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…
Leviathan Peak, Monitor Pass: Pika Lookout
Guys, we need to talk about Pokemon. I think I might be obsessed. When I am not exploring the wilderness, I am instead exploring my neighborhood. I know exact spots where all the Pokemon like to loiter. My hobby of running is suddenly twice as useful because I can use it to hatch Pokemon eggs, turning weekends chilling at home turn into opportunities to crawl the neighborhood searching for stray Bulbsaurs. Yes, I probably think…
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….
Table Mountain: It is a Wildflower Mountain!
It’s wildflower time! Usually, if I’m looking for a quick local hike I will just hit up the Red Hills, because the Red Hills are kinda where it is at. Instead, this year Curtis and I decided hiking wildflower hills was just so pedestrian. Nope, we were headed to a WILDFLOWER MOUNTAIN. Honestly, I think the Red Hills might have a greater flower diversity… but Table Mountain more than makes up…
Westfall Meadow: Easy Winter Yosemite Backpacking
While laying in our yellow slug winter tent, in the impossible quiet of the dark Yosemite forest, the question arose: When was the last time we actually backpacked in Yosemite? It was only last spring (2015), when Curtis and I backpacked to Styx Pass and Boundary Lake – an area straddling the Yosemite Wilderness and the Stanislaus Emigrant Wilderness. But does that count since we were able to get our permits from…
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…
Winter Camping in Sequoia National Park
This year Curtis and I made our thanksgiving feast in a dutch oven, over a campfire, surrounded by snow, in Sequoia National Park. Last summer we bought the ‘America the Beautiful’ all national parks annual pass, instead of the plain old Yosemite annual pass. Yosemite had upped their fees for the annual pass, so it was only a $20 difference – and great motivation to visit a laundry list of the…
Hello! I am a 30-something outdoors-lady, backpacker, and resident of Groveland, California - 
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