Why The Sierras Are Awesome

Emerald Bay from the Bayview Trail.

Apparently I'm on the half-year schedule for posting here. Summer was late in coming this year, but now that it's here in Tahoe, it couldn't be more beautiful. I got out on a couple of hikes this past weekend to enjoy the sun and warmth. On Saturday, I went into Desolation Wilderness from the Bayview Trail to check out snow conditions for an upcoming backpacking trip. Conclusion: there's still a lot of snow up there, but there are clear areas too. The remaining snow is melting fast. Mosquitoes should be out in full force in a week or two!

I was going to hike in as far as conditions and time would allow, with a goal of seeing Dicks Lake and Fontanillis Lake before hitting the Velmas. I got side-tracked by the snow and went off trail on the way to Dicks Lake. I also forgot the map at home. Using peaks as landmarks, I went cross-country to explore a bit and ended up at Upper Velma Lake. Soon thereafter, I met a guy by another unnamed lake, borrowed his map, and found I was not far from the trail. Conclusion: cross-country hiking is a lot more fun and rewarding than hiking the beaten trails.

Unnamed lake in Desolation Wilderness.

It's wildflower season in Tahoe National Forest, on the way out to Loch Leven Lakes.

On Sunday, I met up with my friend Steve and we hiked up to Loch Leven Lakes, west of Donner Pass off I-80. There are three named lakes and more that are unnamed nested in glacier-carved granite bowls and depressions. A beautiful area that I would like to come back to, especially for backpacking and more cross-country travel.

Cross-country hiking around Loch Leven Lakes. Looking east to Devil's Peak in the distance.

A sweet sunny spot for a lizard on top of a rock cairn.

I think this was High Loch Leven Lake.

Life has a way of circling back...

Great storm-watching on the porch in Montana this summer.

I looked back recently on my July 19th, 2009 post. At that time I was on a road trip heading north after leaving Colorado. After a particularly long and arduous day of hiking in the Tetons, driving north, and finding no camping in Yellowstone, we ended up exhausted at a campground at 9pm in a beautiful valley, between the Park and Livingston, called Paradise Valley. I remember thinking, "Wow, what a spectacular place!"

Well, life is funny. How could I have known that a year later I would be back in that same valley, spending a whole summer there, and adoring it completely? The hiking and backpacking opportunities there are numerous, easy to get to, and for the most part - uncrowded. The house I lived in abutted the Gallatin National Forest to the west, the Absaroka mountains to the east, and the Beartooths just beyond that. They all became my playground. Here I encountered bears, spires, glacial lakes, Alaska-esque mosquitos, sudden storms, trout, owls, and much more.

A young elk in Yellowstone chills out.

Moonrise over Emigrant Peak, from the back porch.


Backpacking in Lakes Plateau in the Absarokas.



The Beartooth Mountains east of Yellowstone.

An early summer hike up to Pine Lake in the Absarokas.

Granite Lake in the Beartooths.



Surveying pikas.

I also had the chance to volunteer at Yellowstone NP in the bear management office, helping to investigate problem bears in the backcountry, and more extensively, doing pika surveys. Pikas are small rodents in the rabbit family that live in scree fields, harvesting and drying out "hay" for winter food. They remain active in the wintertime, creating tunnels in snow. Super cute creatures, and subjects for long-term climate change studies in the Park.

Staying at a backcountry patrol cabin in Yellowstone. Each of the cabins are unique and dense in history, some of which is shared in the log books. It was nice to be in the backcountry doing work and having a roof to sleep under when night fell. The cabin shelves are loaded with expired can and dry goods that other people have left behind, making for some interesting dinners. I made some brownies from a ten-year old Betty Crocker box...and nobody even got sick.

American bison strolling in Park roads are a common sight in Yellowstone. When I got to the Park in early June, the bison calves were red balls, new and frisky. How they played! I sat by the side of the road and watched them.

It's a lesson I would learn over and over again: Yellowstone is at its best when you sit quietly and just watch. Maywe we can all use a little more time observing the life all around...

