I forgot what water feels like.

Dave Schumaker hiking in the mountains Well, the title is somewhat misleading, it should probably read, “I forgot what taking a shower feels like!” I’ve returned though, and now I’m all clean and shiny again. I absolutely LOVE the Sierra Nevada mountains. The scenery is just so gorgeous. It’s hard to believe beauty such as this is only about a 4 hour drive from the “controlled chaos” that is Southern California. After spending 5 days up there, it is such a depressing sight to drop back down through the Cajon Pass and see… nothing. The air is so thick you can chew it. 😛

We did quite a bit while we were up there. One of the highlights was hiking to Bishop Pass, which is one of the many entrances into King’s Canyon National Park. The elevation is at 11,972 feet so it definitely takes your breath away. Took some awesome pictures while up there as well as geeked out at all the glacier related geology. Definitely awesome.

Did some fishing while we were up there too and I caught my first fish ever! That was rad! I proceeded to catch two more as well. I ended up letting them go however. They were too small to be worth anything, but regardless, that made my day!

We pretty much took the day off yesterday and drove around. We went up to check out the June Lake area, then recreated a geology trip (I’ve been on 4 of them to the Owens Valley alone!) where we checked out Obsidian Dome, Devil’s Postpile (my first time seeing that. Check out the top, where you can see glacial polish and striations), the “Earthquake Fault” in Mammoth and the Mammoth Hot Springs. One interesting thing to note: Since we made that day technically a “geology” day, we found this sign at Devil’s Postpile to be quite humorous. Especially since we came to Devil’s Postpile to learn about geology… not geography. 😉 All in all, we logged nearly 200 miles of driving around yesterday.

We also decided to do some off-roading trails that we’ve seen on some previous trips. We took a trail and ended up following it nearly right back to our camp (22 mile trail). It basically ended on a glacial moraine that was 500 ft above where we were supposed to be. By this time it was pretty dark and the trail looked treacherous, so we ended up stopping the truck on a few occasions and walking parts of the trail in the dark to determine whether or not it would result in us plummeting to the valley floor. We safely made it though! However, that excursion took nearly 2 and a half hours. Good fun all around though!

It’s nice to be back home though… of course it may only be for a day. A friend’s cousin is going up to San Francisco for the weekend and she invited me along. So I think I may go and visit my sister while I am up there. Yes! This summer has just been awesome.

[Updated: 10:46PM] – Uploaded a short video clip from the trip. Yes, we’re idiots. View “Playing With Fire” (477kb). Also, for those of you who care, new Offspring album due out in December. Thanks to their manager, I have a DVD that features a music video of a new song entitled “Da Hui” 🙂 Uploading it sounds tempting, but that’s how I was nailed the first time!

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