All posts by Steve Stern

Two young women at Lake Tenaya

August 10, 2010UncategorizedSteve Stern

Driving back from my trip to the east side of the Sierras, driving by Lake Tenaya, I saw two women rock climbers walking towards their climb.

After I took their picture and started to drive away, they turned and I saw them from the back, looking at their guide, and asked for another picture.

When I saw them with their ropes and hardware, their helmets; I was struck with how young and vulnerable* they seemed, graceful and delicate; and macho. I was reminded of several things at once: my daughter's soccer team calling themselves macha, Lynn Hill, and the whole new story of young, kick-ass women.

*when I commented to them on that, they took exception, saying that they were not vulnerable – but, of course, the opposite of vulnerable is invulnerable, impenetrable, untouchable and they seemed to be none of that – so I am going to stick with vulnerable.

The joy of sun-dried towels

August 10, 2010UncategorizedSteve Stern

I remember when our family first got a cloths dryer. I was only a child. I don't actually remember getting the dryer, but I do remember how soft the dryer- dried towels were. My sister and I loved them.

But my mother continued to sun-dry all our laundry when ever she could. She said that she preferred the way they smelled; that they smelled fresher. We have a air-drying rack in the bathroom – the drier sits where the tub will one day go, so I guess it should be called a showerroom – and Michele uses it to dry a variety of delicates. As an expeariment, I dried my towel on it.

THE towel dried stiff, but – using it – that stiff towel brought back a flood of comforting childhood memories. Not specific memories but very strong, generalized, memories of being young. I am sort of shocked at how much memory came from just rubbing the towel on my body.

Highway 20 from Mono Lake to Tioga Pass

August 8, 2010AmericanaSteve Stern

I love the eastern Sierras – the escarpment along the 395 Highway corridor – they are so dramatic. The eleven or twelve mile drive from Mono Lake to Tioga Pass is the most extreme contrast I have ever seen. It goes from here (both double clickable to enlarge)

to here

in twenty minutes.

At the bottom is Mono Lake which is really not a lake, but a small, very salty sea, a basin with no outlet. Even at that, Mono is a strange place. For years, I drove by it at top speed on my way to more scenic places. I think that most people drove by it and the City of Los Angeles had siphoned off all the creeks running into it; so the Lake was slowly drying up. In 1978 or so, one guy*, David Gaines, changed this little part of the world.

Shocked and appalled by what he saw, Gaines formed the Mono Lake Committee and started talking to everybody – the conservation
community, politicians, schools, service organizations, anybody he could corner – about the wonder of this forgotten lake/sea. Now there is a big Visitor Center overlooking the lake; the small town of Lee Vining – also overlooking the lake – is full of tourists, many of them from Europe; and Los Angeles is no longer sucking the lake dry.

From the bottom, looking up, the Sierras don’t look very impressive.

At the bottom of the road, Forestry Service fire engines are waiting for directions.

But, then, the road just starts up,

Past a pine level, and past rock outcroppings where the seeps run all summer long and the hanging flowers always seem to be blooming.

Running into and then along a glaciated valley to the East gate to Yosemite National Park – where, now, there is always a line – at the gate, that is.

It used to be there was no line – because all the receipts from the gate were turned over to Washington to put in the General Fund – now Yosemite gets to keep most of the receipts and the National Park service the rest. Now, the rangers religiously man the gates.

A walk to the Sierra Nevada crest

August 7, 2010UncategorizedSteve Stern

In less than two weeks, to celebrate my 70th birthday, several of us are going to make a trans-Sierra hike from the east side of the Sierra to the west side. We plan on starting at Mosquito Flat at approximately 10,100 elevation, hiking over Mono Pass at 12,000 feet and then following Mono Creek down to Lake Thomas A. Edison at 7,300 feet.

The first part of the trip, from Mosquito Flat to Mono Pass is short but steep: 1900 feet in about four miles and I was a little worried that I couldn't make it. Four miles is not a big deal and 1900 feet isn't either but 12,000 feet is sort of a bitch. At 12,000 feet, airpressure is only about 40% of sea level. The sky is even darker because there is that much less air between us and space.

So, while Michele was in Canada, I decided to take a trial, trail, hike. Like every hike, it starts in a parking lot – usually crowded.

I think of 10,500 feet as being about timberline in the Sierras and, at 10,100 feet, the trees at Mosquito Flat are already stunted. The trail started wide and relatively flat and soon narrowed and got steeper. Late July is spring at 10,000 feet and the trail was surrounded with wildflowers.

Hard to see, in photographs, wildflowers, true, but bright wildflowers everywhere. The trail soon climbed above timberline to a more alpine environment.

One of the things I love about hiking above timberline in the Sierras is that it is like hiking in a Japanese Zen garden – I know, I know, Japanese Zen gardens are copied from the above timberline landscape in the Japanese Alps (are they still called the Japanese Alps?) – but, still…,

At about the half way point, the trail got drastically steeper, switchbacking up the side of the mountain, leading to the pass.

Until, way below, was Ruby Lake at 11,000.

About this time, I was beginning to think I was not going to make it. Then the trail leveled out and makes a gradual turn to the right leading to the pass. All of a sudden, the end was in sight, so – revitalized – I headed for the pass.

Except that it turned out not to be the pass. Once I got to the fake pass, there was another one just a couple of hundred yards ahead, and then another, and – shit – another.