Yosemite NP – Evelyn Lake Loop – August 14 - 15, 2010 The loop trip from Tuolumne Meadows up to Evelyn trip is a great one. I did this trip about 5 years ago and this time I was leading a Sierra Club trip. I was also hopeful that I wouldn’t get totally dehydrated like I did the last time. Our gang hit the trail around 9:30 under cloudy skies. The trip south on Lyell Canyon is one you won’t forget. It’s a really beautiful setting…hemmed in by mountains on both sides and a beautiful river running down the middle of the canyon. Needless to say there were a lot of stops a long the way to take photos. The trip through Lyell was the easy stroll portion of the hike and after turning at the junction we headed up abut 1800 feet. The good news was we had plenty of clouds to keep us cool. When we got to the top of the climb we started to get some good views as well as a brisk wind. The wind followed us and followed us and followed….it was quite exciting. Soon we were at Evelyn Lake...
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6/13/10 – Purisima Creek Curtis and I did a backpacking readiness hike in Purisima Creek Open Space Reserve. This trip was out of the Half Moon Bay side of the reserve. Total trip was about 7 miles. The trip consists of a loop that starts out in redwoods and follows Purisima Creek, which was welcomed given how the weather was this weekend, Starting elevation was 400 feet and total elevation gain was 1400 feet. We started on the Purisima Creek Trail, Turned onto the Craig Britton trail, which is only, open to hikers and then completed the loop on the Harkins Ridge trail. We saw some good flowers including lupine, forget-me-nots and monkey flower to name just a few. By the time we got to our top elevation it was plenty hot and my backpack did not help. On the way down there were some really steep descents and unfortunately I didn’t have any sticks since one of my new ones is broken. When we got back to the car I was ready for my hiking reward….beer! Trail Description
SEKI/Inyo NF - North Lake to South Lake – August 1- 7, 2009 This was a trip that had a number of unexpected things come up which of course all just added to the adventure. North Lake to South Lake is one of those classic must-do Sierra trips and that just so happens to run along the John Muir Trail for a part of way. This was going to be another section for Steve to add to his JMT section hike collection. Curtis was the planned 3rd party of our merry group but an unfortunate boo-boo a couple of weeks earlier in Yosemite that side-lined him and Steve and I were on our own. See my pictures Day 1 – South Lake to Dusy Basin Oh how this adventure began. We drove into the parking lot at South Lake and found to our surprise there wasn’t a single darn parking space. We didn’t get a really late start either so I have a feeling that the lot had filled the previous day, which was a Friday. We ended up having to park about a mile or so away in a permitted parking zone….what a pain. S...
Tahoe National Forest – Warren Lake – August 22 & 23, 2009 In mid-august I led a local Sierra Club trip in TNF to Warren Lake. I hadn’t been to Warren Lake before but I had visited Paradise Lake, which is just on the other side of Warren years before. I ran across this hike reading a book about wildflowers and thought the trip sounded really nice with the potential of wildflowers and a nice challenging hike in and out of the lake. I did not expect to see many other people on this hike because of the effort at the end of the hike to get to the lake. There is about a 2200 foot gain followed by 2100 feet of loss in about a mile. The total one-way length of the hike is 7.5 miles. I was excited about this trip because I had hiked with everyone before and they were a really great group. It took us a little re-navigation to make it to the trailhead, which is on the south side of I-80 at Donner Summit because there was a bunch of construction going on. We headed out and went throu...
Yosemite National Park – Ten Lakes – September 12 & 13, 2009 This was my third time into the Ten Lakes area and this time I was leading a local Sierra Club trip. I really enjoy hiking in Yosemite in September because the weather is so nice and in general the trails are less crowded. I probably saw the most folks I’ve ever seen hiking in September this time around. There are no pictures with this blog because I decided to skip having a camera given this was my third time here. The start of this trip did not go as planned due to some unexpected delays related to logistics but things got sorted out. The hike into the basin was very enjoyable and we had nice weather. By the time we hit our high point on the trip the clouds had built a bit and we did get a little rain. When we got to the lake the weather cleared and we looked for a good spot. There were several people already camped out and we didn’t spend too much time looking for a perfect spot since the group was more intereste...
Sequoia National Park - Pear and Moose Lake, Sept. 5- 7, 2009 For Labor Day Curtis, Andrew and I headed to Sequoia National Park to do the hike over to Pear Lake from Lodgepole. I had always wanted to do this hike and just needed to find a good 3 or 4 days to do it. The plan was to hike into Pear Lake if we could get a permit, setup camp and then do a day hike over to Moose Lake. My original plan was to stay one night at Pear Lake and one at Moose or head straight to Moose and stay there for two nights. I figured this may be a bit ambitious for the group so we stuck to 2 nights at Pear. The hike is a little over 6 miles and a 2200 foot climb. The hike out to Pear Lake is really nice of course the first hurdle was to find the trail. The trip organizer (aka Renee) wasn’t so organized when it came to identifying the trailhead. We ended up finding a trail to link to the trail we wanted and we were off. For future reference you need to drive out of Lodgepole back onto the highwa...
