The Big Loop: Day 5 & 6

Well I fell behind (as I suspected I would), so now I have to play catch up. Well here it goes.

DAY 5

From The Big Loop

I was a lazy ass this morning. Got up slow, but found the two girls on the High Route. Turns out they are from Santa Cruz. They were psyched to have someone to tag along with for the trip over Alpine Col (this looked easier than The Keyhole). Shortly after I met them, Danieal, the guy I met at Evolution Lake yesterday came up. Turns out these were the girls he was looking for. Seems a bit crazy, but brought some great food that he is sharing readily. Gave me a hard boiled egg with breakfast.

From The Big Loop

The talus is super rough on the north side of Alpine Col. But the view is beautiful on both sides, and I managed to take a few photos. The talus gnats were awful on the south side lake shore and about as bad on the north. They swarm whe the wind dies down. Weird noise they make all together.

From The Big Loop

Well, Tori, Lacey and Daniel finally made it down to whre I was waiting round 3:30. I hung out for a little while longer before making my goodbyes. I had plans to over Puppet Pass before dark. I crossed Humphreys Basin pretty quickly even though it didn't seem that way. It was very different from the last time I was here with Amanda, no snow, very dry and lupine blooming.

From The Big Loop

Mesa Lake was amazing. Green grass lawn, white boulders and an amazing view of the Glacier Divide.

From The Big Loop

The up and over of Puppet Pass wasn't too bad and I managed to be on my way down to Lake Elba by 7. I found a bivy spot just south west of Lake Elba. I managed to botch re-fried bean night by adding too much water, but thanks to Daniel it was already a "2 hard boiled eggs and a chocolate chip cookie" day. Third hand word is that White Bear Pass is scary. I might find out first hand tomorrow.

From The Big Loop

DAY 6

From The Big Loop

Damn, what a cold night. Below 30 at one point, I was wearing all my clothes. Well, it led to an early start where I was passed for the first time (sort of). I ran into the Sierra Challenge crew by Merriam Lake.

From The Big Loop

They were headed for Gemini out of the Pine Creek trail head. After that I came across several more groups, including a friend of Roper's and his granddaughter, and two guys from Alabama and Mississippi. I guess a weekend'll do that. Apparently today is Sunday. Despite stops to chat, I made it to White Bear Lake around 1:30 and took a swim, in addition to my usual lunch time activities.

From The Big Loop

I am going to head to Jumble Lake instead of dropping to Brown Bear Lake. I think it will save time and be a bit more pleasant. I am a bit tired of long stretches of talus.

Well, it was much easier, but it left me with a nasty stretch of talus along Lake Italy that would have be avoided on the other side of the lake. Ah well, I think it was still faster. Certainly not scary this way. Gabbot was easy, just long... And the Mills Creek drainage has been okay. More talus than my body wanted, but nice breaks from it and not too steep in any section. I was beat though, and my right ankle and knee tendon were complaining until I stopped, here at Lower Mills Creek Lake. The Lake is outstandingly beautiful and there were tons of fish jumping at sunset.

From The Big Loop

Would love to take Josh here for some fishing/backpacking. I have begun calling cadence to myself, in order to stay in motion going up hill. I am not sure if this is weird or sensible or maybe both. Also I have increased my pace of eating since I should reach red's Meadow in two days now, and because I don't think I am getting enough calories for the pace I am setting. It looks like I might finish the High route from Kings Canyon to Tuolumne in 9 or 10 days. That's pretty fast for so much cross country travel. Needless to say, I am almost certainly burning more than the 3000 calories per day I had planned on. 6 days is already my longest backpacking trip ever and I have maybe 20 more days left? Wow.

