When we first started out trip, it was all possibility. Everybody we talked to, who had been there had a suggestion on where to go, and they all sounded great. I talked to a guy at Vermilion Resort and he said Laural Canyon is great. A guy at the Rock Creek Pack Station said Hopkins was gorgeous. We can't miss Second Recess, almost nobody goes there because it is in the middle but it is supposed to be spectacular. In the end, we missed them all.
On Thursday morning, we calculated that we had somewhere between twelve and fourteen miles to get out and three days to do it. Over breakfast, we made a plan to hike about half way out on Thursday , explore on Friday, and hike out the remainder on Saturday. Our only fixed point was to catch a ferry across Lake Thomas A Edison at 4:45 on Saturday. It seemed pretty easy. Even when we put our packs on, for the first time in three days, it seemed easy.
But we got a late start, the trial was rougher and more interesting than we had expected, and we found lots of reasons to stop and photograph. It was starting to get dark when we made camp.
That night, we revised our plans. Getting into the Second Recess or Laural Canyon seemed like more work than we wanted to do: Second Recess required crossing Mono Creek which had become quite large and Laural required a steep 500 plus foot climb before we would start hiking it. And it had become painfully obvious that we were not going to be making any early starts.
We revised our plan to making two very easy days with lots of stops and a late start rather than two ball-buster days with a chance of missing the ferry on Saturday. So, the next morning, we got got right to lazing around with lots of grooming time.
We got to the John Muir Trail, a virtual highway at rush hour, in time to watch the sunset of Mono Creek. We were only three and a half miles from the ferry. The next morning, we got up, wandered around taking pictures, and then eased our way into the traffic towards Lake Thomas A Edison. Even with a couple of long stops, it came up much quicker than we expected. We were back in civilization, or – at least – what passes for civilization at 8,000 feet.
We even found somebody to take our picture.
We were – mostly – happy campers.
The National Geographic has an article on dinosaurs from Transylvania in which they say Islands are wonderful natural laboratories for the study of
evolutionary change and for that reason have long attracted the
attention of biologists. Large animals often become smaller on islands and small ones become larger. This phenomenon is known as the "island rule."
Those sentences remind of sitting around a campfire in the Sierras with a friend – maybe 45 years ago. As I was staring at the fire, I noticed that the fire didn't actually touch the logs. It seemed to start just a little above the wood being consumed. I asked my friend, who was somewhat of an amateur scientist, Why doesn't the fire touch the wood?
My friend watched the fire for a few minutes as he thought over the question. Finally, he said, It's the fire principal. A relative of the Island Rule, I guess.
It struck me this week after having some discussions with some Wash
DC inner beltway types, someone at the IEA, and someone at the Fed, that ….they don't know what to do. from an an interesting short article over at the The Oil Drum. Not an article really, just a couple of lines, a comment, about the current economic situation and how to get out of it.
It seems to me that there is no solution. We had an economy based on an unsustainable source of money: the constant increase in the worth of our homes and other assets. The well being of our country – our culture – has been based on spending more money than we made – than we had.
I think that the ramifications of this run deeper and stronger than we are willing to admit. Buying shit has become our major entertainment.
What we don't know what to do is how to do is how to bring the economy back without spending more money than we make – again. The government can do that short term but there is a lot of resistance to doing it long term. We are already upside down because of our wars, among other things.
But even if we decided to continue to rack up the National Debt, I don't think we can do it enough and long enough to make a permanent difference.
Even if our massive unemployment – and it is much bigger than the official figures show – ended – let's say by magic – and everybody started spending money; we would still not be spending what we need to be to bring the economy back to where it was before it crashed.
I suspect that this is the new normal and we had better get used to it.
Wednesday is the day we are going to hike into Pioneer Basin. I have heard of Pioneer Basin for as long as I can remember – that may be only ten years, but I think it is closer to forty or fifty years ago, when I first started reading about the Sierras – in my psyche, it is one of those Sierra legends like Thousand Island Lake or Evolution Valley or Dusy Basin.
As an aside, this will be my fifty fifth year of hiking in the high Sierras. OK, I said that wrong – I first hiked in the high Sierras fifty five years ago – I haven't hiked there every year in between. It is where I first found God and it is where I still feel closest to The Mystery. End aside.
This will be a big day, and our plan is to get up early and get going, except…this is not a get early crowd and nearly everybody stayed snuggled in their little beddy-byes until the sun got high enough to warm the tents.
We were camped on the side of the main canyon, near the top. Pioneer Basin is a side canyon that starts below our camp but the top of Pioneer is much higher than our camp. To save effort and because going cross country in the high Sierras is pretty easy – not many trees to block the view of our rout – and fun, we decided to follow the canyon around – cross country – into Pioneer.
The downside is the possibility of hitting an impassable area and having to backtrack or abort, but the upside is not having to go down to walk back up again. And cross country is fun in a magical child, exploring sort of way.
As we rounded the corner from the main canyon to Pioneer Basin – what we kept thinking of and calling the nose – the views changed from the Fourth Recess, to the main canyon, to Pioneer.
As we got deeper into Pioneer, we started crossing side drainages with lush meadows and small streams that required careful crossing.
We knew there was a trail somewhere around the middle of Pioneer Basin running the length from the main canyon to near the top of Pioneer, so, as we picked our way higher, we kept edging towards where we expected to find the trail. At the same time, the weather was turning more problematic. The pessimists in the group – lead by Michele – thought we were in for a dosing; the optimists – lead by Steve – thought it would blow over. We all spent alot of time looking at the sky.
As we worked our way deeper into Pioneer, we were also working our way towards above timber line. To many people, certainly to me, this is the best part of the Sierra Nevadas. These high meadows, which always seem to be bathed in bright sun reflecting off the bright rock, are harsh environments but they almost always seem gentle and soft. Walking – semi-aimlessly – through a high altitude meadow is as close to being with