Backpacking places!

Backpacking is so much fun! Growing up, my family did lots of camping and so on, and eventually, my father and I did a fair amount of backpacking with the Boy Scouts and some horsepacking with my grandfather and uncle. I really treasure those trips we did together. They really were wonderful, and I thank my father for taking me on those trips and getting me excited about the wilderness.

I do believe that the times when I've been out in the wilderness have been the times when I felt the most close to the world and at peace with myself. I would like to share that feeling with others. Which is why I wrote these pages. To be able to give my friends a nice place to point them when I rave about a hike so that they can go try this hike too. Someday, perhaps I'll find an organization which will get kids out into the wilderness or something too, and I'll hopefully have the courage to go volunteer for that. :-) I used to be a a big fan of the BSA, but their attutudes about homosexuals have made me rather disillusioned with them. So if anybody has any good ideas, let me know. I'd love to help get more people in the outdoors!

OK. So here are some of the trips which Stephany and I have gone on recently. Let me know what you think. Have fun!

• Snow Mountain: 6/6/01 to 6/8/01 A really beautiful area that nobody knows about. Best probably for early season hiking, because of it's warmth and because the snow had almost melted away and thus all the creeks were drying up. But a Really Nice place to go. We went there one weekend, and then came back with Marya and Bernd, we liked it so much.
• Sand Ridge Lake: 7/20/01 to 7/22/01 This was a nice little hike with a lot of folks on the trail, but nobody at all where we slept. BEAUTIFUL meadow! Easy hike, but it got below freezing at night. Wonderful clear sky! We sat outside under sleeping bags until the dew got too thick. The next morning, there was lots of big frost on everything. :-)
• Lyon's Lake: 9/28/01 to 9/30/01 A hike in the desolation wilderness! Tons of beautiful glacial granite, a very spare and often windswept wilderness. Very pretty! A super rewarding fall hike.
• Picayune Valley: 10/12/01 to 10/14/01 A remarkably warm fall hike in the Granite Chief wilderness. Beautiful fall colors! A very pretty waterfall. Nice and easy hike. We had fun!
• Sequoia National Park: 11/21/01 to 11/25/01 This wasn't really a backpacking trip. But I wanted it to be. But I twisted my ankle, so it was merely car camping. But it was fun, so I thought I'd put what we did up in case people were interested.
• Point Pinole: 4/13?/02 to 4/13?/02 An easy hike in the Point Pinole State Park. It was a nice day hike. A fair amount of people, but still fun.
• Mount Diablo: 5/4/02 to 5/4/02 After a winter of skiing and one snow camping trip (which I _will_ document someday), this was our first hike out with both Marya and Bernd. It was very pretty. A good early season place to go, and very close by.
• Danish Creek Camp in the Ventana Wilderness: 5/25/02 to 5/27/02 This was a fun trip into the Ventana Wilderness. Lots of small wildlife, but quite a bit of poison oak too. But a nice trip nonetheless! Easy hike, lots of different kinds of plants, basically nobody else on the trail. This looks like a trip that would be good all year long.
• Velma Lakes area in the Desolation Wilderness: 6/6/02 to 6/9/02 This was a super beautiful trip into the ever awesome Desolation Wilderness. Beautiful spare clean piles of polished white granite everywhere. We LOVED it!
• Relief Reservoir in the Emigrant Wilderness: 6/29/02 to 6/30/02 A beautiful hike in the Emigrant Wilderness. Trip writeup still needs to be done, but pictures and the map are here.
• Climbing Mount Shasta: 6/11/02 to 6/14/02 Mount Shasta is an amazing mountain! There are no other mountains near it, so it just kind of dominates the area. Some friends and I climbed it. It was hard.
• Burning Man 2002: 8/25/02 to 9/2/02 My fifth year. Once again, a great, lifechanging experience.
• Carson Iceberg Wilderness: 10/12/02 to 10/13/02 Fall colors! They were everywhere! A quality hike, great views, but some cow ugliness.
• Lost Coast: 6/6/03 to 6/8/03 Another great early season hike, and our first backpack of the season! Damp, but beautiful!
• Emigrant Y Lake: 7/11/03 to 7/13/03 Our second hike in the Emigrant Wilderness. Great views! We like the Emigrant Wilderness more and more.
• Emigrant Granite Lake: 8/8/03 to 8/10/03 Another hike in the Emigrant Wilderness! This one was rather more of a scramble than a hike.
• Canadian Rockies: 9/14/03 to 9/27/03 This was our honeymoon. I wish I could live here. INCREDIBLE!!!!
• Death valley: No writeup. Steph had just gotten eye surgery, so we just did car camping.
• Alaska!: No writeup. This was AWESOME! We had a bear encounter, and Steph hurt her knee. But we loved it up there!
• Solo in Yosemite!: No writeup. I did one last trip to Yosemite before going to work again. Here are the pics.

Oh, and by request, I have saved out our checklist which we used so effectively in our Lyon's Lake trip for our 30 minute departure. Here it is, in HTML format (kinda ugly), StarOffice format, and Excel 97 format. And here is a typical weekend backpack load, with how much everything weighs (roughly... I had to estimate in some places). Please excuse the format. It does kinda suck. Have fun!!

-tspencer