Post by balzaccom on Apr 6, 2020 13:56:47 GMT -8
As the OP--I would like to request that we try to limit this thread to stories, rather than photo blogs. The goal is to give people lots to read...and those photo take up huge amounts of space on the thread. But that's my opinion as the OP. If y'all disagree, then I stand corrected.
here's another one of my stories:
It was the first trip of the season, and we were a little slow at getting back into the swing of things. But what could go wrong? We’d done this many, many times in years past. Well, we are pretty darn experienced, but we still run into a few challenges along the way from time to time. Anyway...
Of course, we were not quite in hiking shape, so we were moving a bit more slowly than usual. And it was really hot, so we were drinking more water than usual, and consequently pumping more water than usual. Like I said, the first trip of the year.
And the mosquitoes were really going gangbusters for the first few days as well. That was no fun. And sometimes I think we have two kinds of trips in our memories: regular trips, and mosquito headnet trips. This was a headnet trip. They were something awful.
And at dinner that first night, my wife discovered that she had somehow forgotten to pack her foam seat pad. No big deal, but we took those because they were comfortable. And now one of us wouldn't be. Comfortable, that is.
And then I threw out my back on the morning of the second day, putting stuff into my pack. After lying down on our ground cover, and doing my back exercises for about twenty minutes, I thought we could go ahead and hike on. Which was a good thing because this was a through hike, and we had no transportation back at the trailhead. We'd left our car at the other end two days ago.
It just began to seem as if the fates were against us. But a series of stretching exercises, a lot of patience, and some determination got us going again. That got us over the pass and into Yosemite.
Over those first few days, that hot weather began to change, but not necessarily for the better. We went from very hot and dry to cloudy and then thunderstorms for the rest of the trip. But the first rain came only on one afternoon, and by the time it hit, we were set up in camp, with the tent ready for the lightning, thunder, rain and blustery winds. But hell, that's no big deal. We've had that before.
And it wasn’t until the last day that the water pump really started to clog up, and we still had our Iodine tablets as an emergency solution for that. So no big deal. We could manage.
But none of that was the scariest part of this trip…
On the way down to Hetch-hetchy, we had two options. One of them took us away from Falls Creek Canyon and up over Moraine Ridge for a few miles, then back to Falls Creek again to it back up Lake Vernon. That was the easy, if longer, way. About six miles maybe? But I'd read that there was a use trail route that followed the creek straight down to Lake Vernon, which would cut four or five miles off our trip.
Some folks said it was pretty rough, but others said it wasn't that bad. And we were pretty experienced, so that didn't scare us much.
Even better, within a mile of where we would need to drop down the canyon we ran into a CCC crew working on the trail. They were nice kids, seemed to know their way around. So we asked them about this use route.
First of all, we have to say that every single one of the CCC trail crew that we asked about it gave us different directions---and they all recommended that we not attempt it. But we also knew people who had done it without major difficulty.
So we proceeded with great caution, and always keeping in mind that we didn't need to keep going--we could just climb back out and go around this cliff, along the Moraine Ridge trail. If it doesn't work, we said...
Then we came to where the creek took off down the canyon via a series of cataracts. But the route doesn’t leave right next to the top of the falls. It takes off about 300 yards past them. We found what looked like the right place--at some cairns that leave the trail above the first long climb out of Jack Main Canyon to the south. As you climb out of that gorge, the view opens up to the left, and you see the cairns.
So we followed those and they lead us almost due south…to a nice overlook where you can see part of the meadows and Lake Vernon…and towards a series of long granite ledges below you. It looked like a giant set of steps, only too high for us to walk down. Impressive. But the first one looked pretty easy.
We could see some of those steps become granite ramps that would take us down, but they also sloped into some dense manzanita covered slopes on the right. So we followed these ramps as they sloped down and to the right, almost reaching the Manzanita a couple of times, but each time finding a way to get down to the next step, or ramp. And each one was a bit steeper than the last one. So like I said, at the end of each ramp, we would find a short route down to the next ledge, which would lead back away from the Manzanita toward the creek….and we did this four or five times.
