Three Days Wilderness

I'm just back from my first 3 day wilderness trip and it was the hardest hiking weekend so far... Christian and I tried to reach the top of the State Peak (3847 m), but unfortunately had to retreat at about 200 meters below the top...

So we started from the parking lot (1500 m) Friday at 5 pm and hiked up to the first campground "Lower Tent Meadow" (2200 m). There we realized that we made a big mistake: We did not bring a mosquito spray! Still it was a nice and calm evening as only 2 other parties were at the campsite. This was a completely different experience to two weeks ago, when the night was disturbed by a lot of noise at the campground that was reachable by car. So we got up at 5:30 am the next day, and went up to the Granite Pass (3200 m).

At the top, I was still in an acceptable condition, but when we went on during the hottest time of the day, I got again heat stroke symptoms. Additionally, the mosquitos were incredibly annoying. Christian and me got at least one hundred bites each. I tried to kill as many of them as possible (unfortunately I did not count, but it would be a very large number), but this was also rather exhausting and did not help much. All the time we were near water sources or beautiful meadows, they attacked in groups... At 4 pm, we finally reached the "State Lake" and decided to stay for the night. We were the only hikers in this area. In addition to an incredible amount of mosquitos also a bear visited our camping place...



The next day we woke up at 4:50 and started our peak attempt at 5:30. We had good conditions, because the air was still fresh. It was pretty steep, so we had to start some easy climbing at about 3300 m, taking the east ridge.

At about 3600 m, the mountain finally told us "game over, insert coins". We were at the top of a secondary with no chance to proceed on the ridge. And as we knew that our cars are more than 20 miles away, we decided to enjoy the view from the secondary and retreat.


After 4 hours at about 9:30 we were back at the tent, loaded our backpacks and started a nonstop 9 hour hike back to our cars. Fortunately most of it was downhill, but still we were pretty much screwed when we finally arrived at about 6:30 pm at the parking lot at Road's End. One good thing was that at least for parts of the hike the sun was covered by clouds. And as a proof that there exist clouds in California too, Christian took the following picture.


Short before reaching the parking lot, I met another bear on the trail. As it did not seem to move away, I had to take a loop around it. So in total our trip was a bit more than 60 km and an elevation gain of more than 3000 m...

Alta Peak and Paradise Peak

This weekend I went to the Kings Canyon national park together with Christian, Ben, Harald and Hannes. On the first day, we went to the top of Alta Peak (11204 feet). Unlike last year, there was no snow on the top, so getting there was a lot easier.


After enjoying a great view at the top, we decided not to go down the normal trail, but try to go down to a nearby lake. Unfortunately this involved more free solo climbing sessions than was to my liking. Christian and I climbed down a 50 ft wall, while the other three tried their luck at a very steep gravel field. Getting around the lake was also pretty difficult and Ben was a bit unlucky as he fell into the water. On the picture below the area around the lake looks quite flat, but if you get nearer you soon realize that only climbing may bring you to the other side.

Unfortunately I was suffering from a heat stroke by the time we were reaching the lake. Hiking with head ache is not much fun. Actually I had exactly the same symptoms as last year.

All of us were very exhausted when we finally reached the car. So only Christian and I were motivated enough to do a second peak on the second day. We went to the top of the Paradise Peak (9,362 feet). It was very hot and we felt Alta Peak in our muscles, but the view at the top was again worth all the trouble...

On that day we saw a lot of dead trees lying around and the amazing thing was that they did not rot, but fall into little pieces. It must take hundreds of years for such a tree to finally fall into very small pieces, but you can still make out where it fell down...

I'm back

Last week I arrived in San Francisco. As last year, the flight was awfully long and the apartment hard to find ;-) At least I still knew most of the street names and was more confident with the get-into-the-apartment key locking system. Below you can see me on my new king size bed. Looks very similar to last year, but still two differences: First of all, there were no cookies this time (I gonna complain about that!), and second Cindy decided not to come with me.

As everybody always seems to be so much concerned about how much I eat, I included two pictures of my 4th of July dinner menu. First it was barbecued beef sausages with fried eggs and stuffed olives (still have to work a bit on the design of the eggs)...


And second a delicious cup of ice cream topped with strawberries and blackberries...

So, now you should be pacified (and maybe salivating ;-)). My room mate is from Puerto Rico, which is a wonderful island next to Cuba. I can't image why he likes to spend summer in the US. My working and car pool colleague is from Brazil, his name is Marcelo.

So far I did not do much exciting, but watching TV is somewhat astonishing. My favorite TV show is "Dance your ass off" - it's just Dancing Stars brought to the next level. I wonder if there will be some bottom line somewhere.

I got a mobile phone and was called three times in a week, despite I did not give my number to anybody. Unfortunately it was not cute girls that wanted to meet me for dinner (enchanted by my cooking skills), but only telephone advertisements :-(