We took a somewhat abbreviated backpacking trip out past Ostrander Lake June 25-27 to try out some of our new gear. The short version? We love it, and we had a great time. I also learned and re-learned a lot of stuff about backpacking. For a first trip, it was just right.

We left Thursday night around 9pm after getting off work and cooking up a yummy dinner the comfort of our own home, and hiked out to Horizon Ridge before setting up camp. In some ways I like hiking in the dark – it’s usually very quiet and peaceful. Plus, this was an out and back trip, so we got to see the scenery, and the flowers that we walked past in the dark on our way out.

In the morning we finished our somewhat circuitous route to Ostrander Lake, and circled around to walk along Horse Ridge. It was a lazy day, filled with many stops and a bit of napping. We had plenty of water so we camped high with a bit of a breeze and fewer mosquitoes, filling up when we hiked down in the morning.

For more random notes about our trip, in no particular order Read the rest of this entry »

A while back, Tom turned me on to some great interviews on Mixergy.com, and in particular an interview with Tim Ferris – the author of The 4-Hour Workweek. One of the many great ideas that came out of that interview (just go listen to it), was the idea of exploring and using the least crowded channel for communication. Tim figured out that if he wanted someone’s attention, the best way to do that was to use a channel of communication that wasn’t already crowded and noisy. For example, if you want to establish a relationship with an A-list blogger, the easiest way to actually get on their radar is not by sending them an email. These people are getting tons of email. Instead, Tim made a point of attending conferences where there were a more limited number of interactions.

Of course, that doesn’t just apply to people on the A-list, or even the B, C, or D-list. And it also isn’t just that face-to-face meetings are better. If you’re meeting people constantly in real life, but you have a new account on Twitter, maybe that is the best way to approach you. I wonder if that is/was part of the beauty of Twitter – especially at the beginning. There weren’t that many people on it, and so it was an uncrowded channel.

Today, I had my own little Least Crowded Channel experience. I’m online. There’s Twitter and email and Facebook, and a woman today took the time to find my phone number. Huh. It’s not exactly like a face-to-face meeting, but I get fewer phone calls than I get emails, so it worked. She wanted to submit a testimonial to YosemitePark.com about her family’s long-standing relationship with Yosemite to celebrate her parents’ 69th anniversary (they honeymooned in Yosemite in 1940). Today. And she called me at 4:30 as I was starting to think about winding down for the day. But, she had such a sweet and beautiful story, that I couldn’t resist. If she’d sent me an email – I may have skimmed it before I left. Maybe. But I’m sure I would not have felt as compelled to stay a little late to put her testimonial up today – much less give it front-page billing.

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Other notes:

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Tom and I dodged down to Hite Cove to check up on the flowers there and get a little run in. The run was marvelous. We went all the way to the Cove, and I felt great – although my legs were cramping a little toward the end (not sure why). Plus, the flowers were spectacular.

A friend had been a little worried that the poppies were past. True, they may not be as abundant as they have been, but there are still plenty spectacular. Right now, it seems like the best display is further up-canyon, near El Portal. For my money, the hillsides have gotten even more interesting because instead of uninterrupted carpets of orange, the orange is punctuated with many other flowers and colors. I think the show stopper this trip, were the beautiful patches of Bird’s Eye Gilia (of which I got the Gilia and the B, but had to look up the rest).. or the RedBud. RedBud is always amazing when it is in bloom.

Many of the people that I stopped to ask about flower names could only shrug. To my, “Ooo – do you know what kind of flower that is?” one guy smiled and said, “The pretty kind”. True enough. Still, for those who are interested in this kind of thing (and are understanding of my imperfect flower identification skills)…
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Hiking the first bit of Hites Cove this weekend reminded me of what a wonderful run it is -beautiful rolling terrain, with great views of the S. Fork of the Merced and, of course the wildflowers. Plus, now that it’s daylights savings, there is enough light at the end of the day that it’s possible to really get out and do things after work. Losing that extra hour of sleep goes down easier when you think of the after work activities that open up. So, today, we drove down the hill and went for a jog at Hites Cove.

It. Was. Glorious.
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Today’s the first day of Daylight’s Savings, and Tom, in his typically astute fashion, points out that it should be a National Holiday. The rate of accidents increases when the times shift because people have messed up sleep schedules. It would be much safer to have an extra day on the weekend to adapt. Plus, in this case, it gives us more of a chance to celebrate the long evening hours.

We piled a bunch of friends in to the car today and wandered down canyon to take pictures of the wildflowers. It was a gorgeously warm and sunny day, and the poppies, as everyone has been claiming, are out in force already this year. When we stopped at Hites Cove, we also saw huge clusters of blooming Popcorn flowers, Blue Dicks, Gold Fields, Shooting Stars, Baby Blue Eyes… and all the flowers that we don’t know or can’t remember. It’s an amazing display. The lupines aren’t out yet, and I always look forward to the Fairy Lanterns, so I suspect we’ll be taking more trips down there to watch the spring bloom.

When we got back to Yosemite West, it was almost shocking to see the amount of snow that was still there. Being able to drive back and forth between seasons is like getting to travel through time. Turns out, Spring is only about 5 miles from Winter, as the crow flies.

For more pics… Read the rest of this entry »

The Pano project was also the perfect excuse to go to a Yosemite spot that I’d never been to before. Plus, the prospect of hiking with strangers also provided motivation for prioritizing some ‘training’ hikes leading up to the end of the month.

Between the Fern Ledge hike, and the Pano hike, I took a couple of other relatively substatial hikes. The week after Fern Ledge, I hiked with my friend, Hope, to Yosemite Point and back. (Tom wanted some exercise, so he ran laps on the Falls trail while we walked.) Hope’s a great hiking partner, and I was entertained by stories and got some good advice on hiking in a sundress/skirt – what to do, and what not to do.

