Category: Hiking

Dark Clouds
Hiking, Latergram, Lowest to Highest
Unexpected and uncharacteristic rains hit on day three of our hike just while climbing out of Darwin Falls to China Garden Springs, and continued for over 24 hours while we hiked on through Death Valley. This is how we experienced one of the hottest places on earth: soaking wet. Dark clouds continued to slam this canyon all night; we got smart and took cover under this leaky old mining structure, and hiked out before sunrise the next morning, running ahead of the clouds…

Read more

Tram
2015.10.06
Hiking, Latergram, Lowest to Highest
A nice thing about a walk down old 4×4 roads in this area is finding abandoned ruins of old mining operations and such. This is the top of a defunct tram that runs over the Inyo mountain range. The Saline Valley salt tram was finished in 1913 and brought 20 tons of salt every hour from 1100 feet in Saline Valley, west over the Inyo crest at 8500 feet, and back down to Owens Valley at 3600 feet. Salt was used heavily as a primary food preservative. Operations ceased in the 30s, but the tram works, especially at the top, remain as one of the largest and best preserved. The operator’s cabin is still fairly intact (thanks to people leaving what they find behind) paneled in fragrant […]

Read more

Pineapple Express
2015.10.02
Hiking, Latergram, Lowest to Highest
On October 2, I tackled Telescope Peak. Google it, it’s something like one of the world’s shortest climbs with the most elevation gain, and unless you can keep your eyes peeled for desire paths, there’s no trail. No joke, that was sorta really hard. 😜 Thanks Kevin for capturing my swagger on film, for giving me the L2H trail name “Pineapple Express” (you can see the pineapple kool-aid in my pack but not the dried pineapples inside), and for hanging tough. I’ll never forget how incredibly quickly you fell asleep once reaching the top! Get free L2H maps which include the foot route over Telescope east-west.

Read more

Sierra High Route Part 3: Piute Pass to Reds Meadow
2015.09.11
Hiking, Sierra High Route
Day 1: Piute Pass Trailhead to French Canyon July 24th. This hike was kicked off with a pleasant hitch in a big truck from a fellow named Kelly. Kelly had just dropped his niece “Sierra” off at Mt. Whitney so that she could summit, and was headed back to Bishop where he was visiting family. Kelly and his niece had just finished the John Muir Trail (JMT) and had themselves hitch hiked, so he was eager to “pay it forward.” He was not only super fun to chat with, but he stopped by Great Basin bakery in Bishop (so much better than Schatz FWIW) and bought me a coffee, a muffin, and a baguette to pack out, AND he drove me all the way to the Piute […]

Read more

Sierra High Route Part 4: Reds Meadow to Tuolumne Meadows
2015.09.07
Hiking, Sierra High Route
This ~50-mile stretch of the Sierra High Route took me four days. I left from Reds Meadows near Mammoth Lakes on a Wednesday afternoon at 12:30pm and came out in Tuolumne Meadows on a Sunday at 11:00am with heels on fire – I wanted to make breakfast at the diner! Day 1: Devil’s Postpile to Superior Lake July 15th. It began with a pleasant enough jaunt along the PCT/JMT towards Devil’s Postpile, a mind-bogglingly geometric statue sculpted by no other force than Mother Nature. Mostly hexagonal (44.5%) and pentagonal (37.5%) rock posts — some of them near perfect — arise out of the ground up a couple hundred feet. They cracked into this shape when a mass of volcanic lava cooled slowly gazillions of years ago, and […]

Read more

Rough Fire
2015.09.05
Latergram, Sierra High Route
I’m trying to stay cool about the fact that the Rough Fire might keep me from finishing the last 30 miles of my 195-mile Sierra High Route hike this season. I’ve hitch-hiked 850 miles to Portland to visit family and friends and wait it out a bit, but it’s now the biggest wildfire in California, 85,000 acres and only 31% contained (135,000, 36% on Sep 13). I hiked a good amount of this trail in smoke, but the part I’m missing is dangerously close to the fire and probably hellishly smoky. And the trailhead area is officially closed. Keep an eye out though, I’ll be hiking the Lowest to Highest with fellow PCT hikers and copperheads Ariel and Kevin few weeks! Photo taken of the northern tip […]

Read more

Sierra High Route, 2015
2015.09.04
Hiking, Sierra High Route
The Sierra High Route (SHR) is an alternate route — not a trail — through the high Sierra Nevada suggested by Steve Roper in his 1990 book Sierra High Route: Traversing Timberline County. It somewhat parallels the John Muir Trail (JMT) for most its length, and briefly uses the JMT to move from one crest to another. Steve Roper agonized over whether to share the route in a book; he feared its pristine nature would be damaged by overuse. Between the months of June and August 2015, I had the privilege to take on every mile of the SHR, solo. I attacked it in a south to north fashion; however, I started with a chunk at the north, and hiked subsequent chunks moving south by a chunk […]

Read more

Sierra High Route Part 5: Tuolumne Meadows to Twin Lakes
Hiking, Pacific Crest Trail, Sierra High Route
This 23-mile stretch of the Sierra High Route took me almost three days. I left Tuolumne Meadows Saturday June 13th at 7am and came out at Twin Lakes on Monday the 15th at 4:30pm. Granted, I’m usually able to hike 23 miles in one day, that’s when there’s a trail and I don’t have three unusually steep mountain passes to get over. Over three days I had my ass handed to me by this route and once finished, tentatively decided to not continue hiking it. Day 1: Tuolumne Meadows to Cascade Lake June 13th. I was originally set to leave on June 5, and was posted up in Tuolumne acclimating to the elevation, but rain came in and wasn’t letting up so I postponed. I’m actually glad […]

Read more