Two-Heel Drive

On a lark I created a Google alert for “Henry Coe” the other day, and it’s unearthed another gem: this one from a guy who calls his blog “Wondering Vet” (Vietnam, not veterinary school). He just got home from a five-day outing at Coe:

I’m drawn to the backcountry by the fishing and the physical challenge; however, while there I appreciate the quiet and peaceful setting. The park consists of rolling hills with oak forests, chaparral, manzenita, and other dry country vegetation. Some of the steep protected canyons are lush with green flowering trees. This time of the year the grasses that cover the hill are dry, although there are a few wild flowers. The golden poppies are obvious and beautiful in this dry terrain. About two-thirds of trails and roads that I covered the are steep, some reaching fifteen to twenty percent or more. Some of roads and trails, especially along dry Orestimba Creek, are comfortable and flat. The steep trails present some challenging hiking that equate in difficulty to those in Sierra Nevadas. Most of the park is semi-desolate. I love the place.

He’s also a philosopher/poet (we seem to get a lot of that in Northern California). In any case, it’s cool to find yet another who appreciates the charms of Henry Coe.

Happened upon this blog post by a trail runner who hiked in and camped out at Henry Coe State Park.

China Hole Trail dropped down to (crazily enough), China Hole, the swimming hole on Coyote Creek. Dodging the ubiquitous poison oak, we made our way along the Creekside trail–one of the prettiest sections of the trail we were on all day.

Creekside is a nice little trail — tricky and challenging in places but worth checking out. The bottom of the post links to the ubiquitous Gambolin’ Man.

I’m doing the big loop at Big Basin to check out the water flow … pix & chatter tonight.

Coepark.org reports that all fire-damaged areas have been declared open again.

Hat tip to Fedak for passing the news along; he’s packing his gear for a couple days of backpacking.

Some part of me wanted to hike all 28 miles of the Ohlone Wilderness Trail in the worst way, which I can safely say includes:

• Hiking in rain and pea-soup fog for the five miles of the trail I’d never seen, so I’ll have to return on a sunny day to see what it actually looks like.
• Camping out in the rain (first law of hydrodamics: water gets into everything).
• Twisting and turn all night because my feet refuse to warm up, which keeps the rest of me from staying asleep for more than 60 minutes at a stretch.
• Next morning, all I have to do is walk 18 miles, with a convenient hike over Mission Peak in the last eight miles just to make things interesting.

Not that I’m complaining.

Idea for this outing came from Steve Sergeant, a Sierra Club outing leader who was the instructor in a class on lightweight backpacking I took last year. Steve took a bunch of us deep into the innards of Henry Coe State Park to demonstrate his techniques for shaving pounds off one’s pack weight. It was an excellent outing, primarily because the weather was perfect and the scenery was wonderful.

This year the weather had other plans.

Three of us started out at the Lake Del Valle end of the Ohlone Trail hiking under cloudy skies. I was carrying about 25 pounds; Frank, the fastest hiker of the bunch, was carrying 27; and Steve, mostly to prove a point, had everything he needed crammed into a 9-pound kit, lighter than most people’s day pack.

That’s Steve in the white poncho. Note that this ultra-thin bit of nylon that isn’t big enough to keep his calves dry also is his tent. His stakes are little shards of aluminum similar to fondue skewers and his guylines are really thick-gauge sewing thread. His whole shelter kit weighs in at well under a pound; his pack weighs less than half a pound — the straps have no padding, but have sleeves to insert a pair of gloves to do that little task. Clever, eh?

All this ingenuity really accomplishes is relocating one’s discomfort. If you can stand to sleep out in the rain under a poncho with your nose six inches from the elements, and dash in and out of camp as fast as humanly possible because all your insulation is in your sleeping bag and hanging around at a campsite freezes your fanny off, then ultra-lighting may be for you.

Steve can handle this because he’s been doing outdoors stuff for 30 years and he’s done all the suffer-on-the-trail, live-it-up-in-camp stuff. Actually, Steve still does these outings too, but our recent weekend was a “fast and light” fling, which meant we were all on a diet, pack-weightwise.

