What I did on my summer vacation, Part 1:

Jumped.

Molten Lake

On vacation with the family in Northern Michigan right now. I've been spending a lot of time NOT at my computer, looking at scenery like this. Just lovely.

May Lake

(Okay, so this is long overdue, but I've figured out a workaround for the photo uploading issues I've been having, finally)

My second night in Yosemite on my trip a few weeks ago, I spent the night out at May Lake, in the high country near Tuolumne Meadows.    It's about 8 miles from Glen Aulin, with a trailhead off the Tioga Road, so you could easily do the two together on a weekend.  

Anyway, May Lake is a great beginner's backpack.  I've been told it can be difficult to get a backcountry permit for there, especially at peak times, but I had no trouble -- perhaps because I was heading in on a Thursday night, relatively early in the season.  Early enough, in fact, that there was still snow on the ground. A LOT of snow, actually. 

It's only about 1.2 miles up to May Lake from the parking area. It is an all-uphill hike, at about 9000 feet altitude, but because it's so short, I think pretty much anyone could do it, even with no backpacking experience at all.  And there are some lovely views from the trail. 

Just like at Glen Aulin, there's a High Sierra Camp at May Lake and a backpacker's campground. The campground is right on the shore of May Lake.   How 'bout this site:  

That's the lake behind my tent there, a stone's throw away.   Oh, and San Francisco friends, if you've ever wondered where your water comes from, here's one answer:

I feel like I sound like a broken record whenever I talk about Yosemite, but like everything else up there, May Lake is absolutely gorgeous. In the evening, it gets all glassy, sheltered as it is down in a swale of rock, and the reflection of those amazing Sierra clouds that Ansel Adams made so famous is striking. I probably took well over 100 pictures there (thank goodness for digital!). 

Apparently the bugs can get bad around the lake, but I had no problems in late June. Perhaps because it was still pretty chilly. I'd guess it got down close to 30 degrees overnight, and I already mentioned the snow.  The High Sierra Camp didn't look anywhere near ready to open for the season, in fact.   In terms of other wildlife, a deer wandered right through my camp while I was setting up, and there were a TON of yellow-bellied marmots about, particularly in the morning.    I watched them for quite a while Friday morning, as I made my coffee and breakfast. They're interesting creatures -- left one on guard as the rest were running about getting water, searching for food, etc. 

They're nicknamed "picket pins," which you understand once you see one standing up on its hind legs. And, man, they're bigger than I thought. I always imagined marmots to be sort of squirrel sized, but these are more like the size of a beaver. I'd guess they easily weigh 20 lbs. Maybe more. I've heard that they can be scavengers and try to get into your food, even when you're standing right there, but I didn't have any problems. And, of course, my food was all locked up in a bear cannister overnight. Oh yeah, bears are apparently also an in this area, but I certainly didn't see one. I think they tend to follow the dumb tourists, so they're more likely to be seen during the high season, when there are lots of folks out there and not everyone is following good back-country food storage principles.

The only thing I didn't like about May Lake is the fact that you can't swim there.  Not that I really wanted to swim in a high sierra lake that was still surrounded by snow.  But, generally, it seems like it really just BEGS to be swum in, but since it is a domestic water source, you're not allowed. (Hey, question -- why is that the rule? I mean, you can swim in the Great Lakes and those are also domestic water sources. Doesn't the water get treated in various ways before becoming drinking water, anyway? Does it have something to do with the size of the body of water? Or just California paranoia? Yes, I googled it. No answer.)  

Anyway, I'm planning another trip to May Lake soon.  I'm thinking I'll take some friends who are new to backpacking and break 'em in easy.  Think morning coffee with this laid out before them will convince them that it's not so bad to carry everything you need on your back, sleep on the ground, and pee in the woods? 

Glen Aulin

Last week, I escaped to Yosemite for a few days. I was in dire need of a break, after a few stressful weeks at work. One of the things I really adore about living in the Bay area (and one of the things that will make it incredibly difficult for me to ever live anywhere else again) is that I can hop in my car and be in some of the most beautiful places on earth in less than 4 hours. And, really, it's hard to be stressed when you're miles from anywhere with no responsibilities other than hiking and setting up your tent each night. Oh, and make lovely steamy cups of bourbon and hot chocolate before bed. :-)

Anyway, my first night out on this trip, I decided to head out into the back country up near Tuolumne. I did an overnight to Glen Aulin.

