Moments in Dirt and Ink

I got a new sketchbook after finishing the last one.  It is another Canson Field Drawing Book like I've had before and quite liked.  The last book was a little on the small side.  I still have a few pages in the watercolor book that hadn't been touched in almost a year and that got the most use.  It should have gotten a little more, but chatting and fish photography happened instead. A falling cabin corner beside reliable Movie Stringer (my hero) after climbing Templeton Mountain. The rest stops in Glenwood Canyon have trails and I wandered up Grizzly Creek while waiting for a space for the Hanging Lake. First night at the flats on top of the Flat Tops. Second night under the cliffs near the biggest of the Flat Tops. Fourth night with a distant view of the biggest of the Flat Tops .

Inyo National Forest Manzanar National Historic Site DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4  |  DAY 5  |  DAY 6 The sun gets up appropriately early when camped out around The Pothole. My bear canister seems inappropriately empty. Apparently I did not quite figure out that I needed one more breakfast than supper. There is no breakfast for me in there. Ralph has about a pound of oatmeal he has not eaten yet, so there is plenty to eat. But where are the raisins? Where is the cinnamon? Oh, are beggars not supposed to be choosers? I dump the last of my blueberry juice infused cranberries (surprisingly yummy) into the mix and it is good, but it really needs a mass of cinnamon. Allspice can be nice, too. We pack up for the last time and head down passing a couple groups coming up from Anvil Camp. Add to them the trail crew staying there and it must have been a little crowded there last night. There are indeed a lot more mosquitoes down in the more common camp area.

Inyo National Forest Sequoia National Forest DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4  |  DAY 5  |  DAY 6 Another morning by the lake and still no fish are jumping, but we are going fishing. Just not here. We pack it all up only to drop it again just the other side of the rocks. Dave has decided that it will be easier to get to Big Sur for a family weekend if he walks out today and Devon likes that hike a little better than the one over the trailless rocks, so they are both bailing on us again. We wave them off while we unload our packs, the start the first navigational challenge. Looking down on the lake at the next level below. Williamson Creek gets its start here. We are heading down to it and over the lip to the next one. Photo by Dave from above us. This is where I want to grab my camera and thumb to a photograph of the area we will be hiking down to remind me of the route. Reconnaissance photos are really the only thing with enough detail to help with a

Inyo National Forest DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4  |  DAY 5  |  DAY 6 This morning, I pack up most my stuff into various bags to leave at camp. We will be coming right back here in the afternoon, so no need to carry it. My worries about the weather coming later cannot hurry anyone else and the bright blue sky overhead does nothing to help my case. Climbing back out of the bowl of the lake to what is a bit like a ridge running through Williamson Bowl is just as hard as coming down. There are some things that look like trails, but they finish as soon as they start. At the top with many miles of Owens Valley visible, some realize they can call their spouses to say that they can stop worrying about what might have happened yesterday and start worrying about what might happen today. I realize that we want to go down to the lakes below tomorrow and take the time to scrutinize the route. It seems like all routes cliff out except the highest one. Counter-intuitive

Inyo National Forest Sequoia National Park DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4  |  DAY 5  |  DAY 6 The morning sun comes up directly down the canyon and I go for the camera to take a picture. The camera promptly does nothing at all. I check the settings and it is on and everything looks right, but there is not even a complaint of a low battery when I press the shutter. I left it on when I tucked it into my pack last night and it probably spent the night trying to focus on the inside of the pack. The action was to protect it from dew I knew would not manifest and indeed did not. Battery failure number two. I did that once before with dire consequences for any chance at picture taking, so at least I am not in a panic that my expensive camera is now broken, but I should have learned. Of course since the battery will last for weeks, short of egregious operator error, I do not have a spare. With the telephoto and tripod, this means over 10% of my pack weight now mig

Inyo National Forest DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4  |  DAY 5  |  DAY 6 The White Mountains throw a long shadow, so the peaks above get light a lot sooner than we do. The others are not in much of a hurry to get out and have a bit more to take down anyway. I looked at the weather and then looked around at various nearby and far areas and eventually decided to believe the National Weather Service although I am usually reluctant to do so for more than three days out. According to it, there will not be the slightest chance of rain, so I left out tent or shelter or even bivy sack. I grabbed the wind breaker and left the rain gear. It is a very nice weight savings. Not as much as expected versus what I carried in Colorado, though. Got to figure that out, that did include rain gear and shelter. Meanwhile, everyone else has and is using a tent. I guess it helps tone down the moon brightness. Morning has broken up high, but down in the sages is still quite dim.

