Stock Trip

I got back from Tuolumne, had a two day weekend, went into the office Monday, had a very fast briefing, and was off again.  This time, monitoring stock behavior and evaluating stock campsites.  Six days, five nights, and approximately 60 miles just on the trail.  Awesome.

Our route inside the park, from Hetch Hetchy to Dorothy Lake and Dorothy Pass.

We started bright and early Tuesday morning, the 12th, at Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.  What a beautiful place.  The valley now under water was one of John Muir's favorites and I'm curious to see some historic photos.  Still an impressive site.

One of our first stops in Beehive Meadow.  Our team included Wes (archaeologist), Tim (trip leader, hydrologist), me (social scientist), and Joy (botanist) who is taking the picture.  Looking fresh and clean, if a bit sweaty, day one.

We hiked the first day to Lake Vernon.  A beautiful place up in the mountains.  There was a cabin we could use for food preparation and it was handy to have a table.  We still pitched our tents and slept out.

There was also one of these, a composting latrine.  After our stay here, I dug a lot of holes.

The reason for the trip.  Yosemite has a long tradition of using pack animals to carry loads into the wilderness areas.  The park is approximately 95% wilderness, and that's capital 'W', where there are different rules and regulations about what can and can't happen.  We were monitoring the behavior of the stock when they were turned loose at night, tracking their movement over night, and evaluating current stock campsites for resource impacts and looking for alternative sites if deemed necessary.

Here we are at our campsite at Lake Vernon.  Tim and I were trying desperately to get the blue tooth to work with our GPS units.  I have a signal booster on my back to improve accuracy of our GPS mapping, but we couldn't get it to work and ended up not using it at all during the trip.

One of the mules, Major, sporting his yellow GPS tracking device on his halter.  Janice is looking on, knowing she's going to get one next.

The next day we headed for Paradise Meadow.  We took a short cut up and over this crazy terrain in order to cut the hiking miles.  The view was awesome.

Almost to the top.  Come on little calf muscles, you can do it!

We spent Wednesday night in Paradise Meadow.  A great big open place with plenty of forage for the stock.  Here I am giving DC, my personal favorite, a scratch on the ears.

After Paradise, we hit a few sites along the trail.  One was Lake Wilma.  There was a cabin here to, but we didn't stay the night here.

Lake Wilma.  On some maps it's labeled Wilmer.

We pressed on to Tilden, our stop Thursday night.  We were running late and the sun was setting fast when we finally got to Tilden Lake.  Joy got this awesome shot of Tim, Wes, and me.

Lake Tilden is really long, almost three miles.  It is beautiful.  We had a great campsite close to the lake.

Sun setting over Tilden Lake

The next morning we set off following the stock hoof prints, trying to determine where they went during the night.  Since we'd gotten into camp so late, we didn't have time to do our usual hour of monitoring behavior, though the stock did have their units on overnight.  We stumbled upon this small hidden meadow and I instantly fell in love with it.

We wandered around in that area quite a bit.  Tim showcasing his mad radio skills.

Again, the reason for the trip.  We had a string of seven, 2 horses and 5 mules.  I became rather attached and miss them already.

Russ was our backcountry ranger and mule packer extraordinaire!

Stopped mid-day along the trail.  We have Harley, DC (my favorite), Copenhagen, Candice and Janice, Willie, and Major.  The two boys at the end of the string took turns carrying the most weight.  Those mules are tough.

Friday night found us in Grace Meadow.  It was a long meadow and really pretty.  It was a cold night and some gastric distress made for a poor night's sleep.  I was really tired as we tromped around the meadow the next day. Thankfully it was a short hike to our campsite.

When we found mushrooms, Joy was all about taking pictures.  This is day five, a slightly more dirty Kate, holding a bitter bolete mushroom.  Edible, but very bitter so I put it back.  I tried some new mushrooms during this trip.  All were quite tasty.

Saturday night was spent at Dorothy Lake.  Probably my most favorite place of the trip.  The lake was absolutely beautiful.

 A view from our campsite.

Sunday we did our last site inventories, bid Russ and the string goodbye (they were coming out at Tuolumne) and we hiked out.  It was a long day of hiking.  At the north end of Dorothy Lake we left Yosemite...