So, back to the trail. The rain wasn’t terrible, but it was pervasive. We got caught on top of a ridge in a bit of a squall — I’m sure I felt a bit of sleet up there — but we were able to hike out of it.

Here’s a little pond along along the way. The blurriness is from moisture on the camera lens. Hard to keep it dry under these conditions.

A combination of fog and lens moisture create an interesting image. This is not far from the Maggie’s Half Acre campsite.

Steve and Frank at Campsite 3. We ended up with three shelters arrayed over that little yellowed patch near the tree. I have a floorless tent that weighs about a pound an a half and is held up by hiking poles. I got it set up as fast I could to get in out of the wind and rain. Amazing what a little shelter will do for your state of mind — and state of bodily warmth.

Next morning it was back to the California skies we know and love.
When I got up, Steve was still sleeping under his tiny A-framed tarp, which was pitched about two and a half feet high, with six inches of open space on either side. I asked him if that was enough shelter. “Just barely,” he said. He’d slept in a narrow cocoon that left almost zero space for twisting and turning, but he stayed warm and dry despite getting splashed in the face a few times. He also said these were the worst conditions he’d camped out in with this poncho-as-tarp setup.

Mind you the weather was cool, wet and rainy, but not terribly severe; going this light can get you in deep doo-doo if major storms — sleet, snow, heavy rains, strong winds — crop up.

We had to pack up and hit the trail ASAP because Steve didn’t bring a hang-round-in-camp coat; we did breakfast a couple miles down the trail when we’d all had a chance to warm up a bit. The scenery markedly improved after the weather front went through.

A fine tree along the trail out of the campground.

Rose Peak, highest point on the trail, just before the sun tops the summit.

Amazing views at this time of morning.

Nice tree-and-reflection scene.

For once I was up here when the sunlight hit these rocks at just the right angle to highlight their coloration. Mission Peak is the little hump in the center of the break in the rocks.

The trail passes through the always-scenic Sunol Wilderness. This on the McCorkle Trail a few miles from the park headquarters.

From here it was a hike over familiar ground — lord knows I’ve posted enough Mission Peak and Sunol Wilderness pix here on previous hikes. The climb up to Mission Peak was a bit of drag, mostly because my legs and back hadn’t gotten back into the habit of carrying extra weight for these kinds of distances.

So those are the highlights. I also have good news for those who love to gaze at wildflowers: they should be out in quantity in the next few weeks.

It’s about 2 in the morning and I’m staring into the black nylon of my sleeping bag. I should be staring out the little hole that makes this a "mummy-style" bag, but my twisting and turning has entered the Olympic realm and by now I’ve got the bag completely reversed — which is nice in that no cold air is coming in and it’s pitch dark, which prevents a shimmering half-moon from keeping me up all night. As I’m trying to drift back to sleep, though, I keep hearing this light scratching sound which immediately convinces me critters are trying to get inside my tent.

Later I realize it’s neither mouse nor marmot no black bear doing the scratching: It’s the sound of my eyelashes brushing against the sleeping bag fabric. I wish I could say this helped me rest easy, but easy rest just doesn’t happen when I attempt to sleep on the ground. Tortured, paranoid, back-wrenching rest, I get a lot of that. Anyway, resting easy is for sissies and besides, you’ll never see the rising sun make a rocky mountainside glow if you’re snoozing away in restful dreamland.

The scene of my latest sleeping-in-the-woods experiment was Emigrant Wilderness, which is just north of Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada range. Rebecca from the North_CA Hiking discussion group asked if anybody was interested in an overnighter in this place called Y Meadow Lake and I was the first volunteer. My calculation was that even if they were looking askance at taking a rookie backpacker into the Sierra, they couldn’t resist the prospect of somebody else doing the driving. So I pressed my new Honda Element (newly redubbed the Hiker Hauler) into service with Rebecca, her husband David and Steve, who rounded out our foursome.

