentinel Dome, one of the only places in the park that has a full 360 degree view. Unfortunately, due to a timing snafu, we got there a few minutes after sunset… but still had a great view of the alpenglow on the mountains of the John Muir Wilderness. After that we drove over to Glacier Point and spent three hours trying to take some long exposures… without a tripod.
That pretty much wrapped up our trip. That night the snow level dropped to about 1000 feet above the valley floor and we had to cancel our plans to check out Toulumne Meadows because the road was closed. We made our way up to Sacramento to watch the IRA’s and then up to Shasta, but that’s a different trip report.
There really isn’t a whole lot you can say that does justice to the scale of everything at Yosemite. Even the hundreds of pictures I posted don’t really capture the enormity of everything. So presumably if you are reading this you fall into one of two categories: you have or have not been there. If you have you understand what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, you should go.
The day before I left Corvallis I got an issue of Backpacker magazine, and skimming through it quickly one article caught my eye. It described a “secret” trail at Yosemite, one that hasn’t been on maps for some 20+ years. I sort of felt guilty using a trail that was formerly only known to locals (until some guy’s trip report blew it up) on my first visit of my adult life to the park. I realized though that as far as this trail went, the cat was out of the bag (so to speak) and I wasn’t the one who published it, and even if I didn’t take advantage of it hundreds of other people would.
We got to Yosemite Monday night and did the typical tourist crap, stopping every 50 feet to take pictures and gape at the walls, cliffs, waterfalls, and other tourists. We finally got into the Valley around 7 pm and cruised over to the Visitors Center. As soon as we walked in you could see the sign with the status for all campgrounds – they all read “full” or “closed”. Lame. We spoke with the ranger at the desk and she said the closest place we would be able to camp was the town of El Portal, which was back outside the park and about 30 miles away. Fortunately for us, El Portal is the home of the “most expensive gas station in the country”, and not just the continental US. We paid our 3.35/gal because we had very few other options and moved on to our campground. The two campgrounds that the ranger told us about were both full, bear in mind this was a weekday night before the peak season. The people at the second campground mentioned that there was an overflow campground farther down the road. This “campground” was actually a day use area, but we still had the privilege of paying $20 to camp there.
It turns out that there is a backpacker campground in the valley, which is a relatively closely guarded secret. You can only camp there the day before or day after your wilderness permit. But, it is $5 per night. If we had known this, and gotten into the Valley early enough to get a wilderness permit that night, we could have saved an hour of driving, $20 of gas, and $15 in camping fees. Live and learn, and then get loves.
We got our permit and bear canister, and only sort of got laughed at for wanting to do the trail that was in Backpacker. We parked in the main trailhead parking lot and had to take a shuttle over to our trailhead. For some reason packing always seems to be a huge fiasco, and ultimately we end up with 50% more gear than we need. We took the main park shuttle, transferred to the El Capitan shuttle, and then walked the last mile to our trailhead. It isn’t so much a trailhead as finding an old abandoned road from a small network of other service roads.
The “secret” trail we were going to take was the aptly named OBOFRT (Old Big Oak Flat Road Trail). It was the original road into the Valley, no longer in use mainly because it was built directly in the path of a set of very active rockslides. The road definitely felt more like a secret trail than the parks other main trails. It was really nice to walk out of the valley on a road grade as opposed to a trail with endless switchbacks climbing straight up a wall. The views as we got slightly off the Valley floor were great, and it was kind of fun to hike on this historic, mostly long forgotten, old road, with its pavement still intact in places.
That night brought us to Cascade Creek. There were a couple prime campsites, both of which were taken. So we spent an hour or so looking for anywhere that had a few square feet of flat ground. Eventually we hiked up the trail a little farther and over another smaller stream and found a nice campsite set farther back off the main trail.
The next day we hiked farther up the north rim of the valley towards El Cap. Justin thought it might be a good idea to hike as quickly as possible for a little to “get his heart rate up”, thinking we could just cruise the rest of the day and build some semblance of fitness. Unfortunately, instead of leveling out like he was expecting, it kept up a pretty good grade for the next 3 miles. So the strategy totally backfired and he was toast after the first 30 minutes of hiking in the morning.
We finally leveled out and started to get some views as we worked closer to the rim. We stopped to have lunch near Ribbon Stream, where, while I was filtering water, another pair of hikers passed us and said there was a bear about 50 feet up the trail from where we were making lunch. That was the closest we got the entire trip to seeing a bear.
