Dan's Outside

NovemberRain

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November 9, 2006 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | Comments Off on NovemberRain

Shoulda' Started Earlier

I did wake up at 4:00 a.m. Really, I did. But after working on grading papers late into the night I could tell it was not going to be a great idea to get up after 4 hours of sleep and climb the mountain before sunrise this week. Maybe next week… or the week after…
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November 5, 2006 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | Comments Off on Shoulda' Started Earlier

Gotta' Start Earlier!

I’m considering a very early morning hike up Misson Peak tomorrow morning, with luck arriving at the top before sunrise. I tried last weekend and was about 20 minutes late to the summit ridge – and that was on the last morning of daylight savings time. So tomorrow the sun comes up “an hour earlier” (or so it now seems) meaning that I need to wake up really early.

If you see new Mission Peak photos here tomorrow you’ll know I made it.
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November 4, 2006 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | Comments Off on Gotta' Start Earlier!

Best Hiking Season

Although fewer and fewer people are found on the trails this time of year, we are coming into the best season for hiking in central coast California.

While central California can be a great place to hike in the summer, it can also be a very hot and dry place with temperatures often getting into the 90 degree range – it is not always a lot of fun to trudge up a steep trail in that kind of heat. On top of that, it rarely rains here between mid-spring and November, so the trails are dry and dusty.

During November the temperatures drop and the first rainfall settles the dust. The air – at least in the morning – can be crisp and clear. The leaves are still changing colors at the lower elevations. Eventually there will be mud – lots of mud – but at this early point in the season that is not a problem yet. And we have California’s “spring in winter” to look forward to, as the grasses and other plants begin to sprout in mid-winter after the rain arrives.

And if you are like me, you may even acquire a fondness for hiking in cold and wet weather… and choose to hike in the rain.
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November 2, 2006 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | Comments Off on Best Hiking Season

Happy Birthday to Two-Heel Drive

In my last post I forgot to wish Two-Heel Drive, Tom Mangan’s hiking blog, a happy first birthday.

Tom has done a great job with his blog, obviously bringing his skills as a journalism professional to his work. (Something that many of the rest of us cannot claim… ;-)
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October 29, 2006 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | Comments Off on Happy Birthday to Two-Heel Drive

Closing a Circle on Mt. Whitney Comments

At the risk of a dangerous level of inter-blog circular referencing…

Tom Mangan (Two-Heel Drive) posted an excerpt from and comment on a recent post of mine about climbing Mt. Whitney from the west, in which he wrote:

Possible disadvantage: after a week in the High Sierra, you’ll wonder why you bothered to summit Whitney. It’s not like it’s the only place with a good view.

Indeed!

As much as Whitney is a very high place with wonderful panoramic views and is the object of many hikers, I would certainly not call it my favorite place in the Sierra… in fact, not even my second-favorite place. As far a peak climbing goes, my climb of nearby Mt. Langley actually made a much bigger impression on me.

And, as Tom has apparently figured out, on each of my Mt. Whitney From the West adventures the approach was much more memorable than summiting the peak. In fact, on one of the two trips the descent was more memorable… but that’s a story for another time.

On my second Long March to Mt. Whitney, we came from Onion Valley via Kearsarge and Forrester Passes. One minor goal for me on this trip was to hike across a very short section of the Muir Trail that I had somehow missed on several other journeys in the area – the section between Tyndall and Wallace Creeks. (How I missed it is also a long story… and also for another time.)

For some reason, as I considered this section of the trail during the years when I had yet to hike it, I imagined it being one of those sort of boring “gotta’ go there to get between the interesting places” trails.

Boy, was I wrong! It is hard to identify the precise causes, but from time to time in the backcountry you have moments when everything simply comes together and every painful grind up a pass or soggy afternoon spent plodding in the rain is forgotten because the present moment is so good and you feel so connected. I had one of those moments on the high point of this section of the JMT near Tawny Point. I remember the feeling more than the specific details, but I do recall dropping my pack, almost without thinking about it, and simply heading up a nearby low ridge to soak up the panorama.

And even though I summitted Whitney a few days later, this hour spent near the JMT at Tawny Point is way higher on my list of memorable Sierra moments.
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October 29, 2006 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | Comments Off on Closing a Circle on Mt. Whitney Comments

"Hi, are you Dan Mitchell?"

Occasionally I run into someone I know on the trail – even while backpacking in out-of-the-way places in the Sierra. But it is very unusual to run into someone I haven’t met who already knows me!

Today I hiked to Mission Peak, thinking I would arrive at the summit by dawn. Unfortunately, circumstances kept me from getting on the trail in time for that, though I did start out in the darkness. In early light I arrived on the ridge just to the south of the peak, and I set up my tripod and camera to photograph the light beginning to strike a ridge to the west.

About this time a hiker came along the trail, descending from the peak. As she approached she said, “Hi, are you Dan Mitchell?” Now that was a surprise! It turned out that she had seen some of my Mission Peak photographs and guessed that if she ran into someone on the Mission Peak ridge with camera and tripod there was a fairly good chance that it might be me. Diane and I spent 10 minutes or so talking about the peak – it turns out that she had seen some photographs I posted earlier this year (see below) and realized that she had been on the peak the day I took them. (It was a very unusual morning, with fog completely covering the valleys below and high, wispy clouds above.)

I understand that I missed a sunrise birthday party for an 85 year old hiker at the summit. Reports are that there was champagne and cake!

Two Monoliths, Mission Peak (monochrome). September 2, 2006. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell. (Sales)

Mt. Diablo, Fog. Mission Peak Ridge. September 2, 2006. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell. (Sales)

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October 28, 2006 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | Comments Off on "Hi, are you Dan Mitchell?"

