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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.

The last snowboarding trip on April 4th marked the end of winter for me. I couldn’t have asked for more at Northstar: there were literally no lines for the ski lifts, we virtually had the black-diamond slopes to ourselves at Lookout Mountain, the weather was gorgeous, and the snow was pretty decent for the time of year. It was all kinds of awesome!

The season had started off shaky for me, as I had only gone on two snowboarding trips from 2004 through 2008. This is how the first one ended up:

   At least it looks likeI’m having fun

The second trip last in January’08 yielded a similar experience. But last October’08, I VOWED TO SNOWBOARD. I splurged on pre-season deals (I’m frugal so I need good foresight for these things) and bought all my discounted gear, snow apparel, and the Double Whammy season pass to Northstar and Sierra. Thanks to the encouragement and tips from Arden and Justin, I was carving by my second trip in December!

My skills require some fine-tuning

The Asparaguys

   The Googlers - once “the Others”, now our friends