The Big Loop: Day 3 & 4

DAY 3

From The Big Loop

Frozen Lake Pass first thing. Started about 6am, 1/2 hour to the top, and 30min down to the "Frozen" Lake. I had a pretty easy time in both directions, even got to glissade for a short stretch. Met the Aussies, Marion and Lou, at the junction with the JMT. They appear to be royal old school bad asses, doing the High Route at 65 and 67. After chatting with them I humped up and over Mather Pass and covered this portion of the JMT that coincides with the HR in about 2:18. Very, very nice scenery here.

From The Big Loop

Cirque Pass looks like a long slog, hopefully mostly on slabs.

Not slabs. Well some, but mostly talus traversing. I ended up high and left when I finally saw the actual pass so I just kept moving horizontallyuntil I hit the final part of the pass. I was hit by a few raindrops but it never started raining seriously despite some nasty looking clouds. I waited under a boulder to see if it would blow over, but when nothing happened (storm-wise) I just decided to get going. Potluck Pass was hard to figure out by looking at it, but it turned out to be really easy, with a nice use trail almost all the way up. Palisade Basin was beautiful and I made it almost all the way to Knapsack Pass before deciding to camp below the pass.

From The Big Loop

I met two ladies doing frog survey work just at that time. They invited me to hangout in the evening and even directed me to an awesome bivy cave. So awesome it is too bad it is not going to rain tonight.

DAY 4

From The Big Loop

Nice night in the cave. Got going by 6:45. Knapsack Pass was note a joke, but fairly easy anyways. Dusy was pretty in the morning. I've felt low on energy today, might have to do with the rolled ankle from yesterday. Or it might be the long sections of dusty trails. Or it could just be one of these things that happens on Day 4 of a long distance hike. Good thing I move pretty fast on the trails cause the JMT would be unattractive otherwise. Many Many people and lots of sand.

From The Big Loop

Guh. Over Muir Pass. Felt long but it was only about 1:45 from lunch. Got ahead of myself again in map reading. Mostly wishful thinking I guess. At least the actual Lake Helen was much more impressive than the lake I mistook for it. After Muir Pass it was a long descent through Evolution Basin. Lots of BIG Lakes, each with its own character. Evolution Lake was the best, maybe the coolest alpine lake I have seen.

From The Big Loop

Met several cool folks today and caught wind of a group of three ahead of me on the High Route. I am camped in Darwin Bench, to which I stumbled at about 7:10pm. The ankle feels better, as does my right knee tendon (the stepping one), but my feet were unhappy. Tomorrow may be a late start. I learned that I need to switch the side my camera sits on, because it unbalances my pack enough to make one shoulder work more than the other. Timor and Doung (a geochem professor at USC) are camped nearby and they gave me a cup of tea!

The Big Loop: Day 1 & 2

Well, my notes from day one are a bit on the light side so I thought I would throw in a few notes about the trip as a whole too. More like statistics I guess. I am a scientist so what can you expect.

My Big Loop was about 410 miles long and went over 36 mountain passes with 19 of those being cross country. According to my mapping software the total elevation gain was somewhere close to 94416', but the software is not that accurate. And it does not include the side trip I made to climb Split Mountain, one of the 3 14er's I climbed along the way. I would guess that in actuality the total was 5-10% higher than that. My high point was Mount Whitney at 14,497'. My low point was the start and finish at Road's End in King's Canyon at 5075'. My first 6 nights were all spent at above 10,000'. My lowest camping spot was at Roaring River 7,414' on the last night of my trip. My highest camp was at 11,745' just below Frozen Lake Pass on my second night. It seems like I may have gotten less and less able to stand cold nights.

The High Route starts out with the Copper Creek Trail that climbs over 5,000' in just 6.5 miles. Kind of a butt kicker to start out with, but as proves to be the case any time there is no way to avoid heading down below the tree line, Roper tries his best to get you back into the sub-alpine zone as fast as possible. In all the HR blasts from the floor of King's Canyon at 5075' up to Grouse Lake Pass at 11110' in a mere 8.2 miles. Guh. On day one I covered about 13.75 miles and went over two (easy) cross country passes.


