Laurabelle's Blog

On the last weekend in July, Jeff and I went backpacking in Lassen Volcanic National Park. It was a good trip (much better than our last few), but the adventure started early this time.

I had planned everything carefully in advance; we had our wilderness permit and everything ready to go. But at the last moment, Jeff wasn't sure he could get the time off after all. This was doubly frustrating because the reason he couldn't have the time off was the same reason he needed some time away from work. It was rather poetically ironic, but irony isn't much comfort. He did end up getting a half-day off on Friday and a full day on Monday, which was enough; we didn't have to cancel the trip.

So Thursday evening we packed the car, Friday morning I drove him to the train station, and at about noon he caught a train to meet me at work in the early afternoon. Of course we had forgotten something at home, but that was just a brief stop and then we were on our way.

On I-505 (between I-80 and I-5 west of Sacramento), we saw a minivan stopped on the side of the road, with people standing behind it waving their arms at the oncoming cars. We stopped; it turned out they needed a wrench because their passenger-side front tire had more or less exploded, and they needed to put on the spare tire. They had a wrench, but it was old, and one of its corners was split so that the socket wouldn't quite grasp the nuts. Our wrench was unfortunately too small. After substantial non-progress with the old broken wrench, Jeff hopped the barbed wire and went to knock at some nearby farmhouses to see if anyone there could help. This produced a nice ex-Navy chap named Billy with a lot of tattoos, a truck, and a rugged T-wrench! Jeff and myself now having served our purpose, we got on the road again.

The rest of the drive to Lassen was uneventful. Due to our late start and delay on the road, we ate dinner on the road and arrived at Summit Lake South Campground at about 9pm. (It was not even quite dark yet.) Happily, I had reserved a campsite online, so all we had to do was find our spot and set up the tent. Squatters had their stuff at the site we got there (a big group had overflowed from a nearby campsite after the campground host told them they had too many people for one site), but they left politely when Jeff told them we had the site reserved. Apparently they had entered from the other side and hadn't seen the signpost.

I am not generally a spontaneous person; I like to plan things out. Jeff and I had plans for this weekend (maybe not perfect plans, but plans nonetheless). As you might guess, our plans didn't exactly work out.

We had been planning to hike the Alder Creek Fall trail (starting at Wawona near Yosemite's south entrance). I worked a slightly short day on Saturday; Jeff picked me up, and we headed straight to Yosemite. The drive was excellent — nice traffic levels, and we saw no fewer than four large gliding birds that we thought were California Condors (I could be wrong — I don't remember seeing white on the bottom of the wings although I didn't get that good a look).

The plan was to stay the night in Wawona, then start on the trail on Sunday morning. It would be a two-day hike, in-and-out, camping at Alder Creek Falls. Unfortunately, what I hadn't planned for well enough was where we would stay the night on Saturday. I had sort of figured that would work itself out, I think; I guess I figured there wouldn't be many people there in the off-season. When we got there and realized that, gee, there were people there and we didn't have campground reservations, we panicked a little and decided to start hiking with the last of the sunlight and camp somewhere on the trail. Then when Jeff tried to fill out a wilderness permit (on paper from my organizer since they were out of actual forms), he noticed that the Alder Creek Trail was closed for controlled burns. Expletive!

This made me pretty mad at the park ranger who had responded to Jeff's query about hiking in the Wawona area that weekend, since she had not mentioned any controlled burns. I'm sure they plan these things in advance, and that's important information!

Friday was a holiday at Jeff’s work, so I took a day off too, and we made a day trip to Yosemite National Park.

The day commenced at 3:30am, and we were on the road by 4:40am. The highways were empty that early in the morning, so we made good time and reached the trailhead shortly after 8am. It isn’t much of a trailhead, just a little gravel parking lot with a couple of road signs that there’s a trail somewhere around. It was 8:30am when we hit the trail.

The guidebook described the first half-mile as punishing, but we found it to be nothing of the sort (possibly because it was still early and the air chilly). Before we entered trees, the top of the hill featured lovely views of Yosemite Valley, including El Capitan and Yosemite Falls.

Last weekend Jeff and I went to Flapjack Lakes. It's a 16-mile hike, 8 miles in and 8 miles out. It's somewhat like the Heather Park trail in that it's a relentless slope (never a downward step on the way in). Although it takes 8 miles to gain about 3200 feet, almost all that gain is in the last 4 miles, just like Heather Park.

Like our previous hike, the drama started the night before. (I broke the frame of my glasses the evening before we left for Heather Park.) I had a headache most of the evening, and in the middle of the night I got up for some aspirin and then was sick. Still, I was determined not to let it stop me, and in fact I felt better almost as soon as I set foot on the trail.