Posts Tagged: California

Shortly after I returned from Alaska in the summer of 2007, my family left for a short backpacking trip in the Eastern Sierra. My mother, my father, and I met my father’s high school friend, Chris, near the town of Bishop, California. Our goal was the 14,153 foot summit of Mt. Sill, a remote peak in the Palisade Range.

We left civilization at the South Lake trail head, at 9,755 feet. The first day we hiked up to Bishop Pass, at 11,960 feet. The elevation gain was about 2,200 feet, but over a distance of 7.5 miles. Once over the pass, we hiked down into upper Dusy Basin, a beautiful rocky region speckled with alpine lakes.

The final trip of my Advanced Wilderness Skills class this quarter was a student-led backpacking trip to the Emigrant Wilderness. I’d never visited the Emigrant Wilderness, but it was described to me as a larger, less-crowded Desolation Wilderness. I knew the Desolation Wilderness to be a gorgeous area, so I was excited to explore Emigrant.

We left campus at around 7:00 PM on the evening of Friday June 1. The drive along Highway 108 was long. We stopped in Mi-Wuk Village to pick up a wilderness permit at the ranger station there, and continued east along the highway until we reached Crabtree Road. After several miles of poor-quality, mostly unpaved roads, we reached Crabtree Campsite, our home for the night, at around 12:30. We went to bed immediately, most of us sleeping out under the bright, almost full moon.

As a full-time student, most of my climbing these days is done in gyms. So I was excited for an opportunity to spend a weekend climbing on real rock at Phantom Spires, an area south of Lake Tahoe off of Highway 50 with excellent climbing on granite spires. Phantom spires is a neat place to climb because it has routes of varying difficulties, opportunities for trad leading, sport climbing, and top-roping, and it’s a beautiful area but only a ten minute walk from the parking lot.

Just a few miles east of Kirkwood Ski Resort, across Highway 88 from Carson Pass, lies a mountain called Round Top. At 10,381 feet, the peak looks daunting, but it requires no technical climbing to reach the summit. I attempted to climb the peak with a group of nine other Stanford students through Stanford’s Outdoor Education Program.

We stepped out of two monstrous pickup trucks into a Sno-Park at Carson Pass around 11:30 PM on a Friday night. The beds of both pickups were full to the brim with backpacks, snowshoes, harnesses, shovels, and other gear necessary for our summit assault. The spring night was clear but warm, so we decided to sleep out under the stars in the parking lot between our trucks.

A longtime alpine skier, I was roughly introduced to the back country version of that sport one weekend during April of 2007. I was a student in Stanford’s Outdoor Education Program, and I was excited to venture into Tahoe National Forest with eight other students and two instructors. We met to organize our gear on Friday the thirteenth late in the afternoon. After testing stoves, pitching tents, and checking out gear, we threw our packs and skis into a large SUV and a monstrous pickup truck and hit the road.

We began the drive to Northstar around three P.M. on January 4. As soon as we hit 4500′, it suddenly started snowing heavily. Millions of giant snowflakes extinguished visibility and blanketed the road. I took the wheel from Kayleigh, and slowly drove the Ford Escape over the white highway. When we finally reached Kayleigh’s cabin at Northstar, we knew the heavy snow meant we were in for an awesome first day.

Kirkwood is my favorite resort in Tahoe. It’s small, out of the way, and less crowded than almost any other resort in the area. It also gets the most snow of anywhere in the lower 48. With 7800′ base, it snows top to bottom at Kirkwood when it’s raining on the bottom half of many other resorts. Kirkwood also has an awesome variety of terrain, from solid intermediate slopes to extremely steep bowls and chutes for experts.

My first ski trip of the year was a one day bomb up to Northstar on December 16. Northstar is not one of my favorite resorts; it gets too crowded, is too low, and lacks really tough expert terrain. Despite opening up two entirely new ski areas, it still suffers from the problems suggested by its nickname “Flatstar.” Any ski resort that advertises, of all things, its snowmaking system should immediately cause skiers to doubt its snow quality. Northstar prides itself on the most extensive snowmaking system in Tahoe, and the snowmakers were out in full force the day we were there, spraying us with cold pellets of manmade precipitation. Because the base was so small, only a few lifts were open, and all runs rated more difficult than blue were closed.

I gunned the Highlander down Miner Road and smiled to myself as I noticed that the stoplight at the intersection with Camino Pablo was already green. A few minutes later I turned into the Orinda Safeway. As the three rucksacks in the back of the car testified, I was on my way to go backpacking with two of my best friends.

We strode boldly into the grocery store and began to select the food that would sustain us for the next few days. Pasta, tortillas, peanut butter, pancakes, and oatmeal made up the bulk of our haul. Half an hour and sixty dollars later, we were on our way again.