September in Basin and Range Country: Part II (Idaho’s Boulder Mountains)

(Remember that you can click on the photos to see a slideshow, and then hit "escape" to get back to the text. Also, a note on the photo credits: as always, both Felice and I took these shots, and many of my shots resulted from her suggestions.  I do the photo editing using Lightroom; my goal is to reproduce just what we saw, as faithfully as possible.)

         Sept. 9:  We arrived at an RV park near Ketchum in the late afternoon, dropped the trailer, and took the truck up into the Boulder Creek area, north of Ketchum, to find a boondocking site for the next day.  Success!

         Sept. 10:  We towed the trailer slowly and carefully up Boulder Creek Road, which is about twelve miles north of Ketchum.  The road was very rough, with lots of big rocks (Boulder Creek, right?).  The site that we picked out was isolated but was less than a mile from Highway 75, with good views of the surrounding mountains, right next to the creek.  This photo of the trailer was taken from a moraine about a quarter mile away – the trailer is in the top center of the shot, at the base of the treeline:

         Boulder Peak, at about 11,000 feet, hovered over the campsite:

         We immediately set up our cocktail and snacking area on the bank of the creek – the trailer is visible behind us:

         In order to get that shot, I had to set up the tripod in the middle of the stream.  The bad news is that I accidentally walked barefoot through a patch of stinging nettles while setting up the shot.  The good news is that the water was so cold that it stopped the stinging right away.

         That night, the moon was bright, but we could still see the stars pretty well.  In this shot, we are both peering out of the front window of the trailer – I used our radio remote to trigger the camera from inside:

         Later, we took a walk on the nearby forest road.  We set up this 30 second time exposure with the tripod; I didn't know we had captured a meteor (actually, two!) until we got home and looked at the photos on the computer:

        

         Sept. 11:  We took the North Fork trail, about 8 miles and 1300 feet of elevation gain.  As we ascended the canyon, there were great views of the Boulder range:

         Although the first part of the day was brilliantly clear, we knew from our little portable NOAA shortwave radio that a small storm system would be arriving in a day or two.  We started to see some very unusual swirly clouds forming over the mountain tops:

         After four miles, the trail petered out in a high meadow:

          By the time we arrived back at the campsite, dark clouds had gathered – the slanting September light hitting the aspens and cottonwoods was very cinematic.  The trailer is in the bottom center of this shot:

  

        (That picture might be worth clicking on -- it captures the feeling of a little trailer in a big landscape.)

         Sept. 12:  The storm still had not arrived, so we decided to try the Norton Pass trail, about 7 miles and 2300 feet of gain.  The clouds seemed to accentuate the jagged metamorphic ridges:

         The flat light was not great for photography – this shot does not do justice to the emerald color of Upper Norton Lake:

         The trail up to the pass was tough but not impossible – lots of switchbacks, fairly well graded.  Felice had a touch of vertigo, but she persevered.  It was worth the effort – we sat on the ridge at about 10,000 feet, overlooking Miners Lake and the Sawtooth area to the north:

         Just as we started to head back down, it began to snow lightly:

         That night, we got a mix of snow and rain at the campsite, which was at around 7,000 feet.  We were hoping that there would be a dusting of snow on the nearby peaks in the morning.  Being warm and comfortable, all buttoned up inside a well-insulated trailer in bad weather, is indescribably pleasant.  The Danish have a word for it -- hygge, pronounced hoo-gah.  It is like "cozy," but more intense.

         Sept. 13:  A gorgeous, cold morning, with a little fresh snow on the mountains:

         We decided to use the day to scout for boondocking sites north of Galena Summit, in the Salmon River area.  Our progress was slow – we kept having to stop for pictures.  This was taken in the Baker Creek area, not far from our campsite:

 

         This short video was taken from the south side of Galena Summit:

         Our first view of the Salmon River/Sawtooth area north of Galena Summit was very promising:

         After some fun scouting, we found a great campsite right on the river, near Fourth of July Creek.  We stopped off at Pettit Lake on our way back to the trailer:

         We also took the short Titus Lake hike, at 3.6 miles and 700 feet of gain.  Much of the morning’s snow had already melted, but the dark clouds hinted of more to come:

         This is an “extreme zoom” shot – I am standing several hundred yards from Felice, with Titus Lake in the background:

         Sept. 14:  It was a dark and stormy morning.  When the going gets wet, the wet do chores.  So we took the truck down to Hailey for a fun day of laundry and grocery shopping.  (Pizza for lunch – a red letter day for me!)  We spent some pleasant time in the Hailey Public Library and were very impressed by the helpful staff, the comfortable facilities, and the excellent collection -- how does such a small town fund such a great library?  (Answer:  there is a special assessment as part of the property taxes.  No Proposition 13, evidently.)