One of the things I really love about Yosemite is that there are a lot of "backpackers campgrounds." Basically, at really popular locations, they've set up back-country campgrounds, with pit toilets, water, and bear lockers to store your food. I especially like them when I'm backpacking alone, because that way I know that there will be other folks around me in case there's some sort of emergency. In fact, it's really the only way I'll backpack alone. So there's one of these backpackers campgrounds at Glen Aulin, next to the High Sierra tent camp, and that's where I spent Wednesday night.

The High Sierra Camps are 6 camps set up in the Yosemite High Country. Each is a collection of canvas "tent cabins" in a beautiful setting. They're about a 7-10 mile hike apart from each other, and you can hike them in a loop, staying in the cabins each night and being fed dinner and breakfast. It's nice for people who want the feeling of backpacking but don't want to have to carry all their gear -- all you need to carry is your clothes. Some of the camps even have hot water and showers. I've personally never stayed at them, partly because they're quite expensive, but I'd love to someday. For now, though, I'll content myself with carrying my full pack and staying at the backpackers' campgrounds in the same places.

So, Glen Aulin is a little more than a 6 mile hike down from Tuolumne Meadows. It's a fairly easy 6 miles, especially on the way there, since it's nearly all flat or downhill. It's a nice way to acclimate to the altitude (7000-9000 feet), which can make exercise feel more difficult, but is only high enough to have made me sick once, when there was also really poor air quality because of a severe fire. (On that trip, we woke up each morning to a tent covered in ash blown in from the fires).

Basically, you follow the trail down from the Lembert Dome parking lot, near Soda Springs (which is a tiny little spring that bubbles up out of the ground already carbonated -- something to do with the chemicals in the earth there I think). The trail is lovely, weaving its way through High Sierra grassland and pine trees at first. Oh, and those blue, blue, blue Sierra skies.

For much of the hike, the river is tumbling over that famous Yosemite granite just off to the side of the trail.

There are also gorgeous views of snow-capped sierra mountains in the distance. Breathtaking.
Once you get down to the camp, there are a couple bridges and a lovely waterfall, where I drank my morning coffee the next morning, getting damp from the waterfall's mist.

There are 30 or so sites in the backpacker's campground. The first batch are literally right next door to the tent cabins, in a wooded dell. There's a pit toilet, bear lockers, and a water spigot there, which is convenient. However, I chose to continue up the hill about another 2/10 of a mile to the higher campsites, perched on a rocky outcropping above the river. Not only do I think these campsites are nicer, but it let me escape from the bustle of the boy scout troop that happened to be there the same night I was.

I camped in a lovely cove of rock, with the river rushing practically right underneath my tent. Lovely to fall asleep to. I think this is the best site in the whole area, and it got wonderful light as the sun was coming up in the morning. You really only could have fit one tent in the spot I chose, but there were plenty of areas nearby, where you could spread out several tents if you were with a big group.

And though I was a bit worried about how challenging the hike out the next day would be, since it was quite a lot of uphill, at altitude, it was actually quite easy. I didn't even get winded. Anyway, if I was going to do it again this trip again, I'd start out for Glen Aulin in the morning, drop my pack at a site, and then continue hiking down to Waterwheel Falls (another 3 miles beyond Glen Aulin). Then, I'd come back up to Glen Aulin to camp for the night. I think it would also be lovely to start Friday night hiking up to May Lake (only 1.2 miles -- pictures of that tomorrow), then hike Saturday from May Lake to Glen Aulin, and Sunday from Glen Aulin back to the parking lot. You'd have to find a shuttle or other ride back to your car, but that's apparently not too difficult up there.

This was my first time in a long time backpacking alone, and it was lovely, if a bit lonely. But clearly I wasn't miserable.

P.S. Since I was traveling alone, many of the pictures of me from this trip were taken with my favorite new camera accessory -- the GorillaPod. Have you guys seen these things? They're amazing! It's basically a go-anywhere tripod. They're made up of a bunch of ball-and-socket joints, so they're completely bendable. You screw it into the bottom of your camera and then you can set it up anywhere to take a picture -- I put mine on totally uneven ground, around a tree branch, etc, and got some GREAT pictures. Completely worth the $25 bucks I paid on sale at REI a few weeks ago.

