My parents came to visit!

Hence the lack of blogging...I'm trying to catch up now.

First, let me introduce my parents:

Sorry guys, I know you like anonymity, but I don't actually know if anyone other than you guys read this, so I think you're safe. My parents live in Montana where I grew up. They were the ones who taught me to love and appreciate mountains in the first place, so it's really fun when they come visit me in the Sierras. The mountains here are just a little bit more of everything than the mountains in Montana: a little steeper, a little more rugged, a little (well, actually a lot) higher. My parents are currently in training for a pretty epic 14-day trek through the Alps for their 35th anniversary (!!!) so it was great for them to come to the Sierra's and get some practice hiking steep mountains at higher elevation.

Our first hike took us up Lundy Canyon, over the crest, through the Twenty Lakes Basin and out at Saddlebag Lake. This hike is incredible diverse and satisfying, though there is one section that is a little treacherous. Because of this, I would probably only take this hike from Lundy to Saddlebag, not the other direction.

Lundy Canyon is one of the jewels of our area. It's steep walls are vibrantly colored with different kinds of rock interspersed here and there with aspen groves, white bark pine stands, occasional juniper trees and lush meadows full of gorgeous wildflowers. This year we've had mariposa lilies, sierra lilies, larkspur, indian paintbrush, mountain pride and many many more. There is an active colony of beavers that are constantly recreating the landscape, damming Mill Creek in different places to create new ponds, moving their lodges from one area to another, and generally re-engineering the place so that it seems like it's never the same from day to day.

Busy beaver hard at work

This hike starts at the Lundy Canyon trailhead and the first three miles follow Mill Creek up the canyon. The climbing is generally pretty gentle with a few steeper pushes that are well masked by the beautiful scenery alongside the trail - a waterfall, a gorgeous beaver pond, some really neat geology, etc. After about 2.5 miles, you reach a long, cascading waterfall that marks the end of the canyon. From here, the only way to go is up. A beautiful waterfall descends from the southwestern edge of the canyon and the trail switchbacks up alongside it for awhile before it's lost in a slope of scree that, according to summitpost.com "has not yet reached its angle of repose." That is the most apt description I can think of. You fight your way up in a two steps forward, one and a half steps back manner that is both tiring and frustrating. It also has the potential to be dangerous to any hikers below you so it's important that you keep an eye out for sliding rock.

The steepest scree slope of all time (not really, but it felt like it)

Once you reach the top, the view is incredible. You've crested in the Twenty Lakes basin, a gorgeous basin surrounded by huge, jagged mountains whose names I do not know. Lake Helen is the first lake you pass, and its sparkling cobalt waters look so inviting! We didn't have time to swim, but I can only imagine how cold the water was.

Lake Helen with some beautiful mountains in the background

The rest of this hike is very mellow. You climb up and over a saddle and through the lakes basin passing by a few more lakes on the way to Saddlebag. Once you reach Saddlebag you have the option of taking the water taxi across the lake and to the parking lot, or you can walk around either side of the lake. We chose to walk along the east side because the trail on the west side was still partially covered in snow, but the east side trail is probably about 3/4 mile longer (though you can't tell at the start).

This hike is really beautiful. I definitely recommend doing it and even considering camping overnight in the Twenty Lakes Basin. The only downside to this hike is the shuttle. One car is left at the Saddlebag Lake parking area, most of the way up Tioga Pass. This drive is beautiful but it's slow moving and if you're lucky enough to catch it during road construction (which my parents and I did) it takes FOREVER. At least it felt like it. The other car is left at the Lundy Canyon trailhead, about 7 miles north of town on 395 and then 7 more miles up the Lundy Canyon road. It takes almost an hour each direction. However, all that aside, this hike is definitely worth taking!

Glass Mountain 7-12-10

I've been doing a lot of solo hiking lately. For me, hiking solo is both a challenge and a luxury. Simply put, I can push myself as hard as I want and take breaks whenever I want, but I don't get to share the beauty of the places I'm seeing with anyone else - except all y'all out there in cyber-world. The other great part about solo hiking is that it takes little-to-no planning. If I want a lazy morning and then decide to hike around 1:30, no problem. I'm the only one to blame if I end up missing dinner because I left too late. I pack my backpack the same if I'm hiking 6 miles or 16 miles, so even if I hop in the car planning to go one place and getting side tracked by another, it's no problem.

