We wandered out of camp about 2:00pm, not entirely sure of our plan once we got to wherever it was we didn’t know where we were going. The old USGS topo map shows a trail leading southward from Lake #3’s west ridge up to Lake #5 atop the next higher bench, and we had seen that junction the day before when we passed on our way to Lake #4. So, that was at least a formative idea/plan, i.e. to hike…
We woke up leisurely on Friday morning after not the most fitful sleep. It’s funny how sounds carry in the high country – the breeze on the lake water caused it to lap against the shoreline, and to us in our tent it sounded a lot like a large animal lapping up water from a dish, even from 30 yards away. Jane had a hard time getting to sleep, convinced she’d soon have an encounter with a bear. Despite our…
This weekend was originally supposed to be Dani’s first backpacking trip, our destination being Honeymoon Lake, west of Bishop below Pine Creek Pass and accessed via a steep, mostly-unshaded trail. After Chris’ and Carter’s difficulties at Tyee Lakes, a relatively easier trail than Pine Creek, we looked around for an alternate, available site for the same weekend and Hilton Lakes popped up – we’d need to go in Thursday instead of Friday, but the trail looked very doable and the…
We headed up to Grassy Hollow for an evening hike down the PCT. Although we’ve walked this trail more times than we can remember, we’ve never done it this late in the day. The sun was getting pretty low in the sky even as we parked the car (on Hwy 2 at the Grassy Hollow entrance, since the visitor center is closed due to COVID-19), and we made our way briskly through the picnic area and up to the trail….
Our hiking binge continued with a repeat trip up Waterman Mountain, the westernmost peak in the San Gabriels over 8,000′ in elevation. Our last visit here was over six years ago, which is a little hard to believe since Jane has talked about how much she enjoyed exploring the summit rocks ever since. We expected the area to be busy on a Sunday morning, and, yes, the parking areas and turnouts around the Buckhorn Campground entrance were quite full as…
Trying to keep up the momentum, we got out again the next night after work, this time headed for the Blue Ridge trail. And again we picked up some sandwiches at Jensen’s for dinner, this time Chris choosing to duplicate Jane’s all-veggie selection as his own (see, the diet nagging/coaching is working already). The ascent was uneventful, spending nearly all the 2-mile hike in the deep shade of Blue Ridge as we climbed 1,100′ splitting the gap between the Mountain…
Given Chris’ questionable performance at Tyee Lakes the previous weekend, it wasn’t at all surprising that his personal trainer and life coach (one might hazard a guess as to who that is) immediately put him on a strenuous program of diet and exercise. Since it was Jane’s birthday, Chris humored her with a repeat of our last visit to Throop Peak in 2017 – our first idea here was to just walk up the ridge to where we could watch…
Before last night’s early bedtime, we had discussed getting an earlier start today in order to beat the worst of the holiday traffic we expected to be heading back to SoCal, and we were both up and about by 6:30am. After a cup of coffee, Carter packed up his bag and headed off to Lake 1 for a final fishing episode while Chris finished his coffee time and took a more leisurely approach to the morning. By 9:00, Chris was…
Despite being quite tired from yesterday’s hike up to Lake 1, neither Chris nor Carter got good sleep. Both of us got out of our cozy sleeping bags about 7am, surprised to find our campsite already bathed in sun with a comfortable temperature in the high 50s. We made coffee, and Carter shortly announced he was going to fish at Lake 1 – he took his daypack with him, the plan being that Chris would catch up with him later…
Originally, we’d had a five-day trip to Mount Whitney planned for the July Fourth weekend, but with no real opportunity to train for what was expected to be a strenuous trip, we canceled it in May. Few alternatives were available for the same dates, but Chris managed to snag a two-spot permit for Tyee Lakes, a string of large tarns in a hanging cirque northwest of South Lake near Bishop. Carter eagerly signed up for the ample chances to fish,…