Manzanar National Historic Site Inyo National Forest DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4  |  DAY 5  |  DAY 6 Ralph said he wanted to go up Mount Williamson, but he wanted to start the hike at Manzanar. I have been past Manzanar many times and usually given it the hairy eyeball as I went. It is a place I did not want to visit as though visiting would somehow condone the actions that led to the building and populating of this place. After the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor, the American people did a few irrational things out of fear. The west coast states gathered up more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent, most of them fellow citizens, and interned them within 10 camps. The feeble excuses for doing so could just as well be applied to Germans on the east coast, but somehow no one worried about them. Now Ralph wants to retrace, in a sense, the steps of the Manzanar fishermen. You see, in spite of the eight guard towers with armed military police, there were a few w

White River National Forest We have Tuesday morning off, so I picked another mountain to climb. A little easier than Quandary this time. This one is a couple hundred feet short of 13k instead of a couple hundred feet taller than 14k. There is trail all the way up to facilitate that climb with a time limit, but it is only 2.6 miles long. I will not have to hit the trailhead at 6AM this time. I was aiming not all that much later at 7AM, but lost a half hour somewhere. I did a looping hike around it two years ago. Now I will climb it. First to find the trailhead. The roads are not straightforward, but I hit it on the second try. Actually, the trail off the end of Royal Buffalo Drive would probably have worked too, but the parking situation is not as clear. Signs and kiosk at the start of the Buffalo Cabin Trail. The start is familiar, past the clear cut of "defensible space" and into a rather dense and young forest. There are tents scattered in the trees

White River National Forest DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4  |  DAY 5  |  DAY 6 I wake to find there is a mosquito inside my barrier and when I squish it it bleeds. Well, one is better than the multitude that undoubtedly tried. I look out on the meadow are more elk. Half seem to be hanging out by a small pool that is more mud than water. This group is different from the larger group yesterday. This group all have antlers. The mosquitoes are forgotten as I move quietly to the edge of the trees pulling on my coat. I hang back just a little bit and they do not seem to notice me. Elk on the meadow. The elk have gone again once I have eaten and slid everything back in the pack. I am not going to climb Turret Peak this trip, so the only climb left is about 80 feet to finish getting out of the creek below. It is all downhill from there. Every last step. One of them passing the only sign of bear for the trip, a rather large print in the dried mud. Getting

White River National Forest Routt National Forest DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4  |  DAY 5  |  DAY 6 Dawn breaks through a blanket of clouds after another mild night. There is no excuse that I am at a lower elevation this time, this is my highest camp of the trip. The ponds seem decidedly sterile and there have been no mosquitoes up here. It sure is nice. Enjoying breakfast wondering if the sun is high or not. Today should be an easy day, but it might be a little long. I want to get down to the last water shown on the map before the long dry section on the ridge to the trailhead. That should leave just six miles downhill for tomorrow so that it will be super easy to be out by noon. Just have to wander around the bit of rock and ponds and onto the good trail to follow it on down. At least until it is no longer good trail. A long way to go across the flat tops. Somewhere down there is Mosquito Lake. Maybe they named it that to hide that it mys

Routt National Forest White River National Forest DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4  |  DAY 5  |  DAY 6 The night was quite mild and I used the quilt alone, but the morning is cool enough to keep the mosquitoes at bay almost long enough to have breakfast. Just the elevation change is not enough to explain the warmer temperature. A number of lakes, including the Lost Lakes, lie ahead, and then a climb up to the slanted flats above and eventually to the intersection my proposed cutoff would have got me to quite a bit earlier. The map indicates that it is quite dry up there until the finish, but there have seemed to be lakes nearby so far. I am starting with a little more water than I have been just in case it is true. It certainly does start off passing lots of little ponds as indicated. When I get nearby, I will see how I feel about doing a benchmark and a peak. The ponds seem to have multiple geological origins. First one that results in a basin of broken u

White River National Forest Routt National Forest DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4  |  DAY 5  |  DAY 6 There is the tiniest bit of frost around again and it does not seem to want to leave until the sun hits it. That will be a little longer than I want to wait. It sure is easy to get up before the mosquitoes when I already have my warm stuff on. The plan for today is to head up the high point of the mountain range, then suffer the indignity of shortening my trip because I just do not seem to be moving fast enough to do the whole loop. Sunrise in the shadow of the biggest flat top of them all. With the sun nearly upon me anyway, I head off away from the lake with its few fish and horse skeleton. (There is all too often a horse skeleton somewhere.) The trail seems good enough, but it actually leads to two routes to get to the lake. The map shows it heading south an unnecessary length before splitting and going north, but I decide to skip that bit in a momen

White River National Forest DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4  |  DAY 5  |  DAY 6 The air is cold, but I am sweating as I wake. I made a new quilt that just barely tops a pound and am expecting it to be good maybe to 45°F on its own and hoping it will be warm enough in freezing temperatures when wearing the other things I might have along on such a trip. It has not been properly tested, but so far has been too warm on its own for a couple very mild nights. Whatever the temperature is now, it is not cold enough for quilt, puffy pants, and a jacket. I expect it is somewhere above freezing, but as I look around, bits of ice beg to differ. The top of the bear canister has a lovely layer of the stuff and once I leave the quilt, it ices over too. Actually, things seem to be quite actively freezing as I get my breakfast together and keep it up until the first rays of sun hit. The top of Shingle Peak starts to glow as the sun thinks about hitting it. These bells