My latest adventure took me up to the summit of Glass Mountain which is, according to my boss, "one of the most obscure peaks in the Mono Basin." I've been wanting to do this climb for awhile for several reasons. When you live in a place like Lee Vining, it's really easy to get seduced by the grandiosity of the Sierras and forget that the landscape extends out in all directions. Glass Mountain sits out on the edge of the basin between the Whites and the Sierras, slightly north of Crowley and south of the Adobe Valley and has an incredible view for miles and miles. I'm also curious of all the things that exist east of me, because I haven't spent much time out there, even in the Whites. Finally, Glass Mountain is one of the simplest mountains to climb around here. There isn't much of an approach, yet you still reach just over 11,000 ft.

Some kind of buckwheat hugging an obsidian edge

Glass Mountain is on the northern edge of the Long Valley Caldera, one of the biggest calderas in the country, that erupted around 760,000 years ago. Glass Mountain itself is a gigantic volcano that went through a series of eruptions between 2.1 and .8 million years ago. To this day, the mountain is covered in broken chunks of obsidian and pumice that form a patchwork across the slopes. As one of the witty entries in the registry said, "I've never hiked a trail strewn with so much broken glass."

The "getting there" is the hardest part of this hike. There are at least a hundred dirt roads that criss-cross this section of Mono County (I NEVER exaggerate) so not only do you have to find the right one to take off of 120 East, but then you have to make all the right turns (marked and unmarked) to get to the little two track four-wheel drive road that eventually peters out into a little footpath that will eventually take you straight up the side of the mountain. From what I've read, there are multiple ways to ascend Glass Mountain. You can hike straight from Sawmill Meadows, a really beautiful, remote campground that is mostly abandoned, from the north somewhere around Crooked Meadow, from the west (which looks and sounds like death) or from my little two-track. This route appears to be the simplest, most straightforward route up. The key word here is UP. My guess is that the "trailhead" starts around 9400 ft and takes you almost straight uphill to the summit of the mountain. There are a few meanders here and there along the trail, not even big enough to call them switchbacks, but for the most part you are walking uphill through pumice sand.

Initially you pass through a wooded area, lots of aspen that collect near the seeps and springs in small valleys, and tall, puzzled barked Jeffrey's that eventually give way to white bark pine as you begin to climb. The white bark pines take on krumholtz characteristics once you pass about 10,500 feet, so the view becomes clearer and more accessible as the trees become shrubby. Eventually you crest the ridge leading to the summit. From this vantage point, you can see Crowley and have an amazing view of the Long Valley Caldera. The Minarets peak over the ridge and inch into view the higher you climb.

View of Crowley and the Sierras from the top

View of Mono from the top

Once you reach the top, the 360 degree panorama is amazing. You stand on the highest point between Long Valley and the Mono Basin and can see for miles to the north and south. A summit register chronicles the highs and lows of others journeys to the top. I summited on July 12th, but there hadn't been an entry since June 26th. What a remote spot! I highly recommend this hike to anyone looking for a quiet, beautiful area. The hike is challenging but very short, and the view is worth the burn in your quads.

View of Glass Mountain from Hwy 120

A few days ago I took on an epic adventure and hiked the 19 mile round-trip trek to Waterwheel Falls. These falls are one of those kind of mythic, storied places in Yosemite National Park that many people talk about, some have actually been to, and few have seen during peak flow. I now am one of the lucky few. It's a hike I've been thinking about for a long time now, something I had hoped to do last summer but the peak flow came early and my hiking confidence came late. This year was a completely different story. Tioga Pass didn't even open until June 5th this year and though it has now been open for almost a month much of the high country is still completely snowed in. However, because you're hiking downhill to Waterwheel Falls, it opened up a bit earlier than many of the other hikes out of the meadow. However, my confidence still wasn't all there - I was nervous about taking this long of a hike, especially one I was pretty unfamiliar with, by myself. As a result, I left relatively early - I was on the trail by 8:15 - and I hustled my way down.

