Monday, November 14, 2011

Sayonara California


























These are the last photos from our trip.  We ended on Aug 18th. , Jays 13th birthday, in South Lake Tahoe.  These phgotos sure make me anxious to get back on the trail. 

Since we have been home Jay has been on the cross country team at the middle school and will be on the Track and Field team in a couple of months.  Vicky is staying fit by training for a Half Marathon.  Running 13.1  miles just seems so achievable now.  We will be back on the trail in June leaving from Medford  northbound to the Canadian border.  Stay safe and be well

Mama Moab and Jayhawk

Friday, August 5, 2011

How I spent my summer vacation.


How we spent our summer Vacation

Visiting National Parks:
Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Devils Postpile

Visiting Wilderness areas:
John Muir, Aldo Leopold







Cottonwood Pass our entre to the High Sierras


Crossing rivers, the bridges NOT of Madison County


The high Sierras


Oh no it's a Jay a Lope



A hike on a garden path


swimming in the lake



These bridges Schwing


Our hiking sticks got a bit sharper


Niagarra honey moon?

Sunset at Muir Pass


Staying at the vacation condo


bridge over the San Joaquin just before Muir Trail Ranch




Sterling pass  The last pass before Reds Meadow and Mammoth Lakes


Our new Big Agnes Fly Creek 3 tent 3 lbs 10 oz


Fish Creek

Monday, July 18, 2011

On the trail again

This doesn't look like the PCT!  It isn't.  We decided to take a couple of weeks off and go where we knew there would be no snow.  There is a lovely stretch of wild coast in Northern California called the Lost Coast.  We hiked in on the 4th of July weekend.  At the start of the hike, we went to the rim and saw beautiful flowers and lovely forests.  Then we dropped down to the ocean in time to see our first forest fire of the year.















The fire:

Note the burning log that Jay is looking at:


We were trapped, because the tide was coming in (making the coast impassable at high tide).  As Jay put it, "It's either drown or burn."  We chose burn and hiked through the fire along with some other hikers.  Then we got to the end to see the fire truck and teams of fire fighters (plus two helicopters dropping water, taken from the ocean).  Jay and Kevin walked up to the fire fighting team.  Kevin tried to engage them in a conversation about fire fighting -- prompted by "Jay here wants to become a forest fire fighter."  Little did they know that they were all prisoners brought in for this.  Ooops.  From here, we hiked further down shore and met a ranger and then chose a camp site.
Jay and Kevin went on a day hike to the end of the coast the next day -- running into numerous hikers.  Jay startled a nesting pelican.  Then we hiked out the next day and saw tons of sea lions and seals as we stayed on the coast itself.  -- beautiful.

An abandoned light house on the coast:

After coming out of the Lost Coast we headed for Redwoods.
We did a short (three day) backpack into Humboldt State Park -- one of the larger old and second growth forests.

Vicky admiring redwood hugeness. Darn tree hugger
The view lying down and looking up from where we placed our tent the second night we camped:
After the Redwoods we tried to do another trip on the PCT.  The Trinity and Marble mountains on either side of the darling town of Etna.  We met marmot and Roo at the brew pub.  They told us that some of the trail had no snow on it but that most was very hard.  Then we ran into the Three Bears who had gone in from Etna and encountered too much snow.  So we trail angeled and drove the three bears to Seaid Valley.  When we got there, a lightbulb went off in kevin's head -- let's do a hike southbound from Seaid into the Marble Mountains and see how far we can get on the PCT.  We hiked for four days and the headed back to Truckee.  We went to the REI in Reno from Truckee and ran into Balls, Sunshine, and the Mad Hatter.  Today we head to Reno, then Lone Pine on a bus and finally start our Sierra trip.  
--the Slackin Mattsons, Momma Moab, Jayhawk, and Martin Eden