Mary and I spent an awesome Fourth of July weekend camping and hiking at the Tuolumne Meadows area of Yosemite. I love this place; especially at this time of year. Green meadows, babbling brooks, snow streaked mountains, waterfalls, and the occasional remnant snow patch. Also, it was not nearly as crowded as Yosemite Valley was, I’m sure. The valley in the summer, especially on a holiday weekend, is a traffic jam. Here, people are much more manageable; and once we got a mile into the wilderness, there’s hardly anybody at all. The meadows were teaming with wildlife, especially deer and marmots. Lots of marmots.

We spent Friday night at the Tuolumne Meadows Campground. It was full when we got there, but fortunately they have a backpackers section where you can spend the night before/night after you hit the trail. Saturday morning we took off south down Rafferty Creek trail, heading for the Vogalsang lake area. We ended up camping next to Fletcher Lake at 10,160ft, in a little grove of trees next to an open meadow, next to a cliff overlooking the valley we had just climbed up. There is something very relaxing about setting up a tent by yourself in a perfect alpine meadow and cooking a mountain house for dinner.

As long as I’m in California I think a trip to Tuolumne after the snow melts and Tioga Pass opens is going to be an annual tradition.

More photos are on flickr. You can check-out/download the GPS track on trimbleoutdoors.com.

It was not a complete failure, though most shots did not come out as great as I’d hoped.

Moonrise:

Mary, shortly before the ocean sent us scurrying away:

I include this final shot mostly to point out that, though they are clear as day in the picture, it was quite dark and while I was there I had no idea this couple was up on the rocks.

It seems I’m getting a bit flower crazy lately…

A few weeks ago, I and nine other adventurous souls headed back to Death Valley for the weekend. Our primary objective for the trip was to make it out to the Racetrack Playa. The playa is a large, flat surface of hardened mud, cracked into a rather appealing texture. During the winter, it often gets flooded and stays wet and muddy, but in the spring it quickly dries.

Prior to leaving, and right up to the moment at Scotty’s Castle where we decided to go for it, we questioned whether driving all the way out there in our not-so-rugged, low-clearance vehicles was a wise idea. Although I don’t usually picture myself as the conservative one, I in particular was very hesitant to drive the Prius out there, fearing vehicle damage, major hassles, or expensive towing fees when something broke. The big concern, from everything I’ve read, is that the rocks on the 27 mile long unmaintained road puncture tires; often more than one. The lady working at Scotty’s Castle, when asked, said “No way, don’t go. About once a week someone gets stranded out there and it can be $1500 to get towed out.” And I didn’t even have a full-size spare. If I had been alone, I would almost certainly not have gone; but since we had three vehicles, I figured our chances of being stranded were low, and..what the hell. So we drove nice and slow for two hours or so until we made it! Along the way we passed teakettle junction: A fork in the road where people decorate the sign with old teakettles.

Here is the view approaching the Playa from the north:

One of the cool features of the playa is the rocks that slide across it, leaving tracks in the mud that zig zag in all sorts of directions, and last for years. I’ve not heard a conclusive explanation for how they move, and as far as I know no-one has seen or recorded them moving, but I think it is some combination of wind and water pushing them across a slick, muddy surface. After it rains, a lot of water from the surrounding mountains runs down onto the playa, and I believe the winds through there can get very fast. When were first arrived, we parked up by the grandstand and ran out onto the playa. I had read that the best sliding rocks were at the southern end, so I set off walking that direction. I quickly learned that the playa is a LOT bigger than it looks. I kept walking, running, walking. When I looked back, the grandstand had gotten a lot further, but the south end did not look any closer. In the end, we gave up walking and returned to the grandstand for a bit. We then drove down to the south end, but by the time we found the good rock tracks, it was already getting very dark.

In the end, we made it in and out with no problems. I’m not quite as confident about it as Kendall is, but it was a calculated risk. I’m sure many people do have problems, and the fact that our three cars were fine does not say much about the actual odds of getting stuck with two flats. Definitely, if you are going, bring supplies (food, water, sleeping bag) to spend a couple of days/nights comfortably. I’m not sure I would do it in the middle of summer when it is deadly hot. And finally, be prepared to accept that there is some risk of a major hassle and financial costs if you are unlucky. I don’t know about other seasons, but when were out there in April, we saw at least 8 other vehicles along the way. Also, I regret that we tried to drive in and out on the same day. I would much preferred to have camped out there for the night. There is a primitive campground a couple miles south of the Playa.

I had a lot of fun, with my speedlight secured on my hip, taking a shot, reviewing, trying again. You couldn’t see much of anything in the viewfinder because it was so dark, so I had to guess and check. Most shots were several minute exposures, during which time I would experiment with manually shooting the flash off from different places. This one is a fairly short exposure (hence the black background) with a combination of two flash firings: one from above the camera, and one well off to the right.

This is from the morning after. I got up before sunrise, hoping to go hike through one of the canyons in the morning light. But the promising glow on the horizon quickly turned to an ugly gray. I had a nice morning walk though, any way.

Of course, we also saw some pretty awesome poppy fields on Saturday. Those will have to wait for another night!

The first few blocks from the beach appeared full of expensive houses with very modern architecture. I’m guessing the real estate is not cheap. It did seem like a nice place for a morning bicycle ride.

The next morning, we began our epic ascent up the snow covered mountains to Telescope peak. The road to the charcoal kilns was closed, so we hiked up the treacherous gravel road towards the kilns.

As we got higher and higher, we faced the challenging terrain of scattered snow remains…sometimes in the middle of the road. Finally we reached the kilns, making it through the bitter cold and challenging terrain. We were now only 10 miles from the peak. However, climbing the mountain is not worth your life, and we had other things to do that day, so, we resisted our summit fever and decided to head back down the treacherous gravel road, get into our suburban and drive elsewhere. However, the descent proved to be just too difficult, so we found a generous old man who would take us to the bottom in the bed of his pickup.

Once we made it back to the relative safety of the suburban, we headed out to neabry Aguereberry Point, on the recommendation of the campground hosts. Along the way, we stopped to explore the abandoned Eureka Mine, set into a hill.

Looking down from the hill that is Eureka mine, we saw a compound. This compound turned out to be Pete Aguereberry’s former home, which he occupied until 1945.  Things are surprisingly well maintained out there.

It is a bit of a fixer-upper. But it comes with appliances!

And don’t miss the lovely shed area in the back, complete with cleaning supplies by the barrel:

I guess ole’ pete left his car out in the desert as well. It was sitting 100 feet from the house, and it has seen better days.

Finally, after taking a combined total of approximately 3 million photographs of a rusty car, somebody looked over and saw a gaping hole in the side of the mountain, and said, “What’s in there?”

We poked our heads in to see what we could see, and in the entrance room we found more old rusty stuff! Incredible!

We went in as far as the light would allow, and the tunnel seemed endless. The most daring among us simply had to see where it went. So, one quick trip back to the ‘burban for some lights and in we go! It was anticlimactic, to say the least. About 20 feet in, probably 6 inches beyond what we could see without the lights, the tunnel ends uneventfully with some boxes.