DAY 1
(Notes presented without editing for content)

From The Big Loop

Damn hot and dusty up Copper Creek (steep!) kicked my ass (Passed a pack train!) Started at 8:40am. Got to Grouse Lake in about 4:20 (1:00pm). Storm moved in while resting and eating at Grouse, decided to get over 1st pass while lightning was still far away. Waited for storm to clear under boulder in 2nd cirque.

From The Big Loop

The storm cleared away to the NE, leaving me to cross Goat Crest and descend past 2 Glacier Lakes and through Glacier Valley. All super beautiful.

From The Big Loop

Totally made up for the 6000' hump from the trail head to "Grouse Lake" Pass. I am camping tonight at the upper of the State Lakes. Got here just before 8. ~3hrs from my storm boulder. I am one day in and this already feels like the best thing I have ever done.



DAY 2

From The Big Loop

I need to eat when I am hungry rather that waiting to reach certain landmarks. I have reached Marion Lake. I should have eaten lunch an hour ago, maybe 2. But I wanted to eat here, and so I have. I have hiked for 6 hours so far today (2pm). I have covered some good ground but I worked myself a bit too hard between meals and I ran out of juice coming down to this lake. The lake is possibly the 2nd most amazingly deep blue lake I have ever seen. Certainly not the aquamarine usually seen in the Sierra. Looks stormy again, but no rain yet. Very pretty again
today with more expansive views.

From The Big Loop

More talus though, I managed to take a few wrong turns, not that it was a real problem. Just not the best route.

From The Big Loop

Lake Basin was nice but chock full of mosquitoes. I wanted to rest more often but I was spurred on by the whine of little insects. There was a very steep section on the way to Frozen Lake Pass that I was not expecting, but it was still only class 1. So far the passes have been easy. But I guess if you have recently traversed Rosy Finch Peak, a lot of things will seem like a piece of cake. Surprisingly warm below FLP at 11,700'. Hope it stays this way.

From The Big Loop

A Short Update on a Long Walk

Well, it's been a long time. And I screwed up before I left. I meant to post about my drive back to LA and my stops at Badlands (cool but the camera batteries were drained), Mount Rushmore (disappointingly small and had pay parking that my park pass had no effect on), Yellowstone (as cool as ever) and Grand Teton (just a drive by). But I ran out of time in the rush to prepare for my trip to the mountains. So I am going to make it up to my loyal readers (Hi, Mom and Dad!) and post up a nice blow by blow account of my big hike in the Sierra.

The plan for this came about due to my continued drooling over the Sierra High Route which is a nebulous route put together by Steve Roper that travels roughly northward along the spine of the Sierra trying to stay in the magical zone above the treeline. The SHR incorporates a fair amount of cross country travel through areas that I had never even heard of before looking into the route. However, the route is not a loop there is a beginning and an end which is hundreds of miles away. So you can drive to one end, but then you need to figure out how to get back to your car at the start. If you have a partner or two you can take another car and leave it at the end, so that when you finish you just hop in and drive back to the start to pick up the other car.

Well I didn't have anybody to hike with me and I had lots of time so I decided to just walk back to my car, and since I would take the John Muir Trail most of the way back I figured I might as well complete the JMT and climb Mount Whitney. And from there it is just a few days back across the mountains and north to my car. I made my link from the SHR to the JMT at Tuolumne in Yosemite National Park. So in fact I cut both routes a bit shorter than the full length, but to try to link the two ends would have been very hard and might have required a car ride of some sort to make it not ridiculous. So I snipped of those end to tie it all together neatly. The whole loop comes out to something like 410 miles.


The red line is the High Route going North from Road's End in King's Canyon NP to Tuolumne in Yosemite NP. The blue line is the John Muir Trail heading South from Tuolumne to Mount Whitney. And the Yellow line is the route back to Road's end from Whitney over Colby Pass and Avalanche Pass.