The week after that, tempted by reports of amazing Sugar pines, clusters of snowplants, and some potential climbing, Tom and I hiked out to Dewey Ridge. Hiking through the deadfall along the side of the ridge was difficult going, but exploring new ground is always interesting. We found some awesome bouldering – including a boulder even I was willing and able to play on. And the prize of the hike was spotting the tiny Steershead flowers, which aren’t exactly rare plants, but are uncommon to actually see.

My hiking partners for the Pano day were Scott and Eric from the Pano project, and Bruce and Em, who I’ve known for so long I don’t even remember exactly how we met. The best thing about hiking is the chance to chat with new folks and old friends, so this fit the bill perfectly. Although, I have to say that I missed Tom. At some point on the trail I was bemoaning his absence and one of the guys says, “Well, that must me nice. To be free and do your own thing for a while.” Huh. I guess so. Not really, though.

I managed to get a somewhat ruffled picture of a small yellow bird that was singing brightly in a tree just off the trail. I think, based on a quick look through a field guide by John Muir Laws’, that it was a Warbler.

Also, we were treated to a pair of hang glider pilots taking their sled ride down from Glaicer Point. I previously thought that launch time for them was around 7 am, so that they would have very little chance of any thermal activity, but these guys launched sometime after 8 – not that they found anything that kept them aloft. One guy flew into the Yosemite Falls amphitheater, close enough to get wet from the spray, which seemed a little risky, but it must have been an amazing view. It’s been such a long time since I was a hang glider pilot, but seeing one (even if it is packed up on a car) usually brings back such joyful memories. I wonder what all my old HG buddies are doing now.

Eagle Peak itself is a beautiful rock outcrop with the top of Yosemite Falls visible on one side, and looking down on the Three Brothers (or the humping frogs), and beyond them to Middle Cathedral on the other side. It takes a long time to take 376 images, even if there is a little gigapan unit doing the work for you, so we had plenty of time to hang out and have lunch there. It was more crowded than I would have thought for a place I haven’t visited until now, but the rim is long, and we did have long stretches of time to ourselves as well.

Bruce found a pair of abandoned eggs lying on the ground along the rim. I have no idea what sort of eggs they are, and sadly there were no parent birds anywhere nearby.

Fern Ledge is an amazing spot – one which John Muir thought was one of the best from which to watch a Moonbow, and which Ansel Adams immortalized with an image. Last weekend, we gathered a group of friends together and hiked up to revisit the spot.

The hike was just as spectacular as I remembered it. I thought we’d be too early for the wildflowers, but even this early in the season, there were plenty to stop and admire. The water was big – bigger than the last time we were there, and it got bigger the longer we stayed to watch. Tom crept out on a narrow ledge to get that ‘looking straight up’ view, while the rest of took pictures from the relative security of the bigger ledge where we had lunch.

The hike itself was harder than I remembered though, both in terms of the slippery decomposing granite and steep drop offs, but also just in terms of my fitness level. I haven’t been able to walk quite right for days. Still, that kind of sore feels good when I think about getting back in shape to do all the summer things that are on my list.

The company was magnificent. I wanted to include a picture of the crew. It’s a combination of old friends and new ones.

On February 12, the California Native Plant Society sponsored a free wildflower walk led by Yosemite-area naturalist Michael Ross, and breaking out of our normal routines, Tom and I decided to see what it was all about. Simply amazing. It was a ‘wildflower walk’ which meant that it focused on flowers, but the thing is, if you follow a guy around for half a day who is a trained naturalist and who has been living in the Yosemite area for 30+ years you can’t help learning a little bit about birds, butterflies, wasps, caterpillars, fire ecology and a myriad of other things too.

We wandered up into the hills behind El Portal (just outside the park boundary on Hwy 140), and were treated to hillsides covered in carpets of poppies, lupine, popcorn flowers and more that Michael said was the best display he’d seen in 20+ years. He and Ann, another wildflower surveyor, and CNPS member, speculated that because of the amount of rain received last fall and the grasses which normally grow up to obscure the flowers were not as prominent.

Some highlights (hope I get the details right – please let me know if I should make corrections):

We were treated to sightings of some rare plants, including Condon’s Wooly Sunflower, and another Condon plant that grows only in a few small patches, including one just off the side of the road.

We had a few examples of how difficult it is to tell the difference between different species of flowers. For example, there are 150 species of Popcorn Flower (a small white flower) in California alone, and in order to tell them apart you need to have information like whether or not their seeds have scratch marks. The difference between Phacelia and Saxifrage genus is whether or not the style is split. Time to start learning plant parts.

Fiesta flowers, a beautiful purple flower that prefers steep shady environments, got their common name because if you pick the flower something on the back of the flower, maybe the sepals?, act like Velcro and you can stick them to your clothing.

We stopped to take a look at a Thompson’s Sedge, a rare find in this region. Like the Sequoias, this unassuming tuft of greenery also requires fire in order to thrive, and has become less rare now that we have reversed our policy of fire suppression. Michael listed a couple of other plants that are also being rejuvenated in the area due to the new wildfire management policies.

There are small predatory wasps which lays their eggs in a particular kind of caterpillar. The larvae consume the caterpillar from the inside out, ending with the vital organs, and then pupate into their adult forms. Amazingly, these wasps also have a parasitoid microscopic wasp that ride on them, and looks like a small dot with the naked eye.

Shieldleaf is part of the mustard family and the seed pods have a pleasant peppery taste and have been called “mountain wasabi”.

You can use Staghorn lichen to dye wool.

The list goes on and on.