The hike to Waterwheel Falls begins in Tuolumne Meadows either at the Visitor Center or at the trailhead to Dog Lake. I'm not sure which one is shorter. I took the Dog Lake trailhead route because I was a little wary of the mosquitos, though I think it would have been more beautiful to hike across the meadow from the visitor center.

The first five miles are relatively flat - a nice jaunt through an alpine meadow along the Tuolumne River. There are about five stream crossings, four of them wadable with waterproof boots. The first crossing is kind of tricky - it's doable over a log a few hundred yards upstream, but then you're stuck on an island and still have to find your way across the other channel while keeping your feet dry. I would probably recommend bringing Chacos or some other kind of water shoe because in addition to the stream crossings, there's about an eighth of a mile section of trail that is a complete lake this time of year. That comes later on. The Tuolumne River is relatively flat and mellow during this section of trail, and there are many places to pop off the trail and take a dip. Because I was in a bit of a hurry, I didn't do this though I saw many people who did and it looked heavenly.

At around mile 5 the trail takes a pretty steep drop down along Tuolumne Falls. If you don't have enough time to hike all the way to Waterwheel Falls, I would still recommend coming this far. The trail isn't phenomenal but Tuolumne Falls is spectacular - it's your quintessential waterfall with layers of rock creating a chute that forces the water together and thunders down a two-tiered drop into a large pool below. Again, because I was nervous about time I didn't linger too long here on the way down.

At this point, the trail branches into three. You can either continue on toward Virginia Canyon following just below the Tioga Crest, you can stop to camp at Glen Aulin, one of the High Sierra Camps, or you continue down the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne towards Waterwheels Falls. The signs say it's 3.3 miles beyond Glen Aulin and on the way down it feels like a mile and a half. You're walking next to a series of falls and cascades - White Falls, California Falls, and LeConte Falls all line the trail and you get pretty good looks at them as you walk. Somewhere between White Falls and California Falls is the swampy trail section I mentioned previously. It's directly below a beautiful cascade that flows down the granite on the North side of the trail and all the water collects in a meadow that's criss-crossed with deadfall. It's possible to log-hop your way across this section as long as you're comfortable with getting up close and personal with the Lodgepole Pine saplings that are beginning to recolonize the area. I found myself swinging, Tarzan-like, between saplings to reach the various logs that I could then precariously shuffle across until I could grab hold of the next young tree. This part of the trail is probably navigated much more easily simply by bringing along a pair of water shoes. After this point, you begin a steep descent towards LeConte and Waterwheel Falls.

At this point I had been hiking for about 2.75 hours and was pretty tired and hungry. I was initially a little fooled by LeConte Falls, maybe I was just being optimistic about how far I'd already hiked, and thought it was Waterwheel Falls. I was really disappointed. That's not to say that LeConte isn't beautiful, but it certainly doesn't live up to the hype of Waterwheel. Because of that, I figured I'd keep hiking just to make sure I wasn't missing something down below. The Tuolumne at this point is hardly a river. It's more like a series of cascades because the grade is so steep and as soon as I got to a better vantage point where I could see a little way down the trail I knew that all the excitement was coming up ahead. Even before I could see the falls themselves, I could see the mist and whitewater rising up from the crashing water. As I crested the rise, the falls extended themselves below and before me. With such high water, it was an amazing site. I would definitely recommend hiking down the last 400 or so feet to get to the bottom of the falls because they are difficult to see from the trail and the view isn't as impressive from above or alongside.

I reached the bottom of the falls by 11:15 and was the first day-hiker of the day to set up shop near the falls. I got a prime perch right across from the two waterwheels. Aside from the absolute beauty and awesomeness of seeing so much water crashing by, to me one of the most incredible things was the sound. These are noisy falls to be sure so that even if people had been hiking along the trail a few hundred yards away, I would not have heard them.