And that's when it started to rain.
At that point, we were almost at the end of the steepest granite, and all the way over to the right by the manzanita, away from the creek. And with the rain, whatever friction we were getting on these steep granite slabs was disappearing.
Back over and down another ledge....over to the manzanita...hoping our boots would still grip. I looked like we really only had one more ledge to get down, and we followed it back over towards the creek, looking for a way down. Only there didn't seem to be an easy way down this one.
It was a fairly large ledge, maybe a total of twenty-five feet or so that we had to get down to where the rocks were not so steep, and we could hike out.
And we had now spent about forty-five minutes getting down this stuff, and we sure didn't like the idea of tryin to climb back up it, both because it would be a lot of work, and also because it would be a lot slicker with the rain.
So like I said, worked our way back along this ledge toward the creek, and I saw two or three short but difficult stretches that might get us to the next ledge. It wasn't going to be easy, but I thought we could do it. I started down. I didn't even take off my pack to down climb it--it was just class III-IV boulders and cracks to get to an even larger ledge below. But I knew my wife wouldn't like it. We never do this kind of thing backpacking, especially where we are miles from anyone else at all. And we only attempted this because we could see that it was the last ledge before the more gradual granite of the lower slopes, and we had kinda walked ourselves into is.
It took a little convincing on my part. She lowered her pack down to me, and also her hiking poles. And then she basically sat down on the granite and scooted down towards me on her butt, with me at the bottom giving her some encouragement, and promising to catch her if she fell.
Of course, she didn't fall. She got down just fine.
She put on her pack, picked up her poles, and started following me down the creek across smooth and gentle granite slopes to Lake Vernon.
Hell, I was happy we were done with that. Camp was only a few minutes away.
But as we were walking along, now feeling pretty safe and sound, I heard my wife's voice behind.
"I'm OK with us having done that," she said. "But if you ever take either of our two daughters on an adventure like that I will kill you."
here's another one of my stories:
It was the first trip of the season, and we were a little slow at getting back into the swing of things. But what could go wrong? We’d done this many, many times in years past. Well, we are pretty darn experienced, but we still run into a few challenges along the way from time to time. Anyway...
Of course, we were not quite in hiking shape, so we were moving a bit more slowly than usual. And it was really hot, so we were drinking more water than usual, and consequently pumping more water than usual. Like I said, the first trip of the year.
And the mosquitoes were really going gangbusters for the first few days as well. That was no fun. And sometimes I think we have two kinds of trips in our memories: regular trips, and mosquito headnet trips. This was a headnet trip. They were something awful.
And at dinner that first night, my wife discovered that she had somehow forgotten to pack her foam seat pad. No big deal, but we took those because they were comfortable. And now one of us wouldn't be. Comfortable, that is.
And then I threw out my back on the morning of the second day, putting stuff into my pack. After lying down on our ground cover, and doing my back exercises for about twenty minutes, I thought we could go ahead and hike on. Which was a good thing because this was a through hike, and we had no transportation back at the trailhead. We'd left our car at the other end two days ago.
It just began to seem as if the fates were against us. But a series of stretching exercises, a lot of patience, and some determination got us going again. That got us over the pass and into Yosemite.
Over those first few days, that hot weather began to change, but not necessarily for the better. We went from very hot and dry to cloudy and then thunderstorms for the rest of the trip. But the first rain came only on one afternoon, and by the time it hit, we were set up in camp, with the tent ready for the lightning, thunder, rain and blustery winds. But hell, that's no big deal. We've had that before.
And it wasn’t until the last day that the water pump really started to clog up, and we still had our Iodine tablets as an emergency solution for that. So no big deal. We could manage.
