adventures

We got up to Yosemite at 2 in the afternoon, got a permit, went to the trailhead, and packed our packs...then decided that, as we all had headaches, it wasn't too bright to drive from sea level to 7000 feet and hike 8 miles. So instead we hiked to Puppy Dome for the sunset and camped for the evening. On that walk, we saw two yellow-bellied marmots.


Part of the trail crossed granite slabs.


We stayed at the lowest of the three Young Lakes, which was still at 9850' elevation, so we weren't allowed to have a fire. While we were standing in this scree field, I noticed some soft "chirrups" and we spotted a pika gathering branches for his winter nest. He kept running up to the top of a rock, checking things out for a couple minutes, dashing into the bushes, and darting back to his nest. We must have sat and watched him 25 minutes.


We got to the lake and had a power lounge before having 4 run-ins with a black bear in the evening--it came by in the afternoon, at dinner, when we were brushing our teeth, and around 11pm. The last time, I banged pots and pans and my mom threw rocks at it from the tent. It didn't seem to care much about our presence. For about an hour, you could hear the different campers around the lake banging pots and blowing whistles at it as it ambled around searching for food.


We didn't coordinate on lipgoo and wound up with 9 tubes. Otherwise, we packed pretty light (for us) on this trip--I strongly recommend against dehydrated veggie lasagna of any brand (tried 2).

I've had this tube of lip smackers in my first aid kit since middle school--does lip goo go bad?


We stopped here to play with a frisbee we found the day before, then felt bad about trampling the fragile meadows.

You can see there's no snow on that mountain--there should be a glacier.


Mom forgot her comb.


He was trying to convince me we could have taken a "shortcut" over the Ragged Peak "saddle"


Unicorn Peak's on the left and Cathedral on the right.


Done with the hike!


We hung out at Tenaya Lake and downed some beers before driving back to Marin.