Backpacking

[creekster]

Whereabouts in the high country and which 14ers? I have only done done 4. Whitney, Split Mtn, Mt Sill, and Mt Williamson. http://www.summitpost.org/california-14ers/170899

I am going with some guys to Williamson and I may also join them for Tyndall, if I can stay away from work that long. Not sure I am enough of a mountaineer to really do these, but these guys tell me I'll be fine. They may just want to see an old man perish, I guess.

In late July I am going with a couple of other guys to the Glen Aulin trailhead and into the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne and environs for a few days. Hopefully none of these will be burning by time we and the summer heat get there.

As an aside do you think anyone is ever tempted to try to scrape of three and a half feet from Thunderbolt peak just to be a jerk?

[BigPiney]

I am going with some guys to Williamson and I may also join them for Tyndall, if I can stay away from work that long. Not sure I am enough of a mountaineer to really do these, but these guys tell me I'll be fine. They may just want to see an old man perish, I guess.

In late July I am going with a couple of other guys to the Glen Aulin trailhead and into the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne and environs for a few days. Hopefully none of these will be burning by time we and the summer heat get there.

As an aside do you think anyone is ever tempted to try to scrape of three and a half feet from Thunderbolt peak just to be a jerk?

Williamson is a lot of fun. They say it is class 3 but it was not that bad. Never was I scared or nervous at all. The chute is difficult in that you are climbing up a scree slope of over 2000 ft. Just exhausting but not technically difficult. I actually think the hike over Shepherd pass was harder, just in that it is so hot and takes for ever with lots of elevation gain. The stupid trailhead starts at 6000 ft.

The chimney that you have to climb at the top of Williamson may look sketchy in the photos, but it really was not hard and after you climb up you pop out on top of the mountain which is huge, like the size of a football field at 14000 ft, and then it is a easy stroll to the actual summit. You will be fine.

Tyndall looked really easy, but we were too tired to attempt it the next day. Instead we cross country-ied our way over to Lake Tulainyo. I regret not trying to get Tyndall in that day. Looks like a pretty easy class 2, and I doubt that I will ever go in by shepherd again so I will have to hit is some other way. Shepherd was that bad.

I have never been in the Grand canyon of the Tuolomne. Looks awesome. Most of my time has been spent in Lyell canyon and the areas between Tuolomne meadows and Yosemite Valley.

[PaloAltoCougar]

I backpacked 50 miles with my youngest and his comrades (not an official scout trip) taking in Glen Aulin, a portion of the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, etc. The falls (Waterwheel, California, etc.) were spectacular as we were coming off of a wet year. One of my most spiritual moments ever was sitting alone, at the top of one of the falls, as the sun set right over the GCotT. We had to double back and on up the Tuolumne Meadows to get the full 50 as a landslide had wiped out the lower trail and we would have had to ford the river, probably not a good idea with a bunch of 12- and 13-year olds.

[SteelBlue]

Goose, OrangeUte and I had an awesome time in the Trinity Alps this past weekend on our yearly trip. As we've mentioned earlier in the thread, we decided to go early this year because of the drought and the fear the state will be on fire if we go late summer. It was unbelievable how little snow there was, even at the higher elevations, and it was already quite hot. California is a tinder box, and this summer might be a real tragedy. The silver lining, of course, is that we can get to places now that we'd normally have to wait until early July to see.

We hit a trail called Stuart Fork, and pretty much from parking lot to our furthest destination (Sapphire Lake at 15 miles) it was non-stop, wall to wall, nature action. The trail is so named because it winds along the Stuart Fork of the Trinity River. This river was stunningly clear and there were numerous beautiful falls, gorges and swimming holes. You could spend a whole week just exploring the river. We also crossed several creeks, a couple of times over bridges with impressive falls far below. Much of the forest was old growth, and the flora varied from as green, lush and fern covered as a coastal trail, to the more classic, arid California forest. We hiked 9 miles in on day one and made camp on the north border of Morris Meadow, a massive, lush meadow about a mile long and at the foot of beautiful, rugged peaks. We had split up to facilitate getting a campsite obtained and set-up and very nearly spent the night in different sites, (long story).

Day two we headed the 5 miles to Emerald Lake where we spent most of our day. This was such an amazing place. Words and photos cannot do it justice. I place it among the most beautiful places I've had the privilege to stand. Goose and I decided to take what we'd read would be another 2 hour round trip hike to hit Sapphire. It turned out that the trail was excellent and we were there in a half hour including time spent exploring some abandoned mining equipment that dates back to the late 1800's. It was well worth the extra couple of miles.

