Bloody Mountain, 12,552 ft
View from Bloody Mountain

Bloody Mountain, 12,552 ft

I recently returned from a fantastic two week peak bagging trip to the Sierra. While I try to sort through the massive amounts of content I created on that trip…

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Mt Starr, 12,846 ft
Little Lakes Valley

Mt Starr, 12,846 ft

Two weekends ago we took Thor on his second camping trip. We headed out, as usual, to the Eastern Sierra to camp, fish, hike, and bag peaks. Our first night…

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Eastern Sierra Over Memorial Day: Thor’s First Camping Trip!

This year, we took a more laid back approach to our annual Memorial Day Trip in the Eastern Sierra. In past years we’ve bagged peaks and escaped snow storms, but this year we decided to take it easy. Why? Well, first of all, David was recovering from minor surgery and couldn’t lift or do any strenuous activity. But also? It was Mighty Thor‘s first camping trip! We didn’t want to overwhelm the guy, so we just tooled around the Eastern Sierra and let him have a lot of new experiences.
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Eastern Sierra Fall Color Status

Last weekend we did a quick trip to the Eastern Sierra to do some leaf peeping. Reports were coming in that the colors were peaking early, so we thought we’d check it out.
What we found was a weird year for fall colors. It seems that everything is either still bright green or already browning, without much in between. We found scattered groves of bright colors and got some nice photos, but then the storm came in.
The forecast on Saturday morning was a 20% chance of precip with snow at higher elevations, but not enough to stick. By the time we were on the east side the chance had upped to 85% and snow was falling. The forecast for Bishop was dry, however, so we planned on camping around there. Unfortunately that 0% didn’t hold and we were rained on pretty good for a few hours on Saturday night. Meanwhile, snow was falling at higher elevations.
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Granite Mountain Wilderness

Granite Mountains
Granite Mountains

About twenty miles east of Lee Vining and Yosemite National Park there is a small high desert mountain range known as the Granite Mountain Wilderness. There are hundreds – thousands – of these small desert ranges across the western states, and frequently they are driven by at highways speeds, from a distance appearing brown and grey and desolate and boring. But during my years of exploring the backcountry of California I’ve learned that these ranges are full of life, history, and exciting adventures.

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Mount Morgan (13,748′) and a few Fall Colors

Hiking towards Mt Morgan (high point)
Hiking towards Mt Morgan (high point)

Two weeks ago we headed out to the east side for a casual, relaxing fall colors weekend. Of course, at the last minute, Sooz and I decided to climb Mt Morgan, a really fun and easy nearly-14k peak. It wasn’t necessarily so easy for us since we weren’t prepared or acclimated, but the terrain and route finding was straightforward enough that the acclimation was really our only enemy. I explain the route in the captions in my images in my Smugmug album, so if you’re interested head over there for a peek. Here are a few shots of the climb – definitely a worthwhile summit!
 
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