Reading these log entries will give the impression that I spent most of my time going on fun adventures or lolling around the cabin. I had more than my fair share of adventuring and cabin-lolling. And it was vey typical that, after a long work day, or on my way to a work project, I’d get off the trail and go exploring. Lots of (most) rangers spend little of their time off the beaten path. And a ranger’s job is to be on the trails where they can meet all the visitors, after all. So in this regard I wasn’t very…professional. Of course, I always rationalized these jaunts as being a way to “learn the country.” So, yes, many of these postings are records of me out having fun. A typical work day often didn’t make for entertaining reading. Accounts of such days, at least the “work” parts, were usually brief and to the point. But it was extremely rare for an entire day to pass without something of interest going down.
19 Jul (Fri) Big ol’ long day ahead with fresh slices of Piute pie waiting to be relished. Where to begin? ◦◦◦◦◦ First off, this was the coolest morning since I got here, with some frost in low spots. In fact, first frost in the meadow since my arrival this season! Global warming? Nah…. ◦◦◦◦◦ First stop was Walker Meadows to visit Debra and Donnie [cook and packer] in Bart’s basecamp. They arrived yesterday. Debra, though a certified chatterbox, is quite vibrant and I do get a little wag in my tail around her. (Don’t reckon anything will come of this but the mere prospect provides incentive for me to get up in the morning and eat my Wheaties®.) Chatted with Debra and her guests for almost half an hour before pressing on. Crossed the meadows and Kennedy Creek, then headed straight up the ridgeline toward the crest—Red laboring in slidey scree. Passed a stunner 9’ DBH juniper and several other real beauties. Finally we gained the ridgetop, way up in the sky. Rode to the Pt. 10,700+ of t’other day—the highpoint above the lava pinnacle visible from the pack station—and immediately, post gander, dove down the other side toward Ski Lake. An easy traverse from there to Leavitt Lake where I found maybe eight camps and another 4 or 5 rig-fuls of day-users—all of them super-pickups. Rode right past a bunch of folks without talking to any of them so was able to bypass that whole mess. ◦◦◦◦◦ Continued on to Koenig Lake. A (purportedly closed) road leads into that basin, but I took the more direct trail. Once in the basin, I was appalled to see a Japanese 4X pickup parked at a crazy angle at the very top of the farthest away vehicular incursion, a place where, for years, people have tried to climb up’n’over the hill to get to Latopie Lake—never successfully. Rode up to the truck, kinda seething, because now I was gonna have to deal with some good-for-nothing so-and-so(s). No one around. Figured the party was up fishing Latopie but, maybe not—there was a fishing rod in the cab. On to the lake in in-pursuit mode. ◦◦◦◦◦ Haven’t been about this country for years. Didn’t remember anything so it was as new. Riding on naked scree with major flowerage. (Floridness? Floracity?) Up ahead, a giant snowfield—one of the last remaining. And all of a sudden, a guy on a snowboard comes flying off the lip of a cornice, crashes and slides to a halt. I park Red, climb up the hill on foot, and am greeted without any sign of guilt or trepidation by a kid, maybe twenty. Turns out he’d built this big jumping ramp near the top of the snowfield, from which he was practicing flying skateboard-type maneuvers. Told me it’d only taken a little over an hour of shoveling and this was the only snow he’d been able to find now that all the ski areas on the west side were closed. (He came all the way from Merced.) “Yeah…I’m pretty serious about it,” he admitted, grinning, when I commented on the effort. Finally asked if he went with that truck parked over there. A familiar cloud crossed his face. “Uhh, is there a problem with where I parked?” But he seemed genuinely surprised when I told him it was “totally illegal,” claiming to have not seen any barricades or signs. Seeing as how I’d not been down there myself I could hardly accuse him of lying. Vehicle trespass is a real problem in this whole area, what with the rolling, open terrain. So I let him off with a warning, relieved to not have to call Minden [radio dispatch center] and have them run a license number and go through the whole cop-ranger thing. ◦◦◦◦◦ Above, surprised to find four tents at tiny Latopie Lake. A University of San Francisco group—summer school ecology course. Buncha wide-eyed happy students. ◦◦◦◦◦ Pressed on into the alpine zone and jumped on the PCT. This marked the most distant point from Piute, as the raven flies, that I’ve visited on a day ride—maybe ten air miles. Started homeward, finally, about 2:00. But, first, parked Red and hiked to the top of Leavitt Peak for the first time—one of the very last highpoints within a day’s ride of the cabin I haven’t been up. (Crossing another thing off my list….) The view was particularly inspiring. This big lump of a mountain is only a couple hundred feet lower than Tower Peak. It’s set way back from the crest and drops an honest 3000+ feet straight down into Kennedy Creek on its south side—the single greatest vertical declivity in the whole area. Saw a bunch of neat plants up there, notably “alpine dusty maidens,” Chaenactis douglasii var. alpina, a low plant with gorgeous pink flower heads, rare in California. It grows in rocky volcanic soils near timberline. ◦◦◦◦◦ Headed home, Red—as always—suddenly eager. Slow going at first on the stony trail. Scoping for new plants all the while. Stopped in the Walker Meadows basecamp again. Declined dinner invite…too beat. Got home at 7:30, after eleven hours (mostly) on the trail. Had a most welcome river bath and spent the rest of the eve in stupification—attention shot after a day spent gazing at far vistas, searching for tiny flowers and watching the trail. Nothing left in the tank. (And that means a day well spent.)