Having never seen this area when there wasn't tons of water gushing down it, I'm not totally sure what the rocks underneath look like. But because of the way the water acts, I'm guessing that there are huge divots and ledges that stop the flow and force it up and over. Then wind takes over and blows the water back onto itself creating a waterwheel-like rotation. I sat to write in my journal a bit and wrote these words - I wonder why people are so enthralled with waterfalls. Could it be that they serve as a rare glimpse of a power larger than us, a force exerted to a much greater and more beautiful degree? I think that could be. All the time we hear about the remarkable power of the forces of nature - glaciers, water over time, wind - but waterfalls somehow encapsulate that power. I've never been to a waterfall that didn't make my heart race, make me catch my breath and smile. The pure, unadulterated power and noise of waterfalls somehow inspires both awe and fear in me every time I am near one.

Nine miles in and totally rejuvenated by the light mist and churning water, I packed up my backpack and headed back toward Tuolumne Meadows. I ate a delicious lunch of peanut butter and Nutella, an apple and some almonds when I reached Tuolumne Falls and made it back to my car by 4:15. Eight hours and 19 miles later I was both exhausted and exhilarated by my experience at Waterwheel Falls. It's a difficult hike, but one that I highly recommend doing while the water is high.

Ski Until July 4!

That's Mammoth Mountain's mantra this year. Hey Montana folk - can you believe it? A bunch of us had the day off yesterday and decided to head up to the mountain and see how the snow is this late in the season. It was a funny conglomeration of people, gear, free tickets, etc and it took us a little while to get settled in. We had two alpine skiers (my roommate and a guy who lives across the street), a snowboarder (the guys roommate) and a tele skier (me). It was a pretty perfect combination though, because we were all equally intermediate at our respective mode of travel, so a lot of the day was spent perfecting turns, getting comfortable traveling at higher speeds and settling into skiing again. I hadn't donned skis at all since my knee surgery in September, so for me yesterday was a huge success! I had no pain at all and felt very comfortable lowering myself into (far from perfect) tele-turning posture.

Mammoth got several inches of new snow on Friday. One of the guys that rode a lift up with us even called it a powder day! Yesterday, though, it was almost 60 degrees. People flew by us in bright pink and yellow spandex, jean shorts, tank tops, and one guy even donned a straw cowboy hat. He must have had a chin strap to keep it on! At the lodges, the mountain had provided pool lounge chairs, and many people sunbathed during their lunch break including a group of 5 guys who spent most of the afternoon shirtless and unconscious, lounging in the high mountain sunlight. It was quite a spectacle.

We ate lunch outside in our shirt sleeves and marveled, once again, at the supreme grandeur of this beautiful place we get to call home. Mammoth lies about 30 miles south of Lee Vining, but from the top of the highest lifts you can see Mono Lake, the White Mountains, the Minarets, the beginning of the high Sierra and the Southern part of Yosemite. It was pretty spectacular.

On one of our last runs of the day, we saw a lady bug, a stink bug, and a poor confused mole all running around on top of the snow. These warm temperatures are even fooling the animals into thinking it's springtime. Maybe, finally, we'll see the sun for good!

Runner's High

I woke up this morning after bouldering all day yesterday with lots of sore muscles, particularly those in my upper body. Even though I've been trying to work on my pushups, my triceps and lats were really tight and worn out. Originally I had planned to go on a bike ride today because I've only gotten out on it once since I've been here. But I checked the forecast and the wind has been gusting up to 40 miles/hour out on the east side of 120, the same gust speed as the last time I went on a ride, so that discouraged me a bit. I haven't been out on a run since my disastrous attempt at 4 miles last week, so I figured I would just go out for a jog and see how it went.

I drove out to Grant Lake Reservoir, a beautiful cerulean blue lake nestled up against Mt. Wood on the June Lake Loop. The highway skirts the west side of the lake, but a small dirt fisherman's road runs along the east side for a couple of miles until it runs into a series of cliffs. I parked at the beginning of this road and began my run. I hadn't eaten much in the morning, but my stomach was feeling a little unsettled as I started out. I was nervous that this, not shortness of breath or tired muscles, might cut my run short. But it felt good to have the dirt road passing quickly under my advancing stride and as I began to fall into the routine of a run, fully engrossed both in my surroundings - a wall of 12,000 foot peaks to my right and a glacial moraine to my left - and the latest This American Life podcast, I forgot all about my upset stomach and just began to enjoy my run.

