The Hart Tree

Because I've now been sitting around rather useless the second weekend in a row without any major adventure, I need to fall back to reporting past events. So this post is about the second day all alone in the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. The trip to Alta Peak the day before had been quite hard, so I didn't feel like approaching another high mountain the next day. I took again a campsite, this time near the big van you can see on the picture below. Well, I wished my tent had a climate that was as loud and powerful, which starts up many times during the night...


The next day I decided to do the Hart Tree Trail, which is a modest hike of 8 miles through a forest with huge trees. This time not the trail itself but the drive to the trailhead was a challenge - an extremely narrow unprepared street - I was really lucky that no one came the other direction. After about 1 mile into the trail, I wanted to take a picture of Cindy, and I realized that she wasn't with me! This was when I gave up the thought of a relaxing hike and ran back to the car. I mean, loosing a watch as the day before is one thing, but loosing your personal protection dog... I was relieved when I found Cindy next to the car sitting on a bear container.


The trail went through the forest without much elevation difference. Along the way, there were so many big trees that I became rather used to the sight. Below you can see me and Cindy standing in front of one of them.


The following tree formed a tunnel, the trail went right through it...


Finally I arrived at the Hart Tree, one of the biggest trees in the Sequoia national park. You can see that it is heavily damaged by fire. Cindy found it convenient sitting in the tree...


After 10 miles of hiking, I was ready for my 5 hour drive back to San Jose. To add also some additional cultural experiences, I had dinner at a Mc Donald's. All of the employees were speaking Spanish and it took 15 minutes until I could get my meal despite the fact that I was nearly alone in the restaurant.

Daniela and Alex

Last weekend, my sister Daniela and her boyfriend Alex visited me in my apartment. Meeting this time was a bit easier than when we tried to meet at the Kings Canyon Visitor Center... The next day, we went to the cinema. Daniela had looked up some highly intellectual film, but we could not find the right cinema, so we had the choice between a standard film or no seeing any film at all. The result was about 2 hours of "You Don't Mess With The Zohan". Check out http://www.youdontmesswiththezohan.com/ to see the official homepage - I think a trailer says more than thousand words, so I don't want to write a lot, just: It's a truly American film...

On the picture above you can see my two visitors sitting on my living room sofa. Cindy did all she could to get on the picture too, clinging intensely to Daniela's hair. What an ill-mannered dog!

Alta Peak

Last weekend, I wanted to go hiking with Karthik and my sister, but because of some unhappy coincidents, I ended up all alone at 9:30 pm in the Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Park. It was not an easy thing to do to find a campsite and put up a tent in the darkness. Especially as I lack a bit of experience, because of my missing military service. On the picture below, you can see the result ;-)

The next day I decided to try a solo ascent onto Alta Peak (11204 feet). I started from Wolverton (about 7000 feet), below you can see me during breakfast. It was not very relaxing however, because a mountain lion ran through the wood only a hundred feet away.

From about 8000 feet upwards, the trail became more and more difficult to follow. This was where I met a Hungarian group, which also wanted to hike Alta Peak that day. They were glad that I could set some footsteps in the snow, getting the correct direction using the GPS. While going up, I lost the trail regularly. It was like walking a few yards on a trail and then hiking blindly on snow fields or through brushwood trying to find the trail again. One time after loosing the trail, I saw my first wilderness bear. I wished that this was happening some time, but I didn't want this to happen, when I was all alone off the trail in the forest. Well, I wasn't all alone - of course this wicked little fighting dog was with me! This must have been the reason why the bear was afraid, and wasn't keen on meeting us. Instead it ran away, unfortunately the same direction as the trail was going...

As the conditions didn't get better, I was multiple times close to resigning. Hiking additional routes to find the trail was exhausting. From about 9500 to 10500 feet the trail was easier, because there were no more trees and it was on the south side of the mountain. Therefore most of the snow had already melted. But from 10500 feet upwards, it was all a big snow field. The only traces in the snow I found up here were bear traces. The air was getting thinner, so I had a hard time fighting my way up to the top through the snow. Below you can see Cindy lying in the snow, behind her the top of Alta Peak.

After 4 hours I was finally at the top of the 11204 feet mountain. It was a relieving feeling, neither me nor Cindy ever got that high.


Going down was a bit easier, especially at the upper part. I should have brought my skiers with me! At about 10000 feet I met the Hungarian group again and informed them about the conditions on the top. Then it was again a bit like straying through the woods. Now there were however some more footsteps and I had better knowledge of the terrain.

Unfortunately I lost my watch, while hiking down. A branch must have taken it off my wrist. After 7 hours Cindy and I were back at the car, the total length of the trail was about 15 miles with about 4200 feet difference in elevation.

Yosemite Waterfalls

Last Sunday, Cindy and I spent another day in the Yosemite National Park, but this time rather as a tourist than as a hiker. We visited three impressive waterfalls, the first one is the Yosemite Fall, on the picture below, you can see Cindy sitting in front of the lower part of the waterfall (320 feet height). The upper part of the fall is even higher (1430 feet), but cannot be visited so easily. What you fortunately cannot see on the picture is the high number of people at this place.


The Yosemite Fall can be visited without any need to walk for more than a few minutes. The next waterfall we visited was the Vernal waterfall (317 feet height), which is at the far end of the valley. It is very wet near such a big waterfall, so I needed to spend as little time as possible for taking the photograph.


One could go even to the far upper edge of the fall, but Cindy was so frightened when looking down that we had to move on quickly.


So, we further went on to the Nevada Fall, which is even more impressive (594 feet height). Getting to the top of it was a bit hard, because the path was very steep and the sun was burning down mercilessly.


But at the top we found some snow for cooling and going down was much easier. All in all it was a nice day, especially because this time the weather was as sunny as it is supposed to be in California...