Getting our gear together at the Gianelli Cabin trailhead, the terminus of six miles of gravel national forest road. The road’s in fairly good condition as long as you go slow over the bumps.

David answers the urge to capture some of the scenic splendor from near Burst Rock at the top of the first hill. Our route to Y Meadow took us over three ridges ridges with about 1500 feet of elevation gain over six miles. All of it was over 8500 feet, which made the hike feel more like 12 miles to me. I spent most of the time protecting our group from mountain lion attacks by bringing up the rear.

Steve is trying out a LuxuryLite pack, which has the twin advantages of being extremely light and causing passersby to stare in confused wonder. The pack’s inventor cleverly devised a method to distribute weight more equitably by strapping a pod to the front, which from a certain angle makes its wearer look like he might have a promising future in the adult films industry. (We cautioned Steve to keep an eye out for amorous female bears.)

We passed dozens of snow patches along the way.

Rebecca passes beyond a broken tree.

Lunch break atop hill No. 2. The High Sierra is splayed out under a cloudless blue sky. I’m not sure what could have improved on such a scene, though a cold beer would’ve been nice.

We slogged to the top of another ridge and then picked our way down a rocky trail to the Y Meadow trail, which had quite a bit of snow melting into it in a few spots.

Saw this amazing green plant along the way.

First sight of Y Meadow Lake, with rocky slopes coming up on opposite sides. There’s a dam at the far end.

We camped along the lake. Rebecca is perhaps reflecting on having had the smarts to marry a guy who loves to build camp fires.

David tells Steve, "Man, you look smashing in a bug net." Yes, there were lots of hungry mosquitoes, many of whom seemed to have a particular taste for Steve, who was swatting them whenever he sat still for more than five seconds.

David admires his creation. After hiking six miles at warp speed, he settled in for the serious business of finding dead trees and chopping them into burnable bits with a very large knife that would do Crocodile Dundee proud . David is unfailingly upbeat and cheerful, which are nice qualities to have in a guy who counts knife collecting among his varied interests.

I’m up at 5 the next morning, with a half-moon shining through my tent’s mesh.

Y Lake is icy calm as the sun warms the hillside in the distance.

A snow field empties onto the lake.

Another of those "only at sunrise" scenes.

Not long after we were all out of our sleeping bags, the mosquitos attacked in fresh waves, so we got back on the trail as soon as possible.

Consulting with a forest ranger about, well, something.

Another look at Burst Rock on the way back to the trailhead.

Steve extols the virtues of post-hike pizza.

If you’re interested in trying out this hike, see this page by a guy who hiked there in seasons past.

Rebecca’s pictures are here.

Steve’s pictures are here.

So it was back to the Carr Lake Trailhead at Tahoe National Forest this weekend for a fun three miles to Penner Lake. Scenery was fabulous, especially for whetting one’s appetite for the jaw-dropping vistas of the High Sierra. We weren’t all that high — under 7,000 feet the whole way — but the air was thin enough to give the heart a workout on mild hills. I went with a group who call themselves Nor-Cal Hikers. I’ve been posting to their online forum for the past few months, so I had to show up for an actual hike so they’d know I was a real person and not somebody’s 9-year-old son posing as a balding, 40something white guy who has a bad hiking habit.

Feely Lake is the second lake along the way, after Carr Lake. There were many more along the way, each brimming with cold, clear snowmelt.

Biggest patch of snow along the trail. It’s just slippery enough to remind you you’re walking on little ice crystals.

The afternoon was sunny and hot — toasty enough to create billowing clouds that would evolve into thundershowers before the day was out.

Three of my fellow campers at Penner Lake. From right, Theresa, who organized the hike; her husband, Dale; and Cary, who obeyed the law which states that guys within inches of a shoreline on a Saturday afternoon must wet a line in a quest to snag scaly creatures from the lake’s depths.

He did hook one brook trout and cook it up for dinner.

The hardiest campers proved their mettle by taking dips in the freezing water. Paige kicks back in the hammock while her daughter Taylor tests the waters. I left my mettle at home.

