Spent a really fun weekend with some buddies on the west shore. Boated across the lake, jumped off rocks, SUPed, kayaked, drank, played bocce ball, horseshoes, cards, and even squeezed in some relaxation. Tahoe life is immensely beautiful.
Just heard about a new long trail. Who’s going to be the first to thru-hike it?
The Sir Samuel and Lady Florence Baker Historical Trail is supposed to open in 2014 and will run 350 miles from South Sudan to Uganda.
They’ve got some work cut out for them. Land mines, former war zone, fleshing out their website (it currently copies content from another blog).
It’s not clear to me whether the intention is to build and maintain single track. The vision comes from Julian Fisher. He hopes that it will eventually be open to 4x4s. So it’ll be a road? Is it a road? Someone go find out.
Take a look down in my comments section, Julian Monroe Fisher was kind enough to chime in!
My uncle and I have been due for a trip for a long time. Our last one was Cedar Mesa.
We drove out Friday afternoon to make a campfire and cook some lentils. Uncle Bill is heading to the JMT later this month for a thru-hike that has been on his list for fifty years. Besides hiking and lounging, this weekend was filled with talk of backpacking technique and trail gossip.
Hiking cross country was a joy. The opportunity to navigate, relative solitude, large number of lakes, alpine plants and sub-alpine trees; it was a great loop. We made camp in the early afternoon, swam, napped and hardly moved ten feet from our warm granite slab.
Yesterday, we leisurely visited the various other lakes in the area, explored other cross country access routes to the region and stared at the view. Around noon we donned packs and found our route down. While there were a few other parties up there, I saw no evidence of travel on the route we took down and hardly any on our route up. I’m pretty sure that people go other ways.
Once we reached tread, the miles went quickly, but we still didn’t get back to the car until after five. It was a nice change from the rush to the car that Sunday often is.
A particularly large pussypaw (?) mat.
Stayed at a river house on the Fall, canoed, visited Burney Falls, camped and hiked in Lassen NP (Crags camp, Manzanita Creek trail). A trip I’ll remember.
Car camping last weekend was wonderful.
Friday brought me to the pass for a staff hike. A definite perk of the job. We lunched at a lake. I especially enjoyed the company of the eight year old member of our group. She skinned her knee and I reminded her of the upside: future scab picking.
It was nice to connect with a few long distance PCTers and the volunteers who feed and cheer them on at the visitor center.
At three on Friday, I grabbed the last site in the campground. Unpacking led reading, and then to napping as I waited for friends to arrive.
We had a great time. Cooking on the fire, catching up, a ridge walk, a swim and more than a few good beers. One friend is a new father. He played the 911 recording from when his wife gave birth in a mall parking lot. Life’s amazing.
I'm Jack Haskel 