Ketchup

The morning after my tour at JGI, Diana and I split for the Sierras for a four-day backpacking trip. We didn't get above 10,000 feet, so would have perished in the nano plague, but it was still pretty damn amazing. We parked alongside the Hetch Hetchy reservoir, seen here below Diana, then made a brutal ascent out of the valley with nearly 2000 feet of vertical gain in three miles. In total, we hiked 11.5 miles into the back country, nearly all of it uphill.

Highlights include this baby black bear (we took four pictures and then skedaddled cautiously for fear of meeting his mommy), a pair of brilliant yellow-orange orioles, endless wildflowers and butterflys, lizards, a big gopher snake, two red salamanders we saw swimming on the shore of one lake, a lot of fat ferious trout, two bald eagles, and four separate deer sightings.

Oh, we also skinnydipped every day and slept in, neither of which are things we get to do at home.

As seen here, the fishing was pretty damned good with two 18" rainbow trout and, I swear it, Diana caught that was 20", which is virtually unheard of. We caught 17 total in two days of easy fishing, releasing all but three for a tasty trout dinner on our second night. It definitely pays to hike that far. Most people don't, and the fishies grow fat and happy for this neglect. There were also 80,005,017,243 mosquitoes because of unseasonally hot weather, which was nasty, but the rest of the

wildlife count was the best we've ever seen.

Twice before we've heard packs of coyotes howling at twilight, and one year we must have camped under an owl's home and he kept us up all night with his spooky deep-voiced hooting. We also saw a beaver once. But this trip was like walking through a great big open zoo!

Impressive.

Labels: Backpacking, Sierra Nevada, Summer