Listing Who I Am

I recently read an editorial post in the Mountain Gazette asking people to share "cool things" they've done that essentially encapsulates who they are, and it has to be generally mountain-related. Such a list would fit just one person in this whole world. I was inspired to try and capture some of my favorite experiences in life so far, big and little.

COOL THINGS I’VE DONE (that have made me who I am)
1. Spent a summer alone in a dark cabin in the woods, with an outhouse, in Alaska.
2. Quit my cushy job in a scary economy and went traveling for eight months.
3. Bottle-fed a newborn Great Dane.
4. Played a pub quiz with a German and four drunk Kiwi girls (we lost).
5. Climbed a fourteener in Colorado.
6. Kayaked through (and made up a children’s story about) icebergs.
7. Cleaned toilets in State parks (highly recommended for your kids!).
8. Napped on a mountainside in grizzly country.
9. Was a flower in a hometown parade.
10. Plucked contact lens from a bear spray victim’s eyes, and then fell into exhausted sleep at 2am on a snowbank.
11. Camped on a rocky beach near a glacier (and was almost washed away).
12. Drank Mojitos with an Aussie while a Filipino band played Johnny Cash in a Spanish bar in Vietnam.
13. Went two weeks without a shower.
14. Aced a tough environmental law final the day I found out I had cancer.
15. Made a calzone, from scratch, in the backcountry.
16. Helped my grandmother pass the U.S. citizenship test when I was a kid.
17. Climbed mountains alone in Tasmania.
18. Worked in pitch black Oregon forests in the middle of the night, calling for owls.
19. Took my Honda sedan four-wheeling on Utah back roads.
20. Ran away from a sorcerer.

America the Beautiful

Yosemite Falls in April.

To celebrate being back in the U.S. for exactly one month today, I thought I'd write and let those of you who are curious know that I am still alive and well. The rapid passage of time is scary, frankly. I heard that time slips even more silently by with age, so I gave it some thought, and eventually devised a method to combat speeding time. This is it: I enjoy what I am doing, and who I am doing it with. I try to listen, and really be there, whatever and wherever it may be. I pay attention. To life. It is the title of this blog, essentially. And it's a good thing I abide by this strategy, and it works so well, or otherwise you'd probably be reading this post six months down the road, with me wondering what happened between April and October.

Speaking of listening and paying attention to what is around us, I heard an interesting program on natural sounds, or rather, its rarity and endangerment, on NPR recently. http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/04/gordon-hemptons-silence

The month has been punctuated by a series of wonderful trips. As soon as I got back home, I left for a four day road trip with my parents and sister, exploring the triumphs of the natural and built worlds: Yosemite, Death Valley, Hoover Dam, and yes, Las Vegas. Some of you may not choose to use the word "triumph" to describe Vegas, but we'll just leave it at that. The new span bridge to permanently divert traffic from Hoover Dam itself is nearly complete, and it's looking pretty. Lots of quality family time, and plenty of time in the car to chat and catch up after an eight-month absence.

Next was a week of camping in northern Nevada with James. Neither of us knew the state well, so we were curious to explore and see what there was to see. Flexibility ended up being the Word of the Week, with Patience a close second, as we got there just about the same time the spring winds and snowstorms did. Neither of us are extremely fussy people, but battling gale force winds in the desert while trying to get a tent set up in those conditions would be ambitious, or laughable. So we stayed in Winnemucca for two nights, waiting for conditions to improve. In the meantime, we visited the extremely helpful folks at the Forest Service and BLM offices to learn about cool places to go, hit the culinary "jackpots" of the town, bought a Nevada Gazetteer, and strolled through the Buckaroo Hall of Fame. One thing is certain, Winnemucca is inhabited by lots of friendly people who are so happy to be living there, and want to encourage you to move there too! We really enjoyed the locals.

Finally the weather kinda sorta improved, so we headed out to Paradise Valley and the Santa Rosa Mountains. We couldn't make it all the way up to the summit on the Forest Service Road due to snow, but we got very close, and it was a beautiful drive. We camped in the Martin Creek canyon nearby. A warm evening fire after dinner was rudely interrupted by a mini-blizzard, dumping a couple inches of snow over fifteen minutes or so, as we scrambled to put things away and put out the fire in the driving winds and snow.