          Late that afternoon, when we got back to the trailer, the clouds had lifted a little, revealing fresh snow on the mountains just north of us:

         These mountains were to our west, in the Baker Creek area:

         This is another in a series of “door shots,” showing the view from the inside of the trailer:

          That night, we peeked out of the door to find that the sky had begun to clear.  Just as we were both looking out toward the snowy hills to the west, a brilliant “fireball” meteor streaked across the dark sky, lighting up the landscape for an instant.  It looked like a hunk of melting gold, leaving a visible trail – really memorable.

         A little later, we took a walk in the moonlight.  The snow was brightly lit:

         Sept. 15:  We were up by daybreak, which is fairly rare for us.  The mountaintops were just catching the first rays of the sun.  Felice walked up the forest road:

        
We took the Taylor Canyon Loop trail, about 4 miles with 1300 feet of gain.  There were excellent views of the surrounding ranges, with a dusting of snow on many of the peaks:

      

         We pulled out of our campsite near Boulder Creek in mid-afternoon and headed up to the Sawtooth area, north of Galena Summit.  

September in Basin and Range Country: Part I (Utah’s Uintas)

(Remember that you can click on the photos to see a slideshow, and then hit "escape" to get back to the text. Also, a note on the photo credits: as always, both Felice and I took these shots, and many of my shots resulted from her suggestions.  I do the photo editing using Lightroom; my goal is to reproduce just what we saw, as faithfully as possible.)

         Sept. 4:  We left on our annual September trip on the Sunday before Labor Day, hoping to avoid the worst of the traffic.  That strategy seemed to work:  we left home before 11 a.m. and were in Leeds, Utah, around 7 p.m. (Pacific Time), 400 miles away, aided by a brisk tailwind.  We stayed at the Zion West RV Park, which was perfectly adequate – quiet but not too far out of the way.

         Sept. 5:  Our goal was to make it to Heber City, stay at an RV park, and then scout boondocking sites up in the mountains the next day.  But surprise!  We got to Heber City by mid-afternoon and decided to push on into the Uintas, since we had already pre-scouted some potential sites on Google Earth.

         We headed up Highway 150 toward the Washington Lake area in the Uinta range.  There was an astounding volume of Labor Day RV traffic coming down from the mountains as we were heading up – we had never seen such a steady, dense, and long parade of RVs and recreational equipment (ATVs, motorcycles, kayaks, mountain bikes, stand-up paddle boards, etc.).

 

         This would be our first time camping at 10,000 feet, so we stopped at a pullout to see if the water heater would light in the thin air.  (It sometimes gasps a little at 9000 feet.)  Success!  So we turned off the highway into the Washington Lake area and headed south on a forest road.  There were lots of boondocking sites available – we had never seen an area with so many sites.  (Later, we would discover that the area of Idaho between Ketchum and Stanley held even more boondocking sites, but that was a week away.)

         Shopping for a boondocking site is almost always fun – how is the view from this one?  Is the other one more centrally located?  Is that one too muddy or dusty?  After some hunting around, we found a well-located site, a little more than a mile south of the Washington Lake Campground.  The site was next to a meadow, with a great view of Bald Mountain and Reid’s Peak, both about 12,000 feet.

         But there was a catch – this was the rockiest campsite we had ever tried to shoehorn ourselves into, worse even than Forestdale Road near Carson Pass.  The access to the site twisted down a steep hill from the roadway, over some big sharp rocks and deep holes, around some boulders, and between a lot of craggy junk. 

         It took us about 45 minutes of very slow and careful back-and-forth jockeying to get the trailer situated, without damaging anything.  (You’ve heard of a three point turn?  This one had 17 points.)  Using our walkie-talkies, Felice guided me in, straddling some of the worst rocks, and even rolling over the tops of some bad ones when necessary.  We stopped the action and took this “OMG” shot of a particularly nasty obstacle –hurrah for extra ground clearance!