On the hike I took a Thermarest Z-Lite sleeping pad, a Marmot Pounder 40 degree sleeping bag, an OR Aurora Bivy Sack, a Bearvault Bear Cannister, a headlamp, an Oricasa folding plastic bowl, a titanium folding spork, a 2L MSR Dromedary hydration pack, and a 1L Nalgene bottle. I had a few other odds and ends but that was the main gear list. And it all went in to a Lowe Alpine Cholaste 35L pack.

My food supply was fairly simple: Powdered milk and granola for breakfast, Nutella and tortillas for lunch and dried hummus and tortillas for dinner and cliff bars (Cool Mint Chocolate) to fill in between meals. I had a small supply of instant re-fried beans that substituted for the hummus on special occasions. On top of this, I had a little trail mix. But that is what I ate for 23 days or so. I started out with 10 days of food in my pack. I dropped off two resupply boxes at Red's Meadow near Mammoth. Red's Meadow is on the trail so I was able to resupply without heading in to town. I had one box with 6 days of food to last me up to Tuolumne and back to RM. And the other box had 10 days to get down to Whitney and then back to my car. (This is over 200 miles on 10 days of food, probably not good planning on my part, but it turned out not to be a problem due to several reasons that I will address as they come up.) Each box had an extra treat in it consisting of an 8oz Italian dry salami and an 8oz smoked cheese.

Before I left on the trip I went to do some alpine climbing with Dan Arnold. Basically this served to get me well acclimatized and ready for my hike. We also had a ton of fun traversing Rosy Finch Peak and climbing the North Arete of Bear Creek Spire and the North Buttress of Mount Goode.

From The Big Loop

Mount Goode

On all of our climbs we encountered Sky Pilot a type of Polemonium that only grows above 12,000'

From The Big Loop

Sky Pilot

We had a great time climbing, and along the way I dropped off my food boxes in Mammoth. On August 4th, I dropped off Dan in Fresno and drove in to King's Canyon to pick up a wilderness permit for the hike. Due to a weird set of independently administered rules permits for trips beginning on the next day are available only after 1pm, but the permit office closes at 2:30. Strange, but I think I understand why that odd state of affairs exists. Eventually I obtained my permit and drove back to Fresno to complete my necessary purchases (batteries for my camera) and to eat my last meal before heading into the woods. After accomplishing that I drove part way back to the park and camped somewhere off the road.

On August 5th, I got up and drove into the park where I went to the Cedar Grove Restaurant and got a double order of biscuits and gravy for breakfast. From there I drove to the Copper Creek Trailhead at Road's End and packed up my gear. I put all the smelly stuff from my car into a bear box with a distant expected return date, and set out on the trail at 8:40am.

From The Big Loop

To tell the rest of the story of my hike I will post in this space the exact notes I took from day to day along the trail. I scribbled them on the back of the maps I had printed out for the trip. These notes are by no means a comprehensive representation of my thoughts along the trail. I spent a lot of time on the trail by myself and there is no way I could capture all of my experiences in that respect. And on top of that most of them were written by a very tired guy just before he went to sleep and are a bit loopy and/or spotty in some cases. I will try to sprinkle in the appropriate photos in relevant places. (and as always, if you would like to see all of the photos I took you can click on any one of them and it will take you to the correct folder on my photo website.)

I will try to post a couple days of notes each day, starting tomorrow and continuing until I reach day 23. At which point I'll try to post something more to wrap up the trip my feeling from the trip and I guess that will be from about 3 weeks post trip and I might have some better perspective by then.

Lazy days of summer

For blogging that is. Damn I have been lazy in my writing here. I have been in and around LA for almost two weeks and I still haven't finished put down anything about my drive back from Chicago. Guh.