I was really careful this time to pick a route that wasn't too hilly. I know that eventually I'll have to work that into my training, but right now at the beginning, it's a little too discouraging when I feel like I need all the success I can get. This route was really nice - it followed a pretty consistent contour around the east side of the lake with only one or two small hills to put a little burn in my legs. However, what I hadn't taken into account was the wind. Silly, I know because the whole reason I was running instead of biking was wind, but I thought I would be protected tucked up against the moraine. Wrong. The whole way out, a strong head wind was whistling in my ears, making my podcast difficult to ear, and making my eyes water. Again, I was a little apprehensive, but it turned out ok. It actually felt like someone was pumping air down my lungs and it meant that I got to run in the sun without overheating. It was pretty fun! I got a little more than two miles out and turned around to make my return journey. At this point I started feeling a little fatigued, not too out of breath, just a little tightening in my glutes and hamstrings. I was a little nervous, but wanted to keep running just to see if I could do the 4 miles.

My run back was fantastic. I started taking longer strides with the wind at my back and felt like I was flying. At about the halfway point, my feet started to tingle and I got a little light headed. I wasn't really sure what was going on, but I wanted to keep running. Then I got butterflies in my stomach and suddenly I wasn't breathing hard anymore. My body was still moving at the same pace, but it was like I wasn't having to try at all, the wind and the endorphins carried me along. This was the first time I had ever experienced the "runner's high," something my ex-marathoner mom has told me about since the first time I ran three miles during track try-outs my freshman year. I always thought it was kind of a myth that runner's talked about because they're doing things that most other people don't enjoy doing, but now I know that it's a real thing and that unless I run at least 4 miles, I won't get to experience it again. How's that for motivation?

4.16 mi/41 min

Happy Boulders and happy bouldering

This past week just flew by. We had a really great group of kids that toughed out a lot of dicey weather and did a great job maintaining their focus while they were here. It snowed on them 2 out of the 3 days they were in the field, but rather than complain or get discouraged, they instead viewed it as a unique opportunity that they may never get to experience again. (It doesn't snow very frequently in LA County.) By the end, they were calling to Chickadees, pointing out juniper and Jeffrey pines, smelling the wild onion and talking about the age of mountain ranges. I know it's idealistic to think that all these bits of knowledge will change the way they live their day to day lives, but I think it's important that they have a little more perspective on the world they live in. Los Angeles is a big city. It's a huge city, actually. Many of them have never lived anywhere else, some have never even been outside the county lines. But now they have a connection to and a mental image of a place that's so starkly different from where they live, yet also very intimately linked. And they understand the history and reality of that relationship. As I watch these kids begin to connect the dots, the connection grows deeper within me too. I've never had any desire to go to Los Angeles, but I'm now feeling a responsibility to these kids. If I'm teaching them how their daily lives affect ours up here, I should understand what that means, what that looks like. It's unlikely that I'll make it down to LA in the near future, but I'm hoping that at some point during this season I'll be able to make the 338 mile trek down the aqueduct and take a look at the other end of the pipe.

In other news, yesterday was my day off. Originally Morgan and I had talked about going skiing (Mammoth Mountain is 30 mins away, they got 500 inches of snow so far this year and are getting more every day.) But because it's been so snowy and cold here, we decided to look for the sun. Jess, another Committee employee, drove us down to Bishop to the Happy Boulders, where Morgan got to put her new shoes to use for the first time and I got to thoroughly embarrass myself with how long it's been since I climbed. Jess is a really great climbing partner/mentor. She worked at a climbing gym in Boulder, CO for a while, so not only is she super knowledgeable about body positions, hand grips, etc, she is also really encouraging and supportive. To me, this has always been one of the biggest barriers to truly enjoying climbing - the feeling of innate competition between you and the people you are climbing with. I always used to get really frustrated that I wasn't as good as the people I was with, and I wasn't seeing improvement as quickly as I wanted. But I'm slowly learning that the only competition should be between me and myself. It's a slow process, the strengthening of those tiny finger and forearm muscles and while it's going to take a lot of persistence, it will also require patience. It'll be good practice for me!