After lunch we headed across towards El Cap, making one brief excursion towards the brink of Ribbon Falls to take some pictures. An interesting decision on my part found me on the wrong side of Ribbon Stream with no easy way to get back. I walked back up the stream looking for an easy place to cross, but there was none. After maybe 20 minutes of searching I took off my shoes and socks and waded through a slower part of the stream.
We finally made it up to the top of El Cap where the views were, as was to be expected, ridiculous. You really don’t get a feeling for how huge a rock formation it is until you are standing on top of it. We snapped some pictures and headed on. The next destination was Eagle Peak.
By the time we were at the junction for the spur trail up Eagle Peak we were pretty tired and had already covered almost 10 miles so the prospect of hiking up 400 additional feet didn’t sound too appealing. When we got up there we felt immediately justified. The views from Eagle Peak were hands down the most incredible I have ever seen. Even a sixteen-picture panorama doesn’t do it justice. It is impossible to capture enough of the view in one shot for it to make sense. We had a completely unobstructed view up the valley towards Half Dome and the John Muir Wilderness, and the only thing blocking our view out of the valley was the hulking mass of El Cap to the West. The entire valley floor played out below us and we could see the other tourists lining up at the viewpoints. The most appropriate way to describe it is the way Justin phrased it: “it’s so beautiful that it hurts”.
We cruised back down to the trail and on towards our camp. The only problem was finding a camp. All we were going by for where to camp this night was “by the river” from the trip report in Backpacker. We had no idea what side, or how far up or down. I walked all the way down to the top of the Yosemite Falls trail before I realized how far I had gone and that we needed to be almost a mile upstream from there to be out of the no camping zone.
While at the top of the Yosemite Falls trail I ran into a guy in sweatpants and a t-shirt who looked a little lost. By this time it was 7:30 and he asked me if I thought he would be able to make it back to the trailhead by dark. I knew it was about 3 miles down to the Valley, but had no idea how long that would take and he had about an hour before dark. He pointed out that he didn’t have a flashlight, but he did have a glow stick… I presume he didn’t die because we didn’t hear anything about it in the news.
After more exploration we found a campsite on the West side of Yosemite Creek, on a small perch a couple hundred feet or so from the river. The spot was just big enough for our tent, and if we dropped anything it was going for a ride down the hill towards the river.
That night it started pouring on us during our water filtration/dish washing efforts after dinner. Only to clear up as soon as we got everything put away and were in the tent for the night.
The next day we ventured up to Yosemite Point, which was a relative let-down after Eagle Peak. On the way back down we stopped at the Yosemite Falls overlook and took the obligatory tourist photos. After we’d had our fill we headed back down the Yosemite Falls Trail into the valley. The funny thing we noticed was that the tourists that made it up to the top of the falls were 5:1 foreigners to US citizens. We hypothesize that this is because it is actually a hard hike up and that Americans are all too lazy to make the trek when there are so many nice places they can drive.
The hike down was not one I would want to make in the dark – the trail was obvious and well worn, but it was steep and parts of it were wet with spray from the waterfall. It took us 2+ hours – I can only imagine how dark it was when Mr. Sweatsuit made it down.
Once we got down, we hopped a shuttle back to our car and started trying to unpack. We were eligible to stay at the backpacker campground so we quickly made our way over there and set up our tents.
That night we drove up towards Glacier Point and watched the Sunset from Sentinel Dome, one of the only places in the park that has a full 360 degree view. Unfortunately, due to a timing snafu, we got there a few minutes after sunset… but still had a great view of the alpenglow on the mountains of the John Muir Wilderness. After that we drove over to Glacier Point and spent three hours trying to take some long exposures… without a tripod.
That pretty much wrapped up our trip. That night the snow level dropped to about 1000 feet above the valley floor and we had to cancel our plans to check out Toulumne Meadows because the road was closed. We made our way up to Sacramento to watch the IRA’s and then up to Shasta, but that’s a different trip report.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Yampa River Trip Pictures
Here is the link to the Yampa Trip pictures. I am going to be signing up for a Flickr account soon so I will have them all in full quality.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2199713&id=19700119&l=13f0111415
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2199713&id=19700119&l=13f0111415
Colorado Update
We got back from the Yampa trip a few days ago. Spent a day in Carbondale at my aunts house, and two night at my grandpas outside Golden. We're leaving at 6 am tomorrow to go over to Rocky Mountain National Park for five nights. We're going to do a 3 day backpack, a single day assault of a more technical peak, and then a 2 day climb of Longs Peak. We'll be back here next Thursday. Val should be posting the Yosemite and Shasta trip reports soon. Yampa pictures coming soon (read: immediately)
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