→ 17 visitors → 1 lb trash bits →1 tree → 400 lbs rock
→ 23 ½ miles → new plants
20 Jul (Sat) Trashed. Did some gang of thugs assault me yesterday? Was I in a bar fight, perhaps? Run a marathon? Did Jim Dunne ever feel like this? Took the whole day off. Worked on plant I.D. and ate a fine B.L.T. for brunch. ◦◦◦◦◦ Heard a group of boisterous backpackers across the river. Their noise bugged me for awhile but when they crossed over I went out to greet them. Turns out to be Sally Miller from Lee Vining (one of the most prominent local “green” activists, Mono Lake Committee, of whom I’ve long heard) with a couple associates, part of a larger group camped at Fremont. Wilderness advocates all, from Sacramento, San Fran, et cet. These three were Tower Peak bound. Sally seems to know everyone I know, said she’d been wanting to meet for a long time. So we had a jolly time. ◦◦◦◦◦ Coincidentally, they returned (without making it to the summit) and rendez-voused with the rest of their group, who’d finally hiked up to the meadows. They all ran into each other exactly in front of the cabin, over by the river where I bathe. Just up from my nap, I went over and had another great visit, all of us lounging on the thick turfy riverbank and chattering away. These sort of encounters are most gratifying: here’s a bunch of people, clearly in awe of the whole scene, who will go back to the flatlands and spread my legend, thus helping manifest my goal of “limited fame” (that is, the sort of celebrity one gets from doggedly sticking to one job for an entire career without becoming money-rich). ◦◦◦◦◦ Up in the hammock [forty feet up a lodgepole just in front of the cabin] to write. A group of five—four men and a woman who seemed to be in charge—came through on their way to Tower Peak. I hailed them, “Hello! Hey! Up here, in the tree!” Stunned expressions and queries. The woman asked, perspicaciously, “Is it cozy?”—“Very,” I replied. ◦◦◦◦◦ It’d been cloudy for hours but no precip. After the Tower bunch left it started to rain such that I bailed for the porch. A bit of thunder, followed by a gentle, steady shower. Then a strange and new thing: when the storm dwindled I began to hear a roar off to the northwest. It sounded like a distant waterfall or cascade in a big river. Couldn’t figure it out at first. Looked somewhat stormier over that way. As it continued, I finally realized that I was hearing a distant and tumultuous thunderstorm with strong hail-fall…was hearing literally millions of hailstones raking the pines and slapping into the ground, several miles away. Hoo-wee.
→ a completely workless day → 13 visitors
21 Jul (Sun) Going on another long ride today. Just down the trail, met two middle aged folks who’d first met me as a rookie and then as late as a couple years back. We had a nice talk. One of the two, Robin Hook is his name, is cousin to the guy who fell and was severely injured at a kettle above Helen Lake some years back. This man was rescued—while I was on long days off, as it happened—after about five days missing, with broken ankle and punctured lung after falling (skewered on a tree branch I believe). A real saga. ◦◦◦◦◦ After we’d talked five minutes, here came two attractive young women, Tower Peak bound. (It’s July….) “You’re the ranger? We’ve heard about you! You’re ‘the ranger with two cats!’ We were going to knock on your door.” They were camped just down-trail, said they’d stop by on their way back to camp. ◦◦◦◦◦ The two men pressed on when the girls came by. When I caught up with them on the trail they razzed me about the false-perception of rangers being alone all the time. Went to some lengths to convince them that the event they’d just witnessed was, unfortunately, incredibly rare. ◦◦◦◦◦ Rode to Walker Meadows basecamp again and visited with Craig and the cute cook. It’d really dumped up there, last night, and Debra had a small flood passing under one corner of the cook tent (this, a fairly major crisis for any trail cook). She gave me a baggie full of BBQed, marinated hunks of lamb that, to me, tasted like candy. Meat-candy. ◦◦◦◦◦ Headed for Emigrant Pass. Haven’t been up there yet, nor have I seen the West Fork trail. The storm had clearly hunkered down in that vicinity: found a couple spots where hillside gullies had dumped piles of pine needles and duff and soil, mixed with equal parts hailstones, right in the trail. That roaring sound I heard last night came from this deluge—almost three miles distant! ◦◦◦◦◦ The meadow below Emigrant Pass was a real garden spot, color-patches of intense and various rainbow hues scattered over the greenest-green swale. Contoured around the meadow edge and contoured myself right into an old hunters’ camp where I spent twenty minutes gathering broken cans and rusty glass. Coming down off the pass, back into the meadow, passed right through some of the aforementioned gardens. Scenes spread before me as I rode along, vistas of stunning and radiant living color, and they induced a generalized state of awe that was close to being painful. (Painful isn’t exactly the word, but not so far off the mark neither.) And—oh yeah!—I found yet another new plant there: Silene invisa, another species on the Toiyabe Sensitive Plant list. Truly one of my best “spots” ever. This is a tiny thing in the carnation family, very grass-like with few leaves, the leaves as slender as the stem. The corolla is entirely hidden inside the green calyx so there was no flash of color to grab my eye. Spotted it growing in a sedge-y garden full of other flowers and, somehow, the basic catchfly form grabbed my attention. ◦◦◦◦◦ Down the trail and home fairly early (6:00) where I visited with Larry and Tim, father/son. They were charmed by the cabin and we had a pleasant talk. Bit later, the two ladies (Christie and Lilias) came by after successful Tower climb. I invited them for pancakes tomorrow.
→ 15 visitors → 1 pit → 3 lbs trash →1 tree → 500 lbs rock → 16 ½ miles
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