Just Like Heaven

This is where I spent Wednesday night. 

This is where I had my coffee Thursday morning.   

This is where I spent Thursday night.

Friday and Saturday were similarly spectacular.   

Some days, I just completely and totally love my life.   Many, many more pictures to follow. 

Daily Photo

How I spent my Saturday night

I spent Saturday night in the mountains, sitting in front of this:


Do I look happy or what? It was so exactly what I needed.

Salt Point State Park

A couple of weeks ago, I was in dire need of some nature. So I got on Highway 1 and drove the hour and a half up to Salt Point State Park.

Salt Point is on CA Highway 1, 15 or 20 miles north of Jenner, and it's a pretty amazing place. The drive there is a bit nerve-wracking -- lots of intense curves, with drops of hundreds of feet down to some very violent looking waves. I've driven up there twice now, and twice I've seen nasty accidents along the way. The first time, I actually watched a motorcyclist take a curve too fast and crash into the stone wall on the inside of the curve (damn lucky he didn't go over the cliff's edge). His bike was totalled like I've never seen before, bleeding green and black goo all over the road, but the biker somehow walked away from the crash unscathed. And then this last time, I drove past a minivan literally on its side in the road, also from what looked like a curve taken too fast.

Also, they're not kidding with the cow crossing signs. This is not the best picture, but that cow is literally just a couple feet from the road (with a huge drop off to its left, btw). And there were several actually in the road on my most recent drive up. And let me tell you, they're NOT afraid of you -- they just lollygag along until they damn well feel like getting out of your way!


Salt Point is home to a massive kelp forest, and is designated as an underwater park. From the surface, this doesn't look like much -- mostly the water just seems to have an inordinate amount of seaweed floating around the surface. But that's actually the top of the kelp strands, which grow all the way to the surface of the water. If you're lucky, you might see some sea otters floating around in the kelp, chowing down on the abundant shellfish. Apparently, from underwater, the view is quite amazing, and you'll often see SCUBA divers there. Also, folks diving for abalone, which is considered to be a delicacy by many. (I've never had it -- California law places strict limits on how much you can forage and I believe even prohibits the selling of it.)

Even without exploring underwater, though, you can enjoy the benefits of this amazing underwater park. Tide-pooling is fantastic here -- with candy-colored anenomes, starfish, tons of mussels, etc. I usually try to bring a tide chart with me, so I can be sure to hit one of the mostly-deserted pocket coves around low tide. Fisk Mill Cove is a personal favorite, but there are many unnamed coves, as well. You often have to pick your way down a very steep path to get to the beaches, but I think it's worth it. I could literally spend hours hopping from rock to rock, checking out what the receding tide has uncovered.



As for hiking, well the trails are poorly marked, to say the least, and definitely not well-maintained. You do a lot of skidding down hills slick with fallen pine needles and leaping over damp gullies like a not-so-graceful mountain goat. So, if you're a nervous hiker or prone to twisted ankles, you might want to skip the hiking. If not, just keep the ocean on your left on the way out, right on the way back (or vice versa), and you'll be fine. You're never far from the water on any of the many trails that wind through the woods, and anyway, you won't want to be out of sight of the spectacular coastline here for long.


The rocks on the cliffs bear more than a passing resemblance to swiss cheese. This is called Tufa Rock, and Wikipedia tells me that it's created by deposits of calcium carbonate from water with high calcium content. I've seen similar rock down along the coast near Santa Cruz, but not on most of the Sonoma and Marin coastline.


There was also a time when this was a fairly active shipping hub (mostly lumber, I think). Hiking along the tops of the cliffs near Fisk Mill Cove, you can see old, rusted metal hooks protruding from the rock, which boats would use to tie up when they got near the shore. Here's an old survey marker from the tops of the cliffs, as well:


Also, at one point in the distant past, there were farmers that lived on this land. There's still an old abandoned shed (perhaps an outhouse?) at one point along the trail, and tiny little graveyard, perched on a bluff above the ocean. Not a one of my pictures of the gravestones turned out, but here's the view from the burial area:

Not a bad place to spend eternity, eh?

