Posts Tagged: California

Early in September of 2008, I attempted a climb of 14,153-foot Mount Sill in the Palisade Range of the eastern Sierras. About one year prior, I had tried the climb but was turned back on the second morning by inclement weather and ill health. On that trip I climbed Mt. Agassiz instead. This time I was determined to make the summit with my three friends, Kate, Whitney, and Ian.

Reaching the eastern Sierra from the Bay Area is difficult. We weren’t planning on hiking anywhere the first day, so we took our time on the drive, stopping at a few points along Yosemite’s Tioga Road to enjoy the sights. We pulled into the town of Bishop late that evening and spent the night in a hotel.

At the end of June during the summer of 2008, I left for Yosemite with a group of Stanford Outdoors leaders. Our goal was to watch the sun rise from the top Half Dome.

We left campus late on a Friday afternoon. The drive was relatively painless; there was no traffic, but we were hampered by thick smoke from the forest fires burning in hundreds of locations across the state and endless stories about pet hermit crabs. We stopped for dinner at a place called Ofelia’s Taqueria in Tracy. We found a number of interesting items in our burritos, and none of us will be returning there.

As an instructor for Stanford’s Outdoor Education Program, I led an introductory mountaineering trip to 11,204 foot Alta Peak in Sequoia National Park during May of 2008. We left the Bay Area at around 7:30 PM on Friday evening, and drove all the way to the park that night. We camped at Lodgepole, a front country campsite with a visitor center, market, flush toilets, and showers.

The next morning, we woke up, broke camp, and drove to the trailhead. At about 7,200 feet, the trailhead was low enough that there was no snow. However, the rangers had told us that snowshoes—and potentially crampons and ice axes—would be necessary for the climb. Due to these reports, we strapped snowshoes and a few ice axes to our packs and started up the trail.

Every quarter, the instructors of the Stanford Outdoor Education Program (OEP) go on a retreat to refine skills and plan trips and lessons. For our Spring 2008 retreat, we took advantage of a spell of hot weather to brave the cold, swift waters of Arroyo Seco, a gorgeous canyon east of Big Sur. Not only is Arroyo Seco beautiful, but it’s much closer to campus than the Sierras, so it made for a short and easy drive.

Tucked in the northwest corner of California, the Trinity Alps are a small but spectacular mountain range. The Trinities have been on my list of places to visit for a few years now, so I was excited for an opportunity to explore them. I joined a group planning to snowshoe up the Canyon Creek Trail to the Canyon Creek Lakes, an eight mile hike with 3,500 feet of elevation gain. The goal was to get as far as possible up the trail, given the storm forecast for the weekend.

I managed to sneak five days of skiing in before New Years during the 2007 – 2008 season. After an usually low snow year for 2006-2007, it was encouraging that Tahoe got several feet of snow before Christmas. Despite this early snowfall, all of the Tahoe ski areas suffered from the usual early season low coverage with lots of exposed rocks.

My first day of skiing was at Sugar Bowl, on the Saturday after the season’s first big winter storm. I didn’t get to lay any fresh tracks, but there were several chutes that had retained nice powder stashes. The best skiing was off of the Disney Express chair. I explored Nancy’s Couloir, which flowed down from a wind-blown ridge. At the top of the ridge, the wind had exposed several large rocks, so I had to carefully navigate a path between the cliffs. Below the rocks, the snow was great.

During our week off from school for Thanksgiving, my friend Paul and I decided to do a short backpacking trip along California’s Point Reyes National Seashore. We left early on Monday morning, piling ourselves and our gear into Paul’s 1978 Volkswagen bus. The morning was cloudy and gray, with dreary rain tumbling from the overcast sky. We drove for a little over two hours, picked up a permit, and parked at the trailhead.