Yosemite Valley Autumn Color – Go Now!

Earlier this month I chased the beautiful eastern Sierra aspens as they changed color. Since they have pretty much run their course now, I headed to Yosemite Valley yesterday to see what I could find.

What I found was an exceptional display of fall color! From the dogwoods along Hiway 120 to the oaks and other trees in (and above) the Valley, the colors were amazing… and probably just about at their peak.
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October 23, 2006 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | Comments Off on Yosemite Valley Autumn Color – Go Now!

Welcome to Visitors from troutunderground.com

Tom Chandler at
***TheTroutUnderground
contacted me this week to ask if he use a few photos to point at my blog – and it looks like he did so today.

I’m very happy to hear that Tom enjoys my photography, and I hope visitors who come here via his site feel the same way. And my readers should take a look at Tom’s site. Even non-fisherpeople will enjoy it. (This makes me think that sometime I’ll have to tell my own sad story about fishing… :-)

During the past couple of weeks I’ve managed to get to the eastern Sierra a few times to take in the annual but always astonishing fall aspens, and I have posted a few photos here. But there are lots of other photos at this site – take a look at the sidebar for links.

Even better, visit my real photography web site: G Dan Mitchell | Photography.

Again, thanks for visiting.

– Dan

(By the way, Tom has some nice photos of his vision of autumn on the upper Sacramento river at his site.)
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October 11, 2006 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | Comments Off on Welcome to Visitors from troutunderground.com

Twenty Lakes Basin 2006

About this time every year I join Talusdancers friends for our traditional Last Pack Trip of the Season, which is often a 2-3 day trip in the Tuolumne Meadows area on the last weekend before the Park Service no longer allows overnight parking on Tioga Pass Road. We have frequently gone to Fletcher Lake (and interesting nearby areas), though weather has occasionally forced a change in plans, as can happen during the Sierra autumn, and we have ended up at Cathedral Lakes or even day-hiked.

This time my friend Owen and I were the only participants as others backed out for a variety of entirely reasonable causes. We had decided on a Fletcher Lake trip. Since I had only two days, we would go to Fletcher on Saturday and then do some sort of cross-country hike on Sunday before I hiked out and Owen remained for one additional day.

I planned to leave after work on Friday but life intervened and I decided to instead leave very early on Saturday. Owen went to a concert in the City and drove up to Evergreen Road (just outside the park) to “car bivy,” arriving there at 3:30 a.m., a half hour before I got up to leave from the South Bay.

A small snow storm had dropped an inch or two of snow in spots, causing the Park Service to close Hiway 120 across the park on Friday night, and we arrived at the Tuolumne Grove to find the road still temporarily blocked. Shortly the road opened and the many waiting visitors headed up the hiway. Owen and I finally met up at the Tuolumne permit station where we got our permits for Fletcher Lake. Since Owen had missed breakfast while waiting for the road to open we decide to visit the Tioga Pass Resort before hiking. As we had breakfast and talked things over we decided that it might be interesting to visit 20 Lakes Basin (above Saddlebag Lake) instead, so we got another set of permits and headed off in that direction instead.

We arrived at the Saddlebag Lakes trailhead… to find it snowing lightly. We waited it out in our cars and finally got on the trial in the early afternoon, hiking through partly cloudy and windy weather around the lake and then to Cascade Lake below North Peak where we set up camp in the shelter of a short granite wall. We got a few more shots of very light snow, and the weather stayed cold and windy.

This time of year can be quite nice, but it can also be cold and a bit stormy. The combination of clouds, slight precipitation, winds, and cold temperatures pushed the conditions on this trip a bit further in the winter direction than usual. We managed to stay out of our shelters (Owen in a ultralight tarp setup and me in my bivy sack) until 7:00 p.m. (and after a spectacular sunset) but finally it was getting too cold to hang around outside. Fortunately, we were both a bit sleep deprived from our attempts to get packed and to the mountains after work, and getting to sleep early was no problem.

It was cold. I began the night wondering if it would be one of those on which I stayed about 10 degrees too cold, dealing with cold feet all night long. The wind was contributing to this effect as was the fact that we had hung out so late into the evening. Finally I began to warm up later in the evening and when I woke up a few times during the night I was treated to a beautiful sight of the full moon illuminating the basin and surround peaks which were ringed with fog.

Morning was cold. I peaked out enough to see that my bivy was covered with a thick layer of frost… and decided to hang out in this relatively warm cocoon until the sun came up. I finally got up around 7:00 or 7:30 and shot a few early morning photographs of our frost-covered surroundings before grabbing a very quick and basic breakfast. After drying out and packing up we finally got on the trail around mid-morning and headed down toward Lundy Canyon to complete a loop around more of the lakes and return to Saddlebag.

It was again fairly cold, never getting above the mid-forties, but that can seem fairly comfortable once you are used to it and when you are on the move. We stopped frequently for photos and eventually climbed up a long gully to come across the top of a ridge where we could see the descent back to Saddlebag. We soon reached this lake and followed the longer left shore route back to our cars.

It being lunch time and the last day of the season at Tioga Pass Resort, we succumbed to temptation and went back there for a meal before heading our separate ways: Owen toward Mammoth to stay the night, and I to Lee Vining Canyon, Virginia Lakes, and Conway Summit for photograph aspens.

Thus ends the 2006 backpacking season. Unlike some of the last few years, there was no single big trip this year. (In 2005 the Talusdancers put together a 2-week trip, and the year before several of us were out on a 9 day trip.) I did take several short trips, with the longest being a 5 day adventure into the Big Pine Creek area below the Palisades.
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October 10, 2006 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | Comments Off on Twenty Lakes Basin 2006