hiking – Life in Yosemite

Knobcones, Sugar Pines and a Bear

15 May 2011 by Theresa

With a husband starting work as an Interp Ranger, it’s easier than ever to geek out on Yosemite nature trivia. Our latest adventure in obscure (?) Yosemite flora, was a trip out to visit some knobcone pines, combined with a trip to the old sugar pines in the Rockefeller grove. Bear distraction On the … Read more

Half Dome Permits – 7 days a week

30 October 201514 December 2010 by Theresa

It’s finally official – NPS announced a new interim program to require permits to hike Half Dome all week long while the cables are up in 2011. Permits will be available online through Recreation.gov only March 1, for May and June dates, and then April 1 for July etc. One more time – you can … Read more

New Resolutions for May

30 October 20151 May 2010 by Theresa

I know, everyone else starts this game in January, but now it’s May, which is really a time of beginning things, and I can’t even remember if I made New Year resolutions, much less what they might be, so I’m starting again with a couple of goals for myself.

Snow Creek to Mount Watkins

30 October 201528 March 2010 by Theresa

… and breathe… Between a Sisyphusean marketing workload with DNC, a conversion optimization class that operates heavily on the you’ll-get-out-what-you-put-in principle, volunteer activities at the Valley Visitor Center for a full day once every other week, a frozen shoulder that seems to be adamant about remaining stuck, and house construction (Tom’s been going nuts, and … Read more

Climbing The Nose & Dayhiking Whitney. The adventure week.

22 September 2009 by Theresa

There was a lot of adventure in our household the week of 9/9/09. We moved our stuff out of the crawlspace so that our new contractors would have some room to work on finishing out the downstairs unit in our house Saturday and Sunday. Tom climbed the Nose in a Day with Hans on Monday, and then we drove across to the East Side and hiked Mt. Whitney in a day on Wednesday, returning tired but happy to our little place in the Valley Thursday night.

Anniversary Vacation – Mt Tyndall

30 October 201529 August 2009 by Theresa

Celebrating our Anniversary atop Mt Tyndall

I promised myself that this is the very week that I would (finally) put something on this blog about the vacation that Tom and I took the week of Aug. 10th for our 11th wedding anniversary. We’d tossed around some other ideas, and we may have even gone to Hawaii if we’d planned ahead a little further (for people that know us, the beach vacation is a radical departure from our typical vacation mindset). It turned out that a shorter vacation to the East Side of the Sierra was absolutely perfect. Our trip had three parts. We had time to finish up some projects ahead of time so that they weren’t hanging over hour heads for the vacation, and then hiked to the top of Mt. Tyndall, wandered slowly through the Bristlecone Pine Forrest, and climbed in Clark Canyon.

McCabe Lake and Sheep Peak from Tuolumne Meadows

20 July 2009 by Theresa

Tom at the summit of Sheep Peak with Mt. Conness in the background — Tom at the summit of Sheep Peakwith Mt. Conness in the background

What do you see if you walk the 6-ish miles into Glen Aulin, and then instead of taking the popular trail down toward Water Wheel and the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, you turn right along the PCT and walk in that direction for a while? The Yosemite scenery is beautiful, but it’s the lure of exploration and new places that draws me in. Tom was also excited about the peaks at the far end.

About 13 miles along the PCT, passing Glen Aulin along the way, we turned right and headed up to McCabe Lakes and hiked to the top of Sheep Peak, a mostly indescript, not quite 12K ft peak (11842 ft.), that nevertheless was a grand adventure, with a spectacular view. We took many pictures with Mt Conness in the background, and tried some panoramas with our small point and shoot. It’s hard to capture sweeping 360 views in a single frame.

Ostrander Backpacking Trip

7 July 2009 by Theresa

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.

The Double Rainbow Tarptent on Horizon Ridge

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

Big Weekend

30 October 201529 June 2009 by Theresa

Tom and I have just gotten back from our weekend adventures, put the groceries in the pantry and refrigerator, and wolfed a bit of the fancy artesian bread we can’t get here with extra cheese and olives. It’s been a long and very full weekend. I took the day off on Friday for my birthday … Read more

Backpacking and Hiking

22 May 2009 by Theresa

Tom demonstrating the Anti-Ray Way in 2005

I’ve been thinking about backpacking lately. A lot. And I’ve been spending inordinate amounts of money on it too – or preparing to spend inordinate amounts of money anyway.

As it turns out, it has been a embarrassingly long time since I’ve gone backpacking, and I’ve just realized how much I miss it. It isn’t that we haven’t been getting out at all. Last summer we were pretty excited about getting into some longer runs, and we started getting a little more serious about collecting pictures, but as activities that take only part of a day, we were getting pretty comfortable returning home to the miracle of modern appliances, hot showers and a comfortable bed. No longer.