Anyway, we had a really nice day - lots of sun, lots of laughs, lots of fun! Here are a few pictures from our adventure:

What a great day!

After exhausting ourselves on the rock, we ran down to the Owen's River and Jess and I dunked our toes in to cool off while Morgan dove in. The cold literally stole her breath and she couldn't do anything except sputter until she got back onto shore. We all left feeling very refreshed! Then we went into Bishop and hit Mammoth Mountaineering Supply, an outdoor gear and consignment store, where we had to restrain ourselves from buying out the whole place. But we all came away with a reasonable amount of stuff and didn't spend our entire months wages so it was a success!

Going to Bishop is kind of like going to the city for us - there are so many things there that we don't have in Lee Vining: a movie theatre, a big grocery store, gear and thrift stores, a nursery, Mexican food, etc so it's pretty easy to go crazy when we're there. After a day spent in the sun, nothing sounded better than a giant margarita, so we made our way over to Las Palmas to meet Ryan, our friend who lives in Bishop. We gorged ourselves on chips, salsa, margaritas and the largest burrito I have ever seen. It was wonderful!

On the way home we stopped at Wild Willie's - a complex of hot spring pools outside of Mammoth - and soaked our exhausted bodies for 30 minutes or so. What a wonderful day! Thanks, girls, for the fun!

Someone get me a Band-Aid...

...because I fell off the bus. The training bus that is. (I've been reading some other runners blogs and apparently being slightly sarcastic and REALLY tacky is en vogue right now. How'm I doing?) Anyway, I'm beginning to realize that sticking to a really rigorous schedule is not really realistic with my current work schedule. Today, for example, I worked from 8:30 am to 11 pm. I would love to think I have the motivation to get up early and run before work, but that's just not going to happen. Hopefully in the next couple weeks the schedule will settle down a bit leaving me with more down time on my work days. Because a half marathon is definitely a real goal at this point and I'm going to be super disappointed if I don't accomplish it because of work. Usually it's the motivation part that I have trouble with and I've been doing well with that so far. So because I don't have much to update on the athletic front (other than an awesomely relaxing session with Rodney Yee yesterday in my living room), I'll talk about work instead.

I think I mentioned that the majority of the groups we get come from Los Angeles County. They often have very little experience in the outdoors, with cold weather, being exposed to the elements, etc. However, because we are located here around 7000 ft, we see a lot of different kinds of weather during the 7 months that we host groups and today was a pretty good example. All day today we were out hiking in the basin. It was chilly - never got above 45 - but for most of the day the sun was out which made it manageable. The wind picked up occasionally and caused everyone to bury their noses in their collars, but considering the temperature we ended up getting a lot done. Then, this evening we decided to go on a night walk. This is a walk where we take the kids 20-30 minutes back into a forest on an old logging road and then have them walk back one by one. It's a really great confidence builder for the kids who usually leave the vans terrified and return to the exhilarated. Well, tonight we piled into the cars to head to our night walk site only to drive straight into a snow storm.

There were a couple kids in this group that had never seen snow before, much less seen it falling from the sky so as soon as we arrived at our trailhead (so to speak) they jumped out and immediately started playing in it. Let me remind you that it's pitch black out and we're about to go hiking, so we had to encourage them to save the snowball fight for after our return to the cars. We began our walk in two single file lines, all walking in silence and listening to the snow falling around us. It was so quiet you could hear each flake settle in among the others as it landed on the ground. In a place where the only sounds usually are the pine needles rustling against each other in the wind, this kind of quiet was really magical. The kids seemed to feel it too. Of course they were nervous about their walk, but as soon as we got going they quieted down and really listened to what was going on around them. The sense of awe was almost tangible around us. I had been a little worried about how these kids would handle the cold and wet, but I was so glad that we chose to bring them out tonight. I think we offered them an experience they will never forget and may never have the chance to repeat. This is why, despite the crazy hours, I love my job.