Camping by Martin Creek. Most of the snow was gone by morning.

Basin and Range.

The next day encompassed a beautiful drive over to the Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area (NCA) in northwest Nevada. Basin and Range. That's what Nevada is. We did indeed see lots of isolated north-south trending mountain ranges (perfect to explore on another trip) separated by bucolic valleys. Sage country, canyon country. Playas or dried lake beds. If wildness and quiet were your thing, you could be very happy in Nevada. I did see a roadside sign (a little more professional than my rendering) illustrating a couple of important industries in this Silver, or Battle-Born, State.
The NCA is a starkly beautiful landscape. A highlight for me was part of its history: the Applegate Trail, used by the pioneers going to California in the 1840s as an alternative to following the Humboldt River, runs through it. I tried to picture covered wagons, teams of oxen, women in bonnets and heavy skirts, clouds of dust, crying children, the relentless sun. I could almost succeed. I admired the strong-willed who pushed through this tough landscape, and felt sympathy for those who perished under the desert sun.

We too might have perished that night in the NCA, were it not for the modern automobile, which we slept in, buffering us from the chilly wind. The stars were brilliant and then the full moon rose. The next morning we continued on to the Black Rock Desert, a playa famous for hosting the Burning Man Festival, but now empty, cracked, shimmering, splendid. We continued on to a leisurely afternoon and night in Pumpernickel Valley, then it was on to Elko, and eventually, home.

Outdoor enthusiasts, especially those of quieter pursuits, don't normally rank Nevada high on their list. It's kind of way out there, and there aren't many glamorous parks of the Yosemite or Grand Canyon ilk (excepting maybe Great Basin NP), but I think it has a lot to offer people who don't want to rub shoulders with a whole lot of other people. Given all the mountain ranges in Nevada, chances are good you'll have one all to your self.

Most recently I came back from an overnight snowshoeing trip into the Crystal Basin of the Western Sierra Nevadas, up to Robbs Hut, with a couple of friends. I was happy to be on snow, even crunchy snow punctuated by bare ground. I didn't have a proper winter this year on my travels, so this short hut trip hit the spot. Robbs Peak offered fantastic views of the Crystal Range to the east and ridge upon ridge to the west, including the Central Valley and Coastal Range. Sunset was gorgeous from the fire lookout, while happily eating a bowl of warm pea soup on the leeward side of the chilly east wind. We also explored the three reservoirs in the basin managed by SMUD, some of us crashing through ice on Loon Lake, and others of us slipping into chilly Union Reservoir. I am still cold thinking about it. But the sun was warm, the weather impeccable, and the company excellent. I am learning more about my home state, and there is much to like. It's a beautiful state in a superbly gorgeous country. It's good to be back.

Robbs Hut

This is my last night of an eight-month trip, not counting tomorrow night aboard an Air New Zealand plane. I go to the Cairns airport tomorrow morning, and 3 flights and 24 hours later, I will be in San Francisco! I am reading a good book - The Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs - and with a newspaper, I should be set for travel entertainment. It is a quiet evening at the Northern Greenhouse Hostel in Cairns, not a very exciting end to the journey...but then again, it may be an accurate reflection of the tenor of my trip. I'll update with the rest of my journey since my last blog later!

...back to the the Sea (Saigon and the Mekong Delta)

Saigon - officially Ho Chi Minh City - is a bustling metropolis, the most modern in Vietnam, and its financial capital. Sometimes it's called the "motorbike city". Apparently there are nine million inhabitants and seven million motorbikes. The city has some fabulous museums where one can learn all about the Vietnam/American War, though from the communist perspective, inevitably. Learning about the War was one reason I had so looked forward to Saigon. And it didn't disappoint. The other reason for my interest in Saigon is a bit of family history. My maternal grandfather spent several of his teenage years in this city, as his family fled from the advancingJapanese in southern China during WW2. I am not sure where he lived, but yesterday I took the bus down to Chinatown to have a walk around. I heard Cantonese spoken by the old ladies on the bus. Chinese signs, old temples, herbal shops, a few little markets were some things I saw. I also had pearl milk tea. :) But it was a Vietnamese version, with other jellies and things along with the pearls - one in particular was a little red thing where as your teeth bit into it, a sour little burst of liquid came out as a surprise.

