Backpacking Virginia Lakes to Green Creek – Day 3 to Green Creek Trailhead
Sometimes the hike out is a real grind. Other times it is 3.5 miles downhill. The last day of our Hoover Wilderness 2018 Independence Day backpacking trip was the second type. Curtis and I have also done a day hike here, from the Green Creek Campground up to Green Lake on a lazy east side car camping weekend. Green Lake, and if your ambitious East or West Lakes, are well…
Backpacking Virginia Lakes to Green Creek – Day 2 to West Lake
In my experience from backpacking in the Hoover Wilderness, one of the worst times of year for mosquitoes usually falls right around the Forth of July. It happened in 2013 on Buckeye Pass, it happened again in 2016 at Crown Lake, and now again in 2018… Summit Lake wasn’t all that bad. But here is the real scoop: GREEN LAKE IS TERRIBLE. But not as bad as Gilman Lake, definitely…
Backpacking Virginia Lakes to Green Creek – Day 1 to Summit Lake & Yosemite
The Virginia Lakes and Green Creek trails into the Hoover Wilderness can make for a stunning day hike. Curtis and I have spent past weekends leisurely exploring the first few miles of both of these areas. At one point, I think I spent a solid hour at Blue Lake willing a pika to pop out the rocks. It looks like there should be pikas there! Obviously I said YES when…
Baboon Lakes, John Muir Wilderness: Rugged Glacier Carved Backpacking
Thank you, glaciers. Curtis attended a lecture detailing new dating techniques used on Sierra Nevada alpine glaciers a couple of weeks after our backpacking trip to Baboon Lakes. He reported back that Baboon Lakes was featured on one the slides as an example of glacier carved beauty. Well yes, of course. Although evidence of glaciers surround you in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, it is too easy to forget to say…
Backpacking Kerrick Meadow, Yosemite & Peeler Lake: Days 2 & 3 of Independence Day 2016 Trip
If Kerrick Meadows is the Northern Sister to Tuolumne Meadows, then Peeler Lake is Cathedral Lake’s Northern cousin. It is a really nice lake, the approach from the meadows has deep drop offs from the granite boulders with crystal clear waters
Backpacking Crown Lake: Herbert Hoover and Day 1 of Independence Day 2016 Trip
Fourth of July 2016: Another Independence Day and another backpacking trip into the Hoover Wilderness on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. But of course, on one of the busiest backpacking weekends in the Sierra Nevada we returned to the place where wilderness permits are moderately easy to obtain. But maybe, perhaps subconsciously, I was also returning on the 4th of July to the wilderness named after the 31st president of the United States….
A Bright Dot Lake among Sierra Peaks, Backpacking Inyo Forest
Most of my pictures in the High Sierra focus around two opposites, a rocky peak or a watery blue lake (except, maybe, for the hundreds of photos of rock piles that may, if you look hard enough, have a pika in them). The side trip Curtis, Trails (& pup) and I took from our backpacking camp at Mildred Lake to Bright Dot Lake highlighted this even more. Bright Dot is a lake…
Remember that time we backpacked to Mildred and Genevieve Lakes?
There is quite a few trips from this past summer that for one reason or another I wasn’t able to blog about when it was fresh in my mind. Luckily, that usually that means I must have been prioritizing something else that was pretty cool, probably ecoSUMMIT or attending a wedding. But now in the heart of winter, denied of that thin alpine air, I am ‘wistfully’ looking organizing these…
Earthquakes, Landslides, Convict Creek and Pend Oreille
Last week I was visiting Curtis’s family cabin up by Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho, which is a stunning place that I feel very special to have been able to visit three times now. Right now the lake and surrounding peaks are beautiful when capped in snow, and the trip requires a boat ride to reach the final destination! That is some real off the beaten path stuff for a…
Hello! I am a 30-something outdoors-lady, backpacker, and resident of Groveland, California - 
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