But none of that was the scariest part of this trip…
On the way down to Hetch-hetchy, we had two options. One of them took us away from Falls Creek Canyon and up over Moraine Ridge for a few miles, then back to Falls Creek again to it back up Lake Vernon. That was the easy, if longer, way. About six miles maybe? But I'd read that there was a use trail route that followed the creek straight down to Lake Vernon, which would cut four or five miles off our trip.
Some folks said it was pretty rough, but others said it wasn't that bad. And we were pretty experienced, so that didn't scare us much.
Even better, within a mile of where we would need to drop down the canyon we ran into a CCC crew working on the trail. They were nice kids, seemed to know their way around. So we asked them about this use route.
First of all, we have to say that every single one of the CCC trail crew that we asked about it gave us different directions---and they all recommended that we not attempt it. But we also knew people who had done it without major difficulty.
So we proceeded with great caution, and always keeping in mind that we didn't need to keep going--we could just climb back out and go around this cliff, along the Moraine Ridge trail. If it doesn't work, we said...
Then we came to where the creek took off down the canyon via a series of cataracts. But the route doesn’t leave right next to the top of the falls. It takes off about 300 yards past them. We found what looked like the right place--at some cairns that leave the trail above the first long climb out of Jack Main Canyon to the south. As you climb out of that gorge, the view opens up to the left, and you see the cairns.
So we followed those and they lead us almost due south…to a nice overlook where you can see part of the meadows and Lake Vernon…and towards a series of long granite ledges below you. It looked like a giant set of steps, only too high for us to walk down. Impressive. But the first one looked pretty easy.
We could see some of those steps become granite ramps that would take us down, but they also sloped into some dense manzanita covered slopes on the right. So we followed these ramps as they sloped down and to the right, almost reaching the Manzanita a couple of times, but each time finding a way to get down to the next step, or ramp. And each one was a bit steeper than the last one. So like I said, at the end of each ramp, we would find a short route down to the next ledge, which would lead back away from the Manzanita toward the creek….and we did this four or five times.
And that's when it started to rain.
At that point, we were almost at the end of the steepest granite, and all the way over to the right by the manzanita, away from the creek. And with the rain, whatever friction we were getting on these steep granite slabs was disappearing.
Back over and down another ledge....over to the manzanita...hoping our boots would still grip. I looked like we really only had one more ledge to get down, and we followed it back over towards the creek, looking for a way down. Only there didn't seem to be an easy way down this one.
It was a fairly large ledge, maybe a total of twenty-five feet or so that we had to get down to where the rocks were not so steep, and we could hike out.
And we had now spent about forty-five minutes getting down this stuff, and we sure didn't like the idea of tryin to climb back up it, both because it would be a lot of work, and also because it would be a lot slicker with the rain.
So like I said, worked our way back along this ledge toward the creek, and I saw two or three short but difficult stretches that might get us to the next ledge. It wasn't going to be easy, but I thought we could do it. I started down. I didn't even take off my pack to down climb it--it was just class III-IV boulders and cracks to get to an even larger ledge below. But I knew my wife wouldn't like it. We never do this kind of thing backpacking, especially where we are miles from anyone else at all. And we only attempted this because we could see that it was the last ledge before the more gradual granite of the lower slopes, and we had kinda walked ourselves into is.
It took a little convincing on my part. She lowered her pack down to me, and also her hiking poles. And then she basically sat down on the granite and scooted down towards me on her butt, with me at the bottom giving her some encouragement, and promising to catch her if she fell.
Of course, she didn't fall. She got down just fine.
She put on her pack, picked up her poles, and started following me down the creek across smooth and gentle granite slopes to Lake Vernon.
Hell, I was happy we were done with that. Camp was only a few minutes away.
But as we were walking along, now feeling pretty safe and sound, I heard my wife's voice behind.
"I'm OK with us having done that," she said. "But if you ever take either of our two daughters on an adventure like that I will kill you."