On this visit, I also saw a lot of fishermen, taking advantage of the low tide to walk out far onto the rocks and get a prime fishing spot. I did a little bit of wandering about out there, but I have to say, it felt really dangerous. The surf is definitely not mild in this area, and where the fishermen in the picture are standing is often underwater. Even at low tide, they were being splashed with the spray of waves hitting the rocks, hard. And if a particularly big wave sweeps you off the rocks around here, you're pretty well screwed. There's a reason folks don't swim in this area, y'know?


I don't know what Salt Point is like in the summer, but this time of year it was mostly abandoned. I saw only one other hiker in the several hours I was there. Oh, and if you time it so you're driving home around sunset, the sunset view of the beach near Jenner is spectacular:

Narrowing it down

Look! Another vacation post! Maybe this small bites thing is working!

So another really cool hike that Dan and I did on vacation was the Zion Narrows in Zion National Park. This has to be one of the most unique hikes anywhere. Basically, the Virgin River IS the trail. You walk down this winding trail along the river's edge for maybe 3/4 of a mile and then the path bottoms out at the river and you just keep going up the river. You can hike as far as about 5 miles up the river and then turn around and come back. If you're more motivated than us (and if your very cute but sometimes absent-minded boyfriend didn't leave his backpack in, oh, say, Portland when you're supposed to be going on a hiking/camping/backpacking vacation), you can also do the hike as an overnight backpack from the top down (about 16 miles total). You hike a few miles down the Narrows, stop at a designated campsite for the night, and finish the hike the next day. We did the day hike version and I'd say we made it maybe 3.5 or 4 miles up the river and then turned around and came back.


We rented special equipment for the hike from The Zion Adventure Company, located right outside the park in Springdale. This included special "canyoneering" boots (which look like a cross between a cross-country ski boot and a hiking boot, but are much more flexible in the sole -- you can see me wearing them in the picture above). We also got neoprene socks to keep our toesies warm and heavy wooden staffs for balance.

Before we did the hike, we went back and forth about whether it was worth $18 each to rent this stuff. We certainly saw lots of folks doing the hike in tennis shoes and Teva-type sandals, but we ended up being glad we had the gear. It looked pretty miserable doing the hike without a walking stick, which helped with balance and also with feeling out what was coming ahead, as the water was the color of Earl Grey tea with milk, and totally opaque. This saved both of us from many unexpected steps into much deeper water. And since I'm always cold, I totally appreciated the neoprene booties. I was surprisingly uncold during the hike, even though the water temp was only about 65 degrees and the air wasn't much warmer when we started. And I was super-glad I didn't have open-toed sandals on -- it was impossible to not stub your toes on the extremely rocky river bottom.

So, as I said, most of the hike is actually IN the river. For the most part, the water came up to just under my knees or so. Occasionally it was thigh-deep, but my shorts, which stop a few inches above my knees, barely got wet. Basically, you wade up the river, using your walking stick to help you avoid obstacles and keep your balance against the current, which was strong at moments, but never really powerful.


The river winds through a towering sandstone canyon, which narrows to maybe 20 feet across in places. The picture above was taken in a part of the Narrows called Wall Street. It's a bit dark, but you can see Dan standing on the rocks on the right edge of the picture, which will give you some scale. It was really quite amazing.

Ultimately, Dan and I both thought that Bryce Canyon (more on that later) was more beautiful than Zion, but that this hike was spectacular. Even if you're a little nervous about it, I'd say The Narrows hike is a can't-miss if you're in Zion. We saw plenty of grandma-types doing it and they did just fine. (Though, confidential to the 40-something banker-type who let his 70-year-old mother flounder away without ever offering her a hand, even when she was clearly frustrated and in need of some physical AND emotional support -- you're a jackass).

If you go, definitely wear light-weight, quick-drying clothes, and stuff that will keep you warm even if it's wet (no cotton!) I wore polyester soccer shorts, which dry super-quick, a workout tank, a fleece, and a lightweight windbreaker. That felt about right -- mostly I kept all the layers on, though I did strip down to the workout tank a couple times when we were in the sun for extended periods. Also, spend the $ on the equipment rentals -- you'll have a much more pleasant experience. And be sure to look at the weather report -- this hike has a high flash-flood danger. Since you're in the river the whole time, and often between two soaring canyon walls, you don't want to get stuck in here during a flash flood!