Storm clouds build over the ridge beyond our camp site. Along about this time I realized the folly of leaving my tent’s rain fly at home. I knew it would rain for sure if I left my tent set up and my gear unprotected, so took it down, stuffed everything back in my pack and covered it with my tent’s ground sheet. I figured preparing for rain created excellent karma against rain actually happening; I was only slightly wrong — we got about 10 minutes of rain in big, splashy drops. My sense is some other campers beyond that ridge got a good soaking.

After dinner we attended to dessert for grownups: margarita snow-cones!

Chuck admires the campfire.

Sunset puts on an admirable show of its own.

I took this shot without a tripod, just resting my camera on my knee. Good thing tequila is such a natural born muscle relaxant, otherwise I probably couldn’t have held the camera steady enough.

Self-portrait. That’s my snazzy new hat with built-in bug net. Many a skeeter buzzed around my head in abject frustration.

Predawn, Sunday morning. Last night’s sunset was a warmup for an excellent sunrise.

I love it when my camera bolsters the delusion that I might know what I’m doing.

Alpen glow on the hillside beyond Penner Lack. I was fiddling around tying my shoes or something and looked up for a second and realized this picture had to be taken. A few minutes later a cloud blocked the sun and the glow faded away.

OK, one last sunrise pic and I’ll give it a rest.

I got myself (and fellow camper Karen) lost looking for this water fall, but we got ourselves found without too much trouble.

A fine, stately dead pine tree.

A few observations about this hike:

1. It can get crowded early in the summer. We were told that 21 Boy Scouts were camped across the lake from us, which caused a fair amount of consternation early in the day, considering how noisy boys are at that age. After several margarita snow-cones we were yucking it up in such volume that we were half expecting the Scouts to come over and ask us to pipe down.
2. The trails are not especially well marked: don’t come out here without a map and a compass, minimum; all the better if you’ve got a GPS unit.
3. It’s quite not the High Sierra, but afternoon storms can happen just like in the high country. If you see big clouds building in the distance, get ready for a downpour. Don’t be a dunce like me and assume it won’t rain because the rainy season’s over elsewhere in California.
4. There are lots of places to camp near a place called Island Lake, which is only about a mile from the trailhead. Perfect excuse load up your pack with extra fun stuff (by which I mean, booze).

This is a great place to hike, camp, fish or walk your dog. It doesn’t quite share the jaw-dropping splendor of the ragged peaks you see elsewhere in the Sierra, but it’s plenty nice enough to cause unexpected urges to run away and live in the woods.

UPDATE: Expedition leader Theresa’s pictures are here.

The only thing easy about Henry Coe State Park is the decision to go there. Easy because you can camp out almost anywhere you want without reserving a campsite. The odds are heavily in your favor that you’ll have much of the park’s 55,000 acres to yourself. I hiked 26 miles across two days over the weekend and saw maybe a dozen people. Camped next to pond with nobody but me and some wild turkeys on the opposite bank.

The plan on Saturday was to hike up to a couple lakes about 10 miles into the park — Coit Lake on the north and Kelly Lake about a mile south of it.

I started out about 8 a.m. in pea-soup fog from the park’s Hunting Hollow entrance. Hunting Hollow is in a deep valley between steep ridges; only way to get out of it is up. Easiest way up is to hang a left on the Lyman-Wilson Trail about a three-quarters of a mile from the parking lot. As Coe hills go, it’s not too bad. On a cool moist morning you might imagine that icy-cold Cokes are available in Hell.

I made my way to a place called Wilson Camp. Nothing left of it but a couple old trailers and old cabins. The trailers looked like a good hard shove would turn ‘em into a pile of kindling. The camp may have seen better days, but it’s got a nice privy and a couple springs nearby.

Not far from here is a major trail junction, with one trail, called Wagon Road, heading due north in my intended direction, and another, Vasquez Road, heading northeast and then southeast. I hiked down what I thought was Wagon Road in thick fog and came to notice the strong Pacific breeze was hitting me on the right side of my face, which would be impossible as I was certain I was heading north. Finally I broke out my compass for the first time since last summer and sure enough, I was going south — on Vasquez Road. I got my map out, double-checked my route and started doubling back. Well, at least I hadn’t walked even further.