Well here goes nothing. I left Chicago on a Monday morning and started to drive west on I-90. Which conveniently takes me through Madison, WI. At a rest stop on the way I was able to get an Autie Anne's hot pretzel, one of my favorite random food items and one I have been without for several years I think. In Madison I stopped at a beer store that came highly recommended on Beer Advocate. This was a very good stop for me as I was able to pick up whole cases of New Glarus fruit beers, along with a nice grab bag of midwest beers including a four pack of Devil Over a Barrel from Tyranena and a Bell's Hopslam, which I had failed to pick up on my last trip through the midwest.

Upon departing Madison I took a detour up to Minneapolis on I-94 solely to visit the Minneapolis Town Hall Brewery. MTH makes Masala Mama IPA one of the last beers in the top 15 or so on BA that had escaped me. I hadn't had time to really check, but I had my fingers crossed, that not only would the Pub be open since I was getting there at almost 9pm but that I would be able to have a glass of Masala Mama. I didn't know whether it was a seasonal release or something that was available year round. I was reassured immediately as I approached the bar on foot, because the place was hopping. I mean really hopping there must have been about 30 tables in a courtyard outside, and they were pretty much all full of people eating and drinking. I went inside and found myself a place at the bar where I was even more delighted to discover that they not only had Masala Mama available they had it on cask. On top of that they had a mango infused version of it called Mango Mama. I had both of these and they were both excellent. They went well with the cajun chicken ceasar salad I had for dinner too. I struck up conversation with two gentlemen next to me who both appeared to be real beer enthusiasts, one of them was even a writer for a local midwest brewing newsletter. After finishing my beers and sobering up a little I purchased a growler of Masala Mama to go and got back on the road.

I got myself an energy drink around 11:00 so I was awake enough to keep driving until 2:00am. I was able to get myself back on to I-90 and within about 70 miles of South Dakota before I decided to pull over and sleep at a rest stop. This is the only time I have done this and it didn't work out too badly but the short amount of sleep I did get caught up with me a couple days later.

Whoa that is a lot of words about half a day. So I will continue this saga later. I might get in another installment today, but if not it will have to wait until after the weekend as I am heading back to Black Mountain for some more bouldering. But before I do, today I am going to see the new batman movie, should be good.

California Dreamin'

I guess. I have made it back to LA after a fun trip from Chicago to Cali. I guess last time I posted I was in Rapid City, SD. However, I failed to mention anything that had happened in Chicago or anywhere else on the route. Ugh. I guess I have a lot of catching up to do. Well, before I launch off with a lot of text describing my beer drinking and hiking here are the links to the pictures I took in Wyoming which is apparently the only state where I pulled out my camera. Click on the pictures below to go to my web albums with captioned photos.





Well, now that the important stuff is out of the way, the last post updating my status was from Boulder, CO. Upon leaving Boulder I hustled on across to Chicago, leaving Boulder around 5pm and getting in to the Greater Chicagoland area around 3pm the next with a stop in Nebraska for some bandit camping. Well, I would have payed for it if I could have figured out how. I called Pete when I got into the area, but ti appeared that he was busy that after noon so I tool the time to head down to Flossmoor Station, a brewpub built in a train station in Flossmoor, IL. I got their huge sampler and an order of crappy chicken wings. The sample was all 11 of their beers on tap in 4oz tasters. There were certainly a lot of pretty good beers there, but definitely some that I did not care for. The bigger beers seemed to be quite a bit better than the standards. I know that I like bigger beers in general, but I can still tell when I lighter beers is of good quality. In any case I drank a fair bit of my sampler (but not too much) and then I got a nice little tour with the assistant brewer. They seem to be doing some interesting things there and I am sure I would frequent the place if I lived in the area.

I then drove on up to the North side of Chicago to have dinner with Pete and Sheila, Pete's parents, and Sheila's mom (also named Sheila). We went of to a place that I think was called the Fire Station, mostly b/c it was in an old fire station house. The food was pretty good, but the best part to my mind was that they had Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter on their beer list. It was great, by far the best and most drinkable porter I have had. It was nice to see Pete's parents as it has been a while. Usually I see them around Christmas at Pete's house, but this past year Pete went to Chicago with Sheila for the holidays.