Day three we decided we'd leave early to avoid the heat on the long hike out. The trail was well shaded nearly the entire way and we were blessed with a slight breeze for most of the morning. We were back in civilization around 4 pm and began the descent into the blast furnace that is Redding. I think I say this every year, but I think this was my favorite trail in the alps so far. A truly memorable trip. I'll add some pics shortly.


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Stuart Fork of the Trinity. This was very near our camp site. Very clear water with lush vegetation.


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Sawtooth Ridge


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Emerald Lake. The wall of that dam was built in the 1800's by miners. There was lots of abandoned mining equipment around both lakes.


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Emerald Lake. Sapphire Lake sits in the next cirque up at the center of this pic.


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These falls spilled out from Emerald and were running pretty full. A beautiful site as you made the final approach to the lake.

[SteelBlue]

Alps trip continued:

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Example of the abandoned mining equipment. It was really interesting to think about how they got all this stuff up there back in the day.

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Sapphire Lake.

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This dude ran across the trail, almost right over my feet. I've never seen one this color. Thought it was cool. We also saw and got rattled at by a rattlesnake, but light was almost gone and I couldn't get a good pic. He was a good 6 feet off the trail, but we were thankful for the warning.

[mtnbiker]

Looks like an awesome area. Thanks for the report & pics.

[ERCougar]

Dang! That lizard!
Sweet pics and report. I really need to get to that area some day. You guys ever need a fourth?

[bluegoose]

Dang it! I knew I should have checked in here before I started typing a trip report. Screw it, I'm putting it her anyway. It may be a little redundant, and hopefully our facts match up.

We survived our third annual dudes backpacking trip into the trinity alps this past weekend. Like I think I mentioned earlier, steelblue and I went with our good buddy who has joined us for the last two years. He is a very experienced outdoorsman and is in very good shape. We also took 2 new guys with us, neither of which are experienced outdoorsmen, and neither of which are in very good condition right now. (Orangeute, I'm looking at you!)

We left the trailhead at about 3:30 on Friday afternoon after leaving town about an hour later than we had originally planned. The hike in was only about 9 miles with a modest net elevation gain of about 1,800 feet. At a brisk, steady pace this would usually take us about 4+ hours, but we really took our time, regrouping often to try to make it a pleasant hike in for everyone.

It really was a stunningly beautiful trail, from the time that we left the trailhead, all the way up to our final day hike area almost 15 miles later. Nearly the entire first 8 miles was shaded, making for very pleasant hiking conditions. It also followed a good sized stream most of the time, never being out of ear shot of running water the entire time.



After about 4 hours of hiking we realized that we may have a tough time making it to our destination by dark. This was not a big problem, as we have always ended up hiking in by headlamp each year. This difficulty came in the fact that none of us had been up this trail before and we had no idea what to expect as far as campsites went.

At dusk, I sent steelblue and our speedy buddy ahead to look for a good campsite as I waited around for the other two guys at the final trail junction, just to make sure they didn't miss the right trail. Orangeute was doing pretty good when they finally found me along the trail, but our fifth guy was struggling quite a bit. He was dragging pretty good by now. Orangeute went ahead to try to find our other buddies at the campsite, while I trudged along at the rear.

When we finally arrived at the meadow, it was dark. We knew the meadow was big, but we really didn't know exactly how big. It was about a mile from top to bottom, and stretched out to close to a half mile wide at parts. Trees covered the edges of the meadow and smaller groves of trees were scattered around throughout the middle. There were some ponderosa pines here that were just massive, some having trunks that were up to about 8 feet in diameter and close to 150 feet tall.

After wandering around the meadow for close to 45 minutes, we finally found the guys, at the far north end of the valley in a thick stand of trees. It was a beautiful campsite set right next to the creek that was plenty big to accommodate a group twice as big as ours.


The next morning, I awoke to a quiet camp and immediately set out to explore the meadow. I was really hoping to see a bear, as nearly all of the blogs that I had read mentioned seeing at least one of them somewhere along this trail. As it turns out steelblue had snuck out before me to get a first glimpse of the area. All we saw were deer grazing in the meadow. But the scenery was spectacular, as not only was the meadow gorgeous, but the steep towering ridges which surrounded us were awesome.