But, back to the museums. I started at the Reunification (or Independence) Palace, where in 1975 the Viet Cong rammed through the iron gates and soldiers ran up to the top to plant their flag, joining north and south Vietnam. Most of the palace is flash rooms with heavy carpets and curtains for entertaining foreign dignitaries, meeting rooms, conference rooms, living quarters for the President...The most interesting place was the basement, which was headquarters of the war for South Vietnam, with map rooms, radio rooms, and one oddly touching one with ten ancient typewriters lining the walls.

After the Palace, I walked over to the War Remnants Museum. It is being renovated, and even before I walked into the courtyard, I saw the piles of bricks and construction debris amongst the powerful tools of the Americans during the war: Army, Navy, and Air Force helicopters, planes, tanks, artillery machinery...all sitting around a big courtyard outside the museum building. Oddly fitting in a way. These once powerful vehicles wrecked destruction, but sitting harmlessly under the shade, they looked almost quaint. In the Museum, I learned about the history and escalation of the wars. How the Vietnamese fought the French for independence, then American intervention and civil war between North and South. The numbers. Number of soldiers killed by country, tons of bombs dropped. Some names were familiar (Tolkin, ships attacked, deceit)and I could trace them back to World History class in the tenth grade. But I am in Vietnam, not in a classroom, and everything feels real, closer to the present for me than they ever have. I know I am in a communist country, and nothing is without communist propaganda. This one-sided-ness is blatantly obvious in very single museum I have been to in Vietnam. I wanted to ask, so these are the people killed and the destruction wrecked by the Americans and the South Vietnamese "puppet" regime, and by no means do I mean to lessen the guilt of their crimes (Kissinger regrets the War in his book about Vietnam...), but show me "your" numbers. How many did the Viet Cong kill? How did they treat their prisoners? Show me the traps that took ankles, how many civilian casualties were killed by the communists? I want it all. Give me the whole picture. But despite its shortcomings, the museum vividly succeeds in documenting the attrocities of war in general. THIS is what happens to innocents. Look at it. Do you see? Everyone should, especially our decision-makers. I for one would be happy to support sending the US Congress to Saigon for the War Remnants Museum with tax-dollars. it would be money well spent...but they'll have to stay in budget hotels just like the rest of us.

The most touching exhibit at the museum was a collection of photos taken by photojournalists from 11 countries who all died documenting the war. One series by a Life photographer follows a tall, handsome young soldier, leader of a helicopter crew, as he strides confidently towards the aircraft before the battle, it shows the bombing, the gunfire, him manning the artillery, him cradling a dead pilot in the air, and the last photo, at the end of the battle and the day, he is sprawled out in a storage room, head down, weeping...You don't easily forget something like this. You also don't forget a photo of a US soldier holding a human head and entrails. I didn't want to look, but I saw it accidently while walking out of the museum. Now it is a part of what I have seen, what I have learned, about war.

But don't worry, I am not crying in my hotel room every day. Just last night, Ashleigh and I went out for shellfish cooked in a delicious tamarind-garlic sauce, then to this posh Cuban/Spanish place for live music, to celebrate her last night in Saigon. She's heading to Cambodia, which I, unfortunately, won't get to on this trip.

Today I went on a tour of the Mekong Delta, crusing the river in motorized and paddle boats and tasting coconut candy. The Mekong River is huge, and before it enters the sea, it splits into nine branches (each is probably the size of the Colorado, at least). It starts in Tibet and comes down through Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, a journey of 4500 km, before reaching the sea. The delta is has very rich soil deposited by the Mekong, so agriculture here is very fruitful. Also, if you're eating farmed catfish at home, chances are, they were farmed in the Mekong River. There are floating structures, houses, in the river, with nets underneath to rear catfish that are then exported. But there are too many farms on the river. The catfish are confined, and they are feed pellets, not their natural foods. Pollution is a problem.

