Backpacking: Trinity Alps

Say whaaat?  1 1/2 months since my last post?  Shut.Up.  I can't even begin to tell you where that precious time went but it's gone and there you have it.  I know that it has been consumed with work and Jason finishing up his internship  (by the way, I have a real and official college level teacher on my hands now).  He starts teaching his first classes all on his own next week at SFSU.  What?  Crazy huh?  I'm super proud of the guy.  He's worked so hard.  He has this summer of teaching and then next semester is more teaching and the completion of his thesis/final project.  Crazy.  We are almost done with this grad school thing.  Then what?  Not sure.  He can stay on teaching where he's at now but it doesn't have much opportunity for growth.  The plan is to be open to leaving the Bay Area starting January...but to realistically start searching for a position for him Fall 2013.  Who knows where that will take us.  He has classmates who graduated going to China, Vietnam, etc.  Where we will end up only the Lord knows.  We're open for whatever though.  :)

In other news.  We just got back from a 4 day backpacking trip in the Trinity Alps.  Here are some pictures of our fun for your viewing pleasure.

 Food!  We ate good let me tell you.  There is one thing I don't like skimping too much on and that is food.  I'm willing to carry just a little more weight for a yummy hot meal at the end of the day. 

After a rather quick 4 hour drive we arrived at our destination.  The Stuart Fork trail head in Trinity Alps.  This trail was not the planned trail since it's rather popular and can be crowded.  Our planned trail ended up being an extra 3 hours away because of the winding roads and so the park ranger talked us into this one.  Turned out to be great.  It's pretty early in the season so it wasn't crowded at all.

All loaded up and ready to go.  Our friend John decided to join us on our trip also.  We started out with a group of 5 and in the end 3 came.  Oh well.  It was great fun none the less.

Moss beard.  Everyone in the mountains has one don'tchya know.

Our camp the first night.  Right by the river.  It was gloriously beautiful but a bit cold.  Being close to water always drops the temp down a good 10 degrees but it was worth it.

Look at this clever man.  He made a tripod out of 3 sticks, held together at the top with a vine of some sort that hangs down and hooks on to our pot.  We boiled water this way for oatmeal and coffee the first morning. 

On the trail again!  Day 2.

John and Jason!

We battled rain on and off and so sometimes the panchos came out.  :)

Big beautiful tree!

After a long day of backpacking it was time to settle down for night 2.  The problem was that there weren't really any spots to.  Trinity Alps is a wilderness, not a state park.  There are no official campsites any where but there are some obvious places that they encourage you to use.  There were only a couple though here and they were taken by a group of 6 that were together.  The guys got creative and ended up finding us this awesome spot (it even had a kitchen counter...sort of :)!).  You really aren't supposed to make new fire rings but it was cold and there was just no way we were skipping a fire.  We tore it down and did our best to make it look like we were never there though when we were done.  Leave no trace! :)

The next morning!  Pancakes...and my weird crooked smile!!!  Instant pancakes are surprisingly good!  :)

The food is bear bagged and in the trees!  Ready for day 3 of hiking.  I talked the guys into not tearing down the camp and staying where we were at for a day hike to our final destination.  It was a good thing because it turned out we went farther then we thought...it was only 2 miles or so away.  hahaha.  It would have been super annoying to tear it all down for just 2 miles.

And then the panchos came out for real!

More hiking...and John's face!

And then our destination....Emerald Lake!  Sapphire Lake was just over the ridge but totally frozen and people were falling through the snow there....lovely.  We decided to skip that one!  :)

The fishing of course looked better on the OTHER side of the lake...you know the phrase...the snow is always whiter?...or something like that anyways.  :)

And just as we were about to cast our lines it dumped rain.  Freezing cold rain.  So we tore down our poles and decided to go back.  Just as we tore down our poles.  It stopped raining.  Go figure.  And the sun came out.  We decided to hike back across anyways and fish on the other side of the lake closer to the trail.

But since the fish weren't falling for my bait I sat and relaxed and took it all in.  I love the outdoors.  :)

Day 4 was our last day and we did 14 miles all down hill.  In.one.day.  Ugh.  Downhill is way harder on your joints and feet and we may have almost killed our third member.  :)  He made it though.  If you can't tell...we look a little tired.  :)  In total we did 32 miles.  woot woot!

The trip was great though and we are planning another one tentatively in August.  Hopefully that won't be my next blog post!  Happy Sunday!