The next day, Pete and I picked up the tuxes, moved his parents to the downtown hotel from where they had been staying in Evanston, met up with Amy and Alex, and headed out to go to a Cubs game with a crew of around 25. This was my first experience at Wrigley Field and I thought it was fantastic. It certainly could use some updating, I have been to plenty of parks that are far nicer, but there is definitely a certain classic feel to the place that I love. I had few Old Style beers, which did not suck much to my surprise. I mean the Old Style was not good, but it didn't have the nasty smell or horrible aftertaste I had been afraid off coming from and American lager. After the game I went to The Hopleaf with Meghan where we met up with a few of her friends (Josh didn't get in to town until later that evening). I got a couple Goose Island beers, a Matilda on tap and a Bourbon County Stout out of a bottle. Ahh, I love me some Bourbon County Stout. I bugged out a bit early to go have dinner with Amy and Alex at a German place downtown. The food there was a tad over priced, but they did have a bit of almost genuine German food which was rather tasty.

Needless to say that was a big day (Thursday). On Friday I took the "L" down to the Goose Island Brewpub to investigate the special beers they had on tap that are not available in bottles. I gave Josh a call on the way down to see what he was up to that day and it turned out that he and Meghan and the friends they were staying with were on their way to Goose Island too. So when I got there I swung by their table to say hi. However, I had brought my computer to write my toast for Pete's wedding the next day, and I found a table to do that by myself. I was able to have a class of the Midway IPA on cask (very very good), the bourbon barrel aged Aviator Dopplebock (quite nice), and I think also the oak aged saison, but I can't remember for sure. I got my toast written and then hopped back on the L in time to go to the wedding rehearsal. The rehearsal went will although the priest was indeed slightly confused by Amy's presence as a female groomsperson. The rehearsal dinner was also fairly fun, and ended early enough so that Amy and Alex and I could get Pete over to the Hopleaf to meet up with Joe and Melanie and Amy's parents. Amanda also managed to find her way from the airport to hangout with us and Pete brought his cousin along so we had a good group of about 10 in the back courtyard of the Hopleaf.

Another big day, and the biggest of all was Saturday, the wedding. It was fun, everyone looked great, Pete and Sheila got married, my toast went well, and I learned a lesson or two. Yes, take away bottles of champagne from guys who are spraying it over the dance floor, No, do not drink that bottle of champagne. Ah well. certainly a good day nonetheless.

The next day Amanda and I managed to get our selves put together again and then head over to Michigan to visit the Livery. I was able to try a few new beers and drop off some stuff from Russian river for Steve the brewer and the bar tenders Dixie and Tim. Amanda and I also had some pretty good sandwiches with our beer. Steve loaded me up with growlers to take back to CA and told me he would hook me up with some beer in bottles when they get put together in the next few weeks. I got back to Pete's place in time to say good bye before he and Sheila headed to bed, since they were getting up very early the next morning to fly to Costa Rica for their honeymoon.

On Monday, I had breakfast with Josh and Meghan, before grabbing my remaining beer out of Sheila's mom's house and hitting the road back to CA. And at this point it looks like the trip back will have to go in another post since this one has already taken too long. Enjoy the photos and I will explain them in couple day with a new post.

The Note

Okay, After various requests here is the text from the note. I had planned to post a photo of the actual note, but my camera's battery is dead, and I want to get this up before anyone gets too upset.

So I went for my hike of about 12 miles and I talked to various people on the trail as I always do. Upon returning to my car I found a note on the windshield that said:

"If you don't break into a camera career, you should try porn, you've got the looks for it.
-Your two admirers on the trail"


I read this and laughed. Understandably so I think. But then I thought another second or two and realized that the only people to which I had mentioned a possible camera career and the only two people who would have been able to identify which car was mine, were to gentlemen in their 60's. And then I laughed all the harder.