We got some rain today. Tour guide said this is crazy, because monsoon season doesn't start until May, and it's only the end of March. Unseasonal things are happening everywhere I go. I'm supposed to go hiking tomorrow, my last day in Saigon. Hmm.

From the Sea (Nha Trang) to the Mountains (Dalat)...

Jeez, I can't believe it's been another week since I've updated. It's been a really great one for some serious learning and fun. From Nha Trang, "Vietnam's Beach", where I wrote from last time, I went to Dalat, a mountain town southwest of there that's supposed to remind folks of the Swiss Alps. I can't say I completely agree, but it was a pleasant couple of days and nights. Problem is, it's near the end of the dry season, and there are a lot of fires going on on the mountainsides ringing the town, so it's brown and smoky. Plus the large lake (reservoir) that's the focal point of Dalat, the apple of its eye, has been drained, and muck is being scooped out by large machinery.

But let me back up a little bit. When I got on the bus in Nha Trang, there was one other girl inside, and we just happened to be seatmates. So I met Ashleigh, another solo woman traveller, from Melbourne, and we ended up exploring Dalat and Saigon together the past five evenings. We rambled down and around Dalat's market and streets, including an old cobblestone lane lined with local street vendors selling sweets, shellfish, pho, etc. We tried bits of this and that, starting off with a kilo of dried yams! (half for Ashleigh and half for me, but I finished mine rather fast and Ashleigh gave me hers :).) I love dried yams. You can't find them like that, soft and chewy, without preservatives, in the States, not even at Trader Joe's. Many street vendors were selling three hot drinks, so I had to try them - soya milk, yellow bean, and peanut. Dalat was great for the street food and market. One night we had hot pot!

For a little something between the gastronomic explorations, I rented a mountain bike for 40K dong from a nice man who gave me a lock but no helmet. I was frankly a little nervous biking around with motorbikes and buses whizzing around, but I took a breath and took off. My goal was to bike to the trailhead for Lang Biang Mountain, 12 km outside of Dalat, and hike up one of its volcanic peaks. It was a sunny day, but not terribly hot because the elevation is around five thousand feet there. But boy, if you're planning to do this ride sometime, I should warn you about the hills. And about eating exhaust. At least it was a paved road. It was really exhilarating coming down the hills, with my big hat brim flopping franatically against my forehead. Got to the trailhead, which was actually an iron gate where you have to pay 10K dong to have the privilage of going up the mountain. Okay, so that's 50 cents. what irked me though was that there's a new road built to the top of the smallest peak, and no official trail for hikers.
So I hiked up 2/3 of the mountain on the shoulder of this road, with "safari"-looking jeeps carrying tourists passing me all along the way. It was actually not that terrible, because of the pine forest. I was in a real forest, not a jungle, a forest! And my feet were crushing pine needles. and I could smell them, and the rich organic debris of the forest floor. Nothing else like it.

The last third of the way up to the peak I chose to go up (not the roaded one - the mountain has five volcanic peaks) was an actual trail deviating from the road, and quite steep in parts. But it's all part of getting up a mountain, so I loved it. Now, I want to tell you that the peak was amazing... but I can't. It was past noon by the time I made it to the very top of this peak, after the biking and hoofing it. There were several fires going in the mountains all around, prescribed, I'm sure, for agriculture. so it was smoky, and visibility was poor, though I could see Dalat 12 km away, and even the road I took to get to the base of the mountain. On the peak itself, there was a large shallow hole, where people tossed their garbage - beer cans, plastic bags, food wrappers, etc. Imagine that. I was glad to be on the top, but after a few minutes of the less than scintillating sights, I was ready to head down to the shade and green.

Although I didn't catch Dalat at the height of its mountain beauty, and got no flavour of its "Swiss Alp"-ness, I am glad I went, because it really is different from the other parts of Vietnam. There's a lot of agriculture here, because of its elevation and cooler climate - flowers, onions, strawberries and mulberries - things that aren't rice, which is what most of Vietnam's agriculture consists of. There are no sprinklers for the crops, so we saw people standing with hoses, hand-watering all their crops! Acres and acres of it. All day.