Dan's Outside

A Couple Tom Stienstra Articles

A couple of Sierra Nevada stories in SFGate:

NOTEBOOK / The mountain highways are opening up all over Northern California. Highway 108 at Sonora Pass became the first trans-Sierra highway to open this year, when it was cleared last weekend for the opening of trout season. The highway was closed this past week for maintenance but will open for good on Wednesday, according to… [SFGate: Tom Stienstra]

and…

Staring down bighorns in Inyo. From a towering rock monolith 150 feet above us, four Sierra bighorn sheep stared down. We homed in with binoculars and a spotting scope. At the lip of the monolith, a big female perched like a hood ornament. When I zoomed in closer, its gaze seemed…
[SFGate: Tom Stienstra]

My favorite personal bighorn story comes from many years ago – probably 20 or so. I was on a two-week solo pack trip in the southern Sierra. I had come over Elizabeth Pass and down to Bubbs Creek, which I followed upstream before taking the Muir Trail over Glen Pass and down to Rae Lakes. The morning after arriving there I thought I’d investigate the ridge to the west so I headed up there by myself. I was climbing along in my own little world when suddenly I heard a tremendous noise of rockfall nearby. I looked up and saw a group of bighorns right in front of me. I dropped my pack in the hope of taking out my camera but they took off, and by the time I got the camera out they were way down the ridge and gone.
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May 6, 2007 - Posted by gdanmitchell | Sierra Nevada