After breakfast we set out on a day hike up to Emerald and Sapphire lakes. It was about 5 miles each direction to the lower lake, with the higher lake being about a mile beyond that. There was a fair amount of elevation gain, about 1,500 feet to the lower lake and another 600 feet to the upper. Along the way, in addition to the various pine trees we also came across a massive stand of quaking aspen trees that spanned about 2 miles of trail. It is the only stand of these trees in the Trinities that I know of. If you were dropped there blindfolded you could have easily thought you were somewhere up Provo or Sundance canyons.



The lakes were gorgeous, nestled in a steep granite cirque with numerous waterfalls cascading off of the cliffs. As it was all snowmelt and it is still early in the season, the water was freezing, keeping 3 of the 5 of us from swimming, myself included.


We spent a couple of hours putzing around the lake. The fish were jumping, but none of us brought our poles so all we could do was watch. Steelblue and I were the only ones to make the trek up to the upper lakes. Along the way was a ton of old mining equipment from the mid to late 1800s. It was amazing that those guys were able to lug all of that stuff up there way back then.


We had initially set our eyes on doing an early morning hike on the day that we were hiking out up to the top of Sawtooth Ridge. It is a monster of a climb, covering close to 3,000 feet of elevation gain in a single mile. I think it has 98 switchbacks to the top. After seeing that monster, we realized that we would have to start out under headlamps to finish on time, which would then be followed by a toasty 9 mile hike out. Cooler heads prevailed and we decided to save that scramble for another trip.



Our trip concluded with a relaxing hike out, with temps rising to about 87 degrees by the finish. But under the thick tree canopy it was really quite pleasant, as we stopped every couple of miles to splash around in one of the creeks that we were crossing. No major issues, aside from some crotch chafing for our fifth guy and some pretty good dehydration, nausea and vomiting by orangeute.

Outstanding trail and fantastic weather. It really is some of the prettiest and most majestic country that I have seen. Would love to go back someday.

[SteelBlue]

Dang! That lizard!
Sweet pics and report. I really need to get to that area some day. You guys ever need a fourth?

That would be fun, and you'd fit right in. As usual, goose wrote the better report on our trip, but I think our facts matched up. I'm still wishing I was out there, it was an amazing place.

[Paperback Writer]

Hiking/Backpacking Boot Recommendations.

I'm in the market for a new pair of hiking boots that will be used primarily for backpacking. Interested in any recommendations or advice.

[Dwight Schr-ute]

I have a pair of Raichle's that I love. I wanted to chew my own legs off during the two weeks that I broke them in, but now they git like a glove. Definitely a bit on the heavy side, but absolutely solid. I guess the company is now called Mammut. Looks like they would be somewhat comparable to these: http://www.sierratradingpost.com/mam...colorFamily=01

[creekster]

I have some Asolo gore tex boots that I really like. I have used them for two seasons now, from day hikes to multi-day trips. The break in period was very easy and they are now very comfortable. The gore tex works like a charm. They are quite stiff but not as heavy as a fully leather-clad upper. And you can find them on some very good sales.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FE0EBG/...SIN=B000FE0EBG

[PaloAltoCougar]

I haven't bought backpacking boots for several years, but when I did I really appreciated the service and selection at REI (pricier than online or discount sports stores, but worth the premium, I thought). I tried on several pairs, hiked around the store (and up and down steps, etc.) and received a lot of guidance from a couple of seasoned backpackers who, thankfully, had nothing better to do that spend an hour or two with a newb.

[Dwight Schr-ute]

I haven't bought backpacking boots for several years, but when I did I really appreciated the service and selection at REI (pricier than online or discount sports stores, but worth the premium, I thought). I tried on several pairs, hiked around the store (and up and down steps, etc.) and received a lot of guidance from a couple of seasoned backpackers who, thankfully, had nothing better to do that spend an hour or two with a newb.

Also, you get one year to return them, no questions asked. Just in case the pair you buy isn't working out.

[ERCougar]

I used to have a pair of vasque sundowners that I loved. But I can't remember the last time I wore boots. Maybe it's because I'm in southern Utah. Why do you want boots? They are heavy and really don't give you actual functional support, do they? (Ill defer to the pt's on this, but I'm very skeptical of ankle braces...even more so of boots). What do you get out of boots that you don't get out of a good trail runner? (Honest question...I've wondered for a while if I should get some again)