This picture is fairly representative of the entire trip.
Okay, the brevity of this post is not indicative of our overnight backpacking trip to Young Lakes, Yosemite. But, since I’m in a hurry to blog about Sonoma and I don’t like my blog posts to be out of sequence, I am now trying to capture the essence of the trip—which, as the blog title suggests, is death.
I exaggerate. But you know how I usually say that the worst mishaps make the best stories? Yeah, I regret it now, because each time it seems to get worse.
On the 14-mile Rancheria Trail in Hetch Hetchy, Yosemite last year, we ran out of water and it was 95-degrees F, with forest fires; on the 34-mile Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail from Saratoga to Santa Cruz last October, it rained unrelentlessly overnight and our tent flooded. And it was totally worth it.
Every time I do one of these overnight backcountry hiking-camping trips, I swear I’m never going to do them again. Yet, I have somehow gone on 3 of them in the past year and accumulated way too much backcountry gear that it only makes economical sense to keep going. (Right.)
At 10,000 feet above sea level, we ran into a lot of snow patches on the trail (in JUNE), while most of us were wearing shorts; we didn’t pack enough warm clothes since we had anticipated extremely warm weather like last year’s forest fires; and we all experienced altitude sickness to some degree, some worse than others.
Altitude sickness aside, the 6-mile trek wouldn’t have been bad at all and the trip was worth the view—a beautiful lake in a basin surrounded by rocky and snowy peaks—once we got to our campsite, even if I didn’t get to spend much time enjoying it while hyperventilating in my tent.
I didn’t get many good pictures at the lake, but head on over to Reid’s and Nelson’s for more blogging fun and pictures.
Some meadow. Gorgeous!
Good trip, but can’t say I’m not glad to have a month or so off before the next hiking trip! Half dome? Oy.
Reid
on Jul 6th, 2009
@ 7:21 pm:
Point Reyes in late July! Let’s go!