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| Backpack trip to Eastern Sierras
Lydia Hailu August 3-6, 2009 One of my favorite quotes is by Muir and its "the mountains are calling and I must go". Well, we've been looking forward to this trip mostly because we haven't done any kind of real climbing since the last trip out to Eastern Sierras in 2007. We took the same route as in 2007. The weather was perfect on the way in and for several days we stayed there, except the 50-60mph wind gusts in the afternoons and evenings on Tues and Wed. We had the lake all to ourselves. In fact, there were no other campers extending all the way up to Mono Pass - wow! Dave used to go backpacking there with his family when he was 10yrs old, and he said nothing has changed in terms of scenery and the fact that there is no foot traffic. The area is really hard to get to if starting from Mono Basin off hwy 395. You have 6 miles of rough-rugged road to Walker Lake, then a 900ft steep climb down to the lake, followed by a 1/2mi relatively flat area through mosquito-infested meadows, then a steep climb on scree and boulders all the way up to lower Sardine Lake (3.5miles 2676ft of climbing). Beau as usual was the champ - he even hauled up his food, treats, and supplements in his backpack and didn't show any sign of weakness. AND...he didn't even limp when we got to camp. Thanks to Sandy, the Methylsulfonylmethane sample she gave us really helped. There were lots of streams and spectacular water falls throughout the place. We had fresh alpine water for drinking and cooking and for cooling our beers! On Wednesday morning, Dave picked up a NOAA weather station on the FSR that a big storm was heading our way starting Wed night into Thursday mid morning - boy they were right on the dot on their prediction. We were hit by 60-70mph wind gusts Wed early evening and throughout the night. It was a bit scary listening to the machine gun rattling sound of the tent and wondering if everything will be ok. Thursday was the coldest, probably 32 degrees that it actually snowed! Later we heard that there was a system moving north into Lassen area with some severe weather. Good thing all we got was snow. I think I will let the pictures do the talking Pictures from the rest of our trip Cheers, |
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