         But the extra effort was worthwhile.  Once again, we were all by ourselves in the middle of nothing, just the way we like it: silent, peaceful, cold, breezy, and isolated.  We were all set up in time to enjoy the sunset:

      

   Sept. 6:  We took the Lofty Lake Loop trail as a high-altitude warm-up.  (A little over 4 miles, about a thousand feet of gain.)  Initially, we were surprised (and not in a good way) by the extensive bark beetle damage to the forest.  On the other hand, the views were improved by the relative absence of trees. 

         This shot was taken at the high point of the hike, at around 11,000 feet, overlooking Cutthroat Lake and Wyoming (to the north):

       Toward the end of the trail, Reid’s Meadow stretched alongside Bald Mountain and Reid’s Peak:

       These mountains were different from the craggy Sierra granite that we usually see -- the sedimentary rock is softer, making the mountains seem more like enormous rounded hills.  The geology of the Uintas is fascinating -- it is a huge east-west anticline, a broad dome of lifted layers, that was later dissected by glaciers.  As a result, many of the summits are flat -- the original stratigraphy is still intact.  

         After the hike, we drove down to the Provo River Falls (which was so loud that we could hear them from the trailer, almost a mile away).  We were surprised at the volume of water, long after most of the snow had melted:

         Instead of our usual “boot shot,” we took a “feet in the ice water” shot – so refreshing!  And painful: 

         That afternoon, back at the trailer, I could not resist another shot of our ultra-rocky campsite:

         The site was so far off-level that we had to pile big flat rocks under the “landing gear” of our steps -- it was about four feet from the ground to the threshold of the trailer.  Note also the thick pad of orange Legos (Lynx Blocks) under the wheel.  But the trailer was level and stable, despite it all:

         This is a “door shot,” showing the view from the trailer itself (authenticated by the doorframe) -- I took quite a few of these shots during this month-long trip:

  

         That evening, during cocktail hour, we heard a few cows trot by.  They seemed intrigued by the solar panel: 

         By the way, the solar panel was a big winner on this trip – we did not have to run the generator once, even though we boondocked (without electrical power) almost every day for a month.

         Sept. 7:  We drove north on 150 to the Christmas Meadows area, to see the High Uintas.  It turns out that they look a lot like the Regular Uintas, which is pretty darn good: 

         The first part of the trail along the Stillwater Fork was not great, both rocky and muddy, and it was not very close to the river next to the river.  But things improved as we headed up the Ostler Fork toward the Amethyst Basin.  We hiked off-trail along the cascade:

         (By the way, that shot was hand-held at a quarter of a second – gotta love that built-in image stabilization software!)  Near the stream, we came across some aspens that had been sculpted by a tall, athletic, and artistic beaver.  Perhaps these are beaver totems:

         Later that afternoon, I had to get yet another photo of the campsite – did I mention that there were some rocks?

         That night, there was a sliver of moon setting in the west, just enough to illuminate the mountains without washing out the stars.  The vertical column of stars is the north end of the Milky Way, less spectacular than the south end (the Galactic Center), but still lovely.  The shadows of the trees stretched far out into the meadow:

       

       Sept. 8:  We took the Clyde Lake Loop with a detour over the Notch to Ibantik Lake, a “lollipop loop.”  (According to ihikeGPS, we went more than 9 miles and gained about 1300 feet.)  The Notch did not look glaciated; I am guessing it might be a “wind gap,” a flat-bottomed canyon eroded by an ancient river and then elevated.  I could not find any information online about its origins, but it is fun to speculate:

         The trail took us past Wall Lake.  The wall itself looked like fossil dunes, similar to the ones at the east end of Zion National Park – notice the non-parallel bedding planes within each group of strata:

         On the way up, Felice pointed out “our” meadow, not far from the foot of Haystack Mountain, at about 11,000 feet – but the trailer is not visible in this shot:

         On the north side of the Notch, we spotted two mountain goats on a tiny ledge on the side of a cliff, a thousand feet above us.  The first shot is a wide view – the goats are the white dots exactly in the center:

         And this is a zoom view – one of the goats decided to stretch his legs, just as Felice was framing this shot:

         We took out the binoculars and watched them for a while and then continued our hike.  After lunch, as we were climbing back up the Notch, we saw two more goats (probably the same ones) on another cliff, backlit by the afternoon sun:

         

       Sept. 9:  We left Utah, headed for Ketchum, Idaho, about 350 miles away.  On our way out, we stopped by my favorite road sign:

Part II: Idaho's Boulder Mountains

        

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Eastern Sierra Meteors: August 2016

(Remember that you can click on the photos to see a slideshow, and then hit "escape" to get back to the text. Also, a note on the photo credits: as always, both Felice and I took these shots, and many of my shots resulted from her suggestions.  I do the photo editing using Lightroom; my goal is to reproduce just what we saw, as faithfully as possible.)

August 9:  The experts were predicting a terrific Perseid meteor shower, so off we went to our favorite boondocking spot at around 9000 feet, north of Tioga Pass.  We left home at around 10 AM and were setting up camp after 6 PM, which was a pretty quick trip for us.  When we arrived, we had to put on sweatshirts, which was a real treat!

August 10:  We took a short but very steep hike in the June Lake area to Yost Lake.  The lake itself was nothing special, but the views of the canyon and the surrounding mountains from the trail were excellent.  This is part of Carson Peak:

At one point, the trail crossed a cascade. Since it was a hot day, Felice decided that this was a great opportunity to soak her head in ice water:

  

August 11:  We tried to beat the heat by hiking to the pass above Virginia Lakes, with a trailhead at around 9800 feet.  There were still some thick snowbanks next to the creek:

The saddle, at around 11,000 feet, provided us with wonderful views of the Yosemite backcountry -- this is the mandatory boot shot:

There are a couple of small nameless glacial lakes at the saddle:

The lakes along the trail are startlingly blue:

Late that afternoon, we convened our traditional cocktail circle in the cool and breezy shade of the aspens near the trailer:

August 12:  We dressed warmly and went outside to watch the meteors from around 1 AM to 2:30 AM.  It was a pretty good show, although the atmosphere was a little bit hazy from all of the forest fires in coastal California.  I tried (without success) to capture a meteor on film; the Milky Way was my consolation prize:

The morning after the meteor shower, we drove up Tioga Pass into the area adjacent to Yosemite and took the Mine Creek/Bennettville trail, with the trailhead elevation of over 9500 feet.  The entire area had been heavily glaciated; there were patches of multicolored and deformed metamorphic rock that had been sheared off.  On the upper right side of the shot, you can see the contact zone between the gnarly metamorphic rock and the overlying igneous layer, all of which had been tilted up and then bulldozed flat by the glacier:

Although the summer had been dry and hot, we were happy to find that as we climbed up above the 10,500 foot level, the flowers were still blooming and the fields were still green.  Here, Felice was wetting her rainbow bandana in a snowmelt stream – note the patch of flowers behind her:

 This is a close-up of that wildflower grouping:

At the top of the Mine Creek drainage, above Spuller Lake, we could see over the ridge and into the Lee Vining Creek area to the north.  I'm pretty sure that's Mt. Conness looming above our heads, with Green Treble and Maul Lakes on our right:

August 13:  We decided to break the trip home into two days -- so after packing up, we headed south to the Rock Creek area, another high and cool trailhead (at over 10,200 feet).  The trail was crowded (for good reason), and we had to park a half-mile away; but it was worth it.  All the way up the valley, we could see the high jagged peaks:

There was still plenty of water in the noisy creek:

In about two hours, we made it up to Chickenfoot Lake.  There was a lush meadow at the south end of the lake that we had never seen before.  It was magnificent – there is no other word. Cool, breezy, and sunny, with panoramic views of the surrounding 12,000 foot mountains.  We set up the tripod, with the radio remote camera trigger, and had some fun:

         After leaving Rock Creek, we headed into Bishop to get a grease cap for one of the hubs on the trailer  -- it had fallen off (probably while we were on a rough dirt road).  I knew that this was not a good thing – the hubs need protection from dust and dirt, and they need grease.  We called an auto parts store, and they had a product (the "Bearing Buddy") that would solve the problem with the hub.  We were able to install it in the parking lot – better yet, I am finally the owner of a bona fide grease gun, a long-held dream:

That night, we stayed at an RV park in Lone Pine and drove home the next day.