White River National Forest DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4  |  DAY 5  |  DAY 6 For a third year in a row, I have an excuse to go out to Colorado with the opportunity to backpack. I decided to check out the Flat Tops Wilderness this time and found this Boy Scout oriented route suggestion . They can get a patch for doing a 50 mile trip and this one is designed to fit the bill. Of course, I cannot just let someone else plan my whole trip for me. Looking over my Trails Illustrated map, Flat Tops seems to have four main entries with good roads to them, one each for north, south, east, and west. There are quite a number more with rougher entries, but one for each cardinal direction seems quite convenient enough. The western entry (Trapper Lake) even has an opportunity to be the first to find a geocache, but was part of a large burn in 2002 and requires a long, slow approach. The eastern entry (Stillwater Reservoir), which is the suggestion, is 70 miles from the inte

White River National Forest The best way to get to Hanging Lake in the middle of the day is probably to pick one of the other parking areas and come in along the bike path, especially if you have your bike along. There is one two miles away and a couple four miles away. Getting to Hanging Lake well after lunch, there was no longer a line for parking spots nor the tan uniformed people enforcing a first come, first served policy. There were just enough spots for everyone as I come in until some twerp behind me decided to go against traffic and grab the last one. I had to circle back around and wait thirty seconds for a much closer and shadier spot instead. Still a twerp. Who gets a Nelson laugh. The Colorado River in Glenwood Canyon. The river is even bigger here as it is just upstream from a hydroelectric dam, but the waters still seem to churn powerfully waiting to suck down anyone foolish enough to go for a swim. This parking lot only gets me closer to the trailhe

White River National Forest Glenwood Canyon... what a place. The "jewel of the interstate system", it says so right there on the signs. It is probably true, too. I was giddy approaching Hanging Lake. It might actually be early enough to get a parking spot! One of the dangers of being too lazy to reach over and give the clock one click to be set correctly just because it will take another eleven clicks to set it again in two weeks is that it is later than I think. Since I am listening to radio episodes of Lights Out, the speakers keep reminding me that it is later than I think, but the actual fact only sank in as I stacked up behind a line of cars that stretched almost to the entry. Never mind. I turned around and dealt with the most pleasant bit of being forced into one lane for construction in the nation before popping out again at Grizzly Creek. This is a huge rest area with more than enough parking. The Colorado River flows fat beside it and there is a pull

Cleveland National Forest Picking up my little sister after she has gotten rid of her rental car, we are on another geocache hunt. Today the primary prey is not just the oldest in the county but the oldest remaining in the state hidden in September 2000. Stopping off by the side of the Sunrise Highway, we are joining at least forty other cars of those who are also out to enjoy the area. The area boasts interpretive signs, a kiosk, port-a-potties, and a trash can that is clearly serviced next to a sign noting there is no trash service. The forest is really gearing up to be compliant with the latest ruling on the Adventure Pass in the Laguna Mountain Recreation Area. Many active at their cars are pulling out road bikes to continue along the highway. More are fiddling with mountain bikes for a trail. We head over to the start to find a map of an elaborate trail system and various other bits of information, then head on in. Meadow with sparse pines and very clear, wide dir

Warner Springs Ranch (map link) Heading down to San Diego to be there in the morning, I could not very well pass up using some of the day for a hike on the way. But what to do? I decided to do something silly. I would go and see this rock that is claimed to be the most photographed on the Pacific Crest Trail just because it looks like an eagle. The thing is, it is not the passing resemblance from just the right angle one typically finds with the various edifices named "Eagle Rock" scattered around the world. This is an animal that flew around in the time of the titans until it was frozen into stone as it landed. Or maybe it was a victim of a trick by a jealous Raven. However it came to be, the bird still rests about forty feet off the trail and I will go see it in person. The trail crosses road often in the area, so it is a reasonable day hike going northbound or southbound. I find my way to the Warner Springs Fire Station, which makes an easy landmark for findi

Los Padres National Forest My little sister is in town and has some strange desire to find geocaches that were set in the first year after the signals from the global positioning satellites were unencrypted. As it happens, the first in the county meets that criterion and is conveniently located just off Camino Cielo. The road has deteriorated quite a bit in that area since I drove it in my Scion , but I can certainly get within two miles of relatively flat walking of the location. That was the plan until the Sherpa (Scherpa) Fire closed the road to all but firefighting equipment. Change of plans. It is also located a hop, skip, and a jump away from the top of the Tequepis Canyon Trail. Easy for me, but my sister has been living in a place where the 2400 foot climb would leave her floating in the air. She is wary of the eight mile round trip length and current temperatures. With assurances of sufficient shade and an easy grade, but mostly with the determination of someone