14 October 2023 Christmas Valley-Wagontire Road, Eastern Oregon Well, this wasn’t a hike but it was definitely an adventure! Half Cookie and I flew up to Bend, Oregon to see an annular eclipse with Orion and his family. I have only seen total eclipses before, so I was very excited to see this “ring of…
Tag: Orion
Buena Vista Crest
Lower Merced Lake to Buena Vista Crest to Mono Meadows Trailhead (18 miles, +3,100/-4,600 feet). I was very excited to get up and get started this morning. Set aside the fact that it was 25 degrees and our water had frozen and I was happy to be moving. What I was really looking forward to…
Lower Merced Pass Lake
Mono Meadows Trail to Lower Merced Pass Lake (13 miles, +3,000/-1,400 feet). It’s been quite a while since Orion and I did a hike together, so I was really looking forward to our trip to Yosemite. Although the forecast called for lows in the 20s, the weather was bizarrely still quite seasonal, with no snow…
Chilnualna Falls Trail
UC Yosemite Field Station to View of Wawona Dome on the Chilnualna Falls Trail (5 miles, +1,500/-1,500 feet). The University of California has some sweet facilities for hosting conferences, including some at Yosemite, so I reserved one of them in late October for our annual “Human Nature Group Masters” conference of colleagues and UCSD alumni….
Day 4: A Bambi Wake-Up Call
Monarch Lake to Sawtooth Trailhead (4.5 miles, +0/-2,600 feet). Last night, Nick, Meredith, and I found a nice open flat area to set up our tents with a view of the lake. When I woke up this morning I heard some scuffling and leaned over to look out of my tent. Peering into the early…
Day 3: A Spectacular Mirror
Big Five Lakes to lower Monarch Lake (8.1 miles, +2,600/-2,000 feet). As beautiful as the last two days have been, there is nothing that quite prepared me for my first exposure to a Sierra reflection on a calm alpine lake. I couldn’t stop taking pictures! It seemed like every angle revealed something new about this wondrous…
Day 2: My First Sierra Pass
Pinto Lake to Big Five Lakes (7.2 miles, +3,000/-1,800 feet). We started the day with a 3000 foot climb up to Black Rock Pass at 11,700 feet. I was very excited because I had seen many pictures online from Sierra passes, but this would be my first experience in person. Slowly but surely we made…
Day 1: Beware of Marmots!
Sawtooth Trailhead to Pinto Lake (7.9 miles, +3,500/-2,500 feet). Today was Day 1 of the HNG “advanced” backpacking trip to Mineral King I organized. I originally had about 12 people sign up for the trip, but everyone got busy and in the end there were only three of us. Nick, Meredith, and I arrived at…
HNG Beginners Backpack
Penney Pines Trailhead to Noble Canyon Trailhead (10 miles, +200/-1,900 feet). When I started going crazy with backpacking, I originally looked for trips organized by the Sierra Club, or self-organized trips by groups on meetup.com and elsewhere. But when I started talking to my friends about backpacking, many of them said they were interested in…
The JimmyJam Hiking Club 