Grand Canyon, California Trip, part 9

Sat/Sun 9/5-9/6—California, 60 HR, Emigrant Wilderness
After finding out that Mark McGwire had hit HR #60 to tie Babe Ruth (we later found out it may have been with the help of some steroids in addition to the andro) while I was hiking in the Canyon, I called my friend Robert Canaan Friday night to check in and discuss our hiking plans in California. We had originally planned a car camping / day hike, but he and Linda instead arranged an overnight hike in a place that proved to be well worth the extra effort to hike in a few miles. Since I was very tired from the Canyon hike, I was a little skeptical of doing an overnight hike instead of just an easier day hike, but it turned out to be well worth the effort.

My friends planned a hike in the Emigrant Wilderness, which is on the northern border of Yosemite National Park. I still was pretty tired, stiff, and sore from the Canyon hike, so putting on the heavy backpack again was a struggle. Of course, that was mostly my own doing, because I stubbornly insisted on carrying the 8-lb tripod with me on this hike as well. But that proved to be a good idea, because I would not have gotten some good, long-exposure photos without it. And on this hike, we ended up having some of the best light for landscape pictures I have ever seen.

Emigrant Wilderness is in the Sierra Nevada range, and features small, cool-looking mountains, lots of exposed granite formations (it looks a lot like Enchanted Rock in places, but with more trees and greenery), pretty lakes, very green alpine meadows, and big pine trees. And, fortunately, no bears. There weren’t even that many people there on this Labor Day Weekend. We got rained on for awhile in the afternoon, but it cleared up about 6pm. At one point, the sunset looked like the glow from an ethereal volcano just over the horizon. My friend Steve, after later looking at the pictures I took of it, proclaimed the sunset to be “fake” and that I had “made it up using computer graphics.” This was Steve’s way of saying that it looked pretty cool. We had a good dinner, drank a bottle of Livermore Valley Cabernet, then smoked a Cuban Montecristo, complements of Dr. Klein and of Steve for giving it to us. It was perfectly clear and crisp (about 50 degrees), which is perfect “cigar weather.”

Then the moon came out. Man, I have never seen anything like this moon that night. It seemed much brighter than normal because there were no other city lights to compete with, and it was a very clear evening. Even before the moon rose over the horizon, there was a glow from it that seemed like the sun was about to come up. When it did finally rise, you could see everything clearly. There were distinct shadows, and you probably could have read a book by the moonlight (I should have brought one – didn’t think of that). I took an entire roll of film just of the moon that night, and Steve later mistook one of these moon shots for a sunset!

I slept for awhile in the 4-man tent with Robert and Linda, but because of my bad snoring, I kept waking them up. Then they kept elbowing me to get me to stop snoring, waking me up. I decided that I would volunteer to “break the cycle” before we got too irritated with each other, and I moved my sleeping bag / pad outside on the rocks sometime around 1 or 2am. That actually worked out really well because it was such a nice, clear, cool night. The stars and moon were still really beautiful. We all slept better after that!

I woke up with a bit of dew on me. It felt like it was about mid 40s F, and the moon was getting close to the other horizon. I snapped about 18-20 more pictures of the moon, then Linda and I had a good breakfast of oatmeal and coffee. Robert slept in until about 830am, then he got up and made his breakfast. While he ate and packed up, I climbed up this really cool rock formation that towered 200-300 feet over our campsite. I took lots of pictures of this, but unfortunately, I double-exposed a roll for the SECOND time, so I lost many of these pictures, too. (At least now that I have a digital camera I don’t have to worry about that).

We then packed up camp and headed over to Chewing Gum Lake (so named for its small, 1-3 foot diameter boulders that dot the shore of the lake that appear to be small wads of gum). There we ate trail mix and beef stick (now a staple on all my hikes). I threw a roll of black-and-white film in the camera for the hike out, and was very pleased with several shots, especially of the lake and some large dead trees. If you’re into fishing (which I’m not), this small lake looks to be a great fishing spot, and you would probably be there alone if you went there on a non-holiday weekday.

We drove back to Livermore about 5pm and had a great Mexican dinner. Robert and Linda had to work the next day, but I didn’t, so I had a couple of really good margaritas. When I got home from the trip, Mark McGwire just hit home run #62 and Sammy Sosa matched him shortly thereafter. It was very cool at the time. Of course, we now know that they were on steroids when they did … sigh.