 ...and entered the Hoover Wilderness on US Forest Service land.

This was our hike from Dorothy Lake at the northern tip of Yosemite to Leavitt Meadows trail head just off California HW 108, or Sonora Pass.  These are seven minute topos.  Google maps pedometer estimates the trail from Dorothy Pass to Leavitt Meadows trail head is about 14 miles.  Our route is in green.

The views were spectacular though.

Near the end, there were two lakes, Roosevelt and Lane.  Beautiful.  It was very tempting to jump in, cool and rinse off a bit, but we still had a long way to go.

 We got a little lost looking for the vehicle.  One meadow to the west of Leavitt.  Still striking.

 Unknown meadow, 6:30pm, day six, ready to be done, but still smiling.

 Another beautiful site!  The van!  Here is Joy hitching a ride home.

It was almost midnight Sunday when I finally got to my house.  Regardless of the time, I took a nice long shower.  I slept the better part of the next two days.  It was a great trip with good people.  I'm thrilled I was able to be included in it.

I would love to introduce you to the Yosemite backcountry.  Let me know if you're interested and available and we'll see what we can do!

Tuolumne Meadows

Eight days.  Seven nights.  Never have I taken a shower that seemed more needed or accomplished more cleaning, except perhaps after my Tough Mudder.

I headed up to Tuolumne Meadows for work.  I left in July and came home in August.  It was cold, wet, rainy, sunny, warm, miserable, enjoyable... a whole range of emotions.

 

First day was setting up camp and hiking to our different locations to see where our trail counters were located and where the wilderness encounter trail section was.  Here's my co-worker Molly enjoying the view.

The next seven days I calibrated trail counters, downloaded trail counters, and conducted wilderness encounters data collection.  It was long days averaging 15 miles a day, but it was great.  Along the trail to Glen Aulin High Sierra Camp along the Tuolumne River.

It was cold and overcast most of the time, hence the sweatshirt.

This is truly a beautiful park!  I'll be spending more time up in the Tuolumne area the next little bit and I'm excited to see more of this park.

Lassen Volcanic National Park

For all I knew, my house was burning down, but that didn't stop me from keeping to my travel plans and heading north to Lassen Volcanic National Park.  It is about an hour east of Redding, CA, at the southern tip of the Cascades.  I have been wanting to visit this park for a long time and finally had a weekend that worked. 

I watched the park film and picked up my junior ranger booklet, attended a ranger talk, then found a campsite.  My site was close to a trailhead so I headed for Echo Lake.  I loved the green as I hiked.

Echo Lake did not disappoint.  It was beautiful and I only saw two other people while I was there.

Hiking back to my campsite, I couldn't help comparing this place to the Great Smoky Mountains with the ridges seeming to line up one behind the other.  Beautiful!

Each campsite is equipped with a bear box.  I was fascinated with the way these particular boxes were constructed so I had to take a picture.  The handle is attached on a loop, with an indentation where it fits...

...onto the post, put some pressure on the handle, and viola!  Open the bear box.  Ah, the blessings of opposable thumbs!

First time in the new tent.  It worked quite well and I was very cozy.

I was up early the next morning, and decided on taking the less traditional hike to some of the park's thermal features.  While in Lassen, I learned there are four different types of volcanoes, and this park has all four!  So cool.  I learned quite a bit about volcanoes on this trip and find them fascinating.  Dangerous, yes, but pure Mother Nature rawness at her finest.  The ecological succession that takes place after an eruption is also magical.  The earth is amazing.

Hidden lake.

There is a lake shimmering on the horizon, left side of the photo.  Pretty spectacular and perfect weather and awesome day.

Arriving at Bumpass Hell.  This is the location of the largest thermal feature in the park.  Apparently, Mr. Bumpass was leading tourists through this place when his foot went through the very thin crust covering a thermal feature.  Very painful indeed and therefore aptly named!

I spent a long, long, long time here.  It was fascinating.

Boiling mud.  So cool.

I had to get back to work or I would have stayed much longer.  I fell in love with this park and it is definitely one that needs more time to explore.  All fellow adventurers welcome to join me on my next trip!