On the way back it occurred to me that if you’re fogged in and can’t see nearby landmarks — ridges, waterways, mountain peaks, etc. — you’re essentially flying on instruments. Which means if you have instruments — map and compass — you have to actually use them; otherwise you might as well be hiking blindfolded.

Foggy summer mornings are heaven for shutterbugs because we know all the cool cloud formations will show up when the fog burns off.

A representative shot of the Wagon Road trail. It follows a ridge for miles and miles, offering wonderful views of the sprawling, rough terrain. It’s hilly but mild by Coe standards.

White cones of blooms from a tree along the trail.

My favorite snag of the day.

Even the occasional crag decorates the ridge line.

Good weekend for mariposa lilies. Saw a whole bunch of ‘em.

OK, Coit Lake at long last. Three guys were camped on the opposite shore and were floating around the lake in inflatable tubes. This seemed to me to be a violation of a fundamental rule of nature: floating without beer. Unthinkable. (Hauling beer for 10 miles over these hills would have one benefit: you’d never live to experience the hangover.)

I ended up camping next to a pond down the road from Coit Lake. Almost Waldenesque except for my outbursts of profanity when a certain tent pole refused to do as it was told.

Look, Ma, a Quail!

And a bunny!

And a Deere!

So Sunday morning is much like Saturday: more pea soup. Kelly Lake is back there beyond those old trees.

Happened across this really nice campsite not far from Kelly Lake. I’ll camp there the next time I’m out here. Coit Lake is bigger but Kelly is prettier.

The trail up from Kelly Lake is mucho steep. Actually, of all the hiking I did over two days, this was the only really nasty stretch, and it doesn’t last long, a mile at most.

More fog-burning-off scenery.

Lots o’ dandelions going to seed around the park this weekend.

I headed down the Grizzly Gulch Trail, which is one of the prettiest ones I’ve seen at Coe. It’s a little-used trail, grown over in some places, but it tracks down a gorgeous valley full of trees, wildflowers, streams, occasional rock formations. You could probably camp out here for a week and never see anybody.

But you might see the bobcat. I came up over a rise in the trail and saw the tawny, bobtailed feline leap across the trail into the underbrush. There and gone in one second flat. Couldn’t have been more than 20 yards away — my best bobcat sighting to date.

Deer carcass picked clean by buzzards and others carrion eaters (no wisecracks about members of Congress, OK?). I doubt it’s a mountain lion kill, mainly because I don’t think a lion would leave it out in the middle of a rail.

One of a couple nice ponds along the Grizzly Gulch Trail.

More clouds painting cool pictures.

And if they’re framed by a dead tree, all the better.

So which do you like better, pictures of bucolic countryside….

… or pictures of bucolic countryside with dead-tree branches cleverly inserted into them?

This is the broad meadow looking toward the Hunting Hollow entrance to the park. After 14 miles, I was happy to see any hill I didn’t have to climb. (My feet were even happier.)

Acronym of the week:

PUDS is thru-hiker shorthand for “pointless ups and downs”, referring to the less interesting sections of mountains thru-hikers encounter from time to time; several PUDS in a row are MUDS, which is shorthand for “mindless ups and downs”. (source: whiteblaze.net)

This came to mind Saturday as I was hiking along the "roller coaster" section of Willow Ridge Road in Henry Coe State Park. Except real roller coasters are fun. If there were amusement parks which required you to push your cart to the coaster’s apex by hand, and if you were self-loathing enough to do this as a hobby, you’d have a fair approximation of what it’s like hiking this bit of dirt road.

