Now that I'm back from my Thanksgiving Trip it's time to get back to blogging about the previous trip! I need to catch up... We had set aside a couple…
After our lovely time in Great Basin National Park we drove across Utah towards Price Canyon Recreation Area, a BLM area with some nice bouldering and a quiet campground. But…
After much delay and anticipation I have finally found time to sit down and publish photos and some posts about our road trip to Colorado. We were on the road…
I'm still digging out from the hole I managed to dig for myself by going on vacation for two weeks, but I was able to squeeze in an afternoon of…
There are plenty of options for getting to the summit of Split Mountain, from the walk-up to the technical. Split could be considered the easiest 14k peak in California when looking…
This was the day with the biggest number of unknowns. The beginning of the day started off without concern, following the trail back to the John Muir Trail (JMT) and…
Arrow Peak from Camp Words of the Day: &$%ing mosquitoes!Despite the mosquitoes this was a great day. Arrow Peak is a wonderful climb from Bench Lake and the views from…
This year’s long summer Sierra trip was a return to an area I sped through when I hiked the middle stretch of the John Muir Trail in 2006. At that time we came over Pinchot Pass, camped at Lake Marjorie, and then hike through Upper Basin and over Mather Pass the next day. I felt a bit rushed through Upper Basin, mainly because we were trying to outrun a horde of mosquitoes. But it still remained one of my favorite scenic stretches of the JMT and I was looking forward to a day where I could go back and explore.
That day came this summer. Sooz and I planned a nine day outing that would take us over Taboose Pass and down the old John Muir Trail to Cartridge Pass, eventually leading into Lake Basin where we would explore, fish, climb some peaks, and enjoy some Sierra solitude. Depending on the time we spent there we also tried to wedge in a couple of days to do Arrow Peak from Bench Lake and Split Mountain from Upper Basin. With this year’s late snow melt we went in with a flexible itinerary and the ability to change it around depending on how fast we moved and conditions we encountered. It turns out that this was a good plan – snow kept us from getting into Lake Basin and we were able to change plans mid-week.
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Last weekend we visited Thousand Lakes Wilderness, nestled in the volcanic terrain between Lassen National Park and Burney Falls. While we're familiar with much of the local area the wilderness…