I decided late Friday night that I had to get out of the house and go on a campout. I’ve often wondered about hiking out to Mississippi Lake at Henry Coe, so this seemed like a good time to give it a try. A cool, breezy day is forecast, with only a 30 percent chance of thunderstorms. Typically a one-third chance of getting stormed upon would all but guarantee getting soaked from above, but since I took all my raingear — which adds a pound an a half to my pack — Murphy’s Law kicked in anyway and delivered a weekend full of ominous-looking clouds but no actual rain.

The route to Mississippi Lake would warm the heart (and feet) of hardcore distance hikers. It’s eleven miles one way with a combined 3500 feet of downhill and 2500 feet of uphill on the way in (tag on another mile to find a campsite); reverse those numbers on the way back. If you’ve been following along you know that Henry Coe has brutal hills complemented by fantastic views; I’ve climbed the worst of these hills and seen the best of the scenery, but nothing quite prepared me for the Roller Coaster. It’s a tad less than four miles, a fine little workout if you parachute onto one end and grab a helicopter ride home from the other. But to hike there, you ascend two butt-kicker ups and descend two toe-jammer downs over the course of nearly seven miles. And then you slog on up and down and up and down and up and down for what feels like forever. The hills aren’t countless; I know because I tallied 20 of them. About five hilltops per mile. Wicked.

OK, let’s look at some pictures.

Witnessing an Andean beast of burden at the park headquarters should’ve been my first clue. Llamas are interesting animals, just never forget they are essentially camels without humps, which means they can have a bit of an attitude.

At this point it’s only six more miles; after a nice trot down a hillside and a stream crossing at Los Cruceros, it’s up the Willow Ridge Trail (steep but gorgeous single-track) and a left turn on Willow Ridge Road. Then the fun begins.

After what seems troublingly similar to the passing of an ice age, Mississippi Lake shows up on the right.

I found a nice campsite perched on a hill overlooking the lake. That’s my shiny new GoLite Hut2 shelter; gotta love that forest green and only 22 ounces. My other tent weighs more than double that. Shaving off pounds sharply reduces the hike-from-hell vibe of this outing. On my first Henry Coe overnighter, I went six miles with 40 pounds. This time I went 12 miles with 21 pounds. I have such ungrateful feet: even with half the load they’re still whining about all those miles.

Quarter moon at dawn. The great thing about dawn is it gives you an excuse to abandon all pretense of a restful night’s sleep and pack up and hike on.

Morning at Mississippi Lake.

Wildflower season’s in full swing.

Took these just before the return trip on the Roller Coaster. I took a picture at the top of each hill to keep my mind occupied. It made the trip bearable but didn’t seem to make the hills any shorter.

This is about as much blue sky as I saw over the course of both days; it was chilly and breezy the whole time, which turned out to be perfect hiking weather.

More wildflowers along the trip down the Willow Ridge Trail on Sunday.

And some white ones…

And some blue ones….

Excellent snag.

The brown speck in the left tire track at just about dead center in this image is a bobcat I saw strolling up Hobbs Road. He trotted up this brutal beast of a hill like he had antigravity paws or something. On maximum zoom it’s possible to make out a animal with no tail and the distinctly feline lower hind legs.

Reckon that’s enough for this weekend. I’m going back to Coe next week for an outing that completes my lightweight backpacking course, so I’m sure I’ll have fresh complaints about the hills to recount then.

It’s four hours past sunset and I’m attempting to sleep on snow seven feet deep. I’m about 50 yards from the Pacific Crest Trail, an hour’s slog (on snowshoes) south of Carson Pass in the High Sierra south of Lake Tahoe.

The head of my mummy-style sleeping bag is drawn tight with a tiny oval that allows my breath to escape. You know how your breath forms a cloud when you’re out in the cold? Well, that warm moisture will condense and freeze when it lands someplace ice-cold, like, for instance, the nylon tent fabric about six inches from my face. A clump of something falling from a nearby tree hits the tent hard enough to loosen bits of my frozen breath. Tiny, icy particles flutter back into the face from whence they originated. The sky outside is cloudless, a million stars visible. The only snowfall is happening inside my tent, and it lasts on and off till dawn.

Night follows a day in which I have spent an afternoon amid the mind-boggling splendor of the Sierra Crest on my hands an knees tunneling into a hillside, helping my two fellow campers dig a snow cave. Five hours of battle with crisp, hardened snow yields a snug, claustrophobic cavern big enough for two. A tent is available; I snap it up. My new sleeping bag is rated at zero degrees Fahrenheit, and I’d like to sleep above-ground to test the claim. The bag is plenty warm (though I doubt the temperature dipped below 20). As usual I toss and turn all night and emerge feeling somewhat rested, so I figure I must have gotten some sleep. At least there are no dreams involving bears. I hate those.

So this is the snow-camping trip I wrote about last week. Steve, a seasoned outdoorsman who reads my hiking blog, has offered to take me along on a winter camp-out and show me the ropes. Well, the snow shovels. An acquaintance of Steve’s named Anne who backpacks her feet off all summer also wants some snow-camping experience. Steve does the driving and the cooking; I’m half tempted to think he’d have carried our packs if we’d asked real nice. Steve’s from Iowa and nice just comes natural to him. I know he’s nice because I’m the least-adept snow-cave builder in, well, our immediate vicinity and he airs not a single complaint.

The original plan was for all three of us to sleep in the cave, but the snow had other plans. After digging till nightfall, Steve decided to set up the tent he brought in reserve. I know it’ll be nice and warm in the cave but I crave the experience of roughing it a tent. Steve and Anne oblige.

The great thing about snow camping is, of course, the snow. It adorns hills, trails, trees, tents, people, and flatters them all. The bad thing about snow camping is also the snow, because it is merely frozen water desperate to return to its unfrozen state. The appearance of people in its midst fulfills the life’s ambition of two molecules of hydrogen bonded to a molecule of oxygen. All people need to know is: stay dry or freeze.

Fortunately for me, Steve teaches snow-camping for the Sierra Club and has given me tons of pointers on the kinds of clothes to wear (hint: an extra-warm parka is essential; down pants are nice too, though a tad less mandatory.) Normally trudging through snow at 8,500 feet on a mountainside will keep you plenty warm. But when you stop, you need insulation. You also need layers of clothes that will wick sweat away from your skin and help it evaporate. Even if you do everything right, you’ll get cold.

Speaking of cold, there’s one more major snow-camping annoyance: the cold will freeze any water your bring along, so drinking water for coffee, tea and meals must come from melted snow if there’s no gurgling stream nearby.

Even with all the mandatory precautions, snowcamping is worth a try. I did it precisely because the idea of camping in the snow was outside my comfort zone. Some things you do just to prove you can.

Oh, yeah, the pictures.

Steve, our can-do camping guide.

Anne, near the parking lot Sunday, happy at the thought of warmth.

We camped not far from this tree.

Every cave begins with the first shovels of snow.

From this point on Saturday it was all hard labor. We drove almost 200 miles through sleet, rain and snow flurries on the mountain passes to reach the trailhead. Within an hour the sky cleared and the weather was perfect the rest of day. We spent it tunneling. Just like "The Great Escape," minus evil Nazis and Steve McQueen.

After dark, we dined. Steve cooked up a fantastic pot of salmon polenta. It wasn’t just the fact that the food we were consuming was the only warm thing in three miles: it really was tasty — seasoned nicely and everything. Later I heard Steve say "Backpacking isn’t worth it if you can’t have good food." Well put.

Sunday morning. It’s still warm in my sleeping bag despite the visits of J. Frost. Some people put their boots in their sleeping bag so they’ll have warm shoes the next morning. That’s my plan for the next time.

Steve makes breakfast, Anne tries to stay warm. Breakfast is oatmeal with cinnamon and dried strawberries. I’m thinking "heck, I don’t really do oatmeal but I’ll have some to be polite." The oatmeal kicks ass. Steve has done it again. Two fine meals I didn’t have to cook in the space of 12 hours. Yeah, it’s worth the cold toes.

You put up with a lot of nonsense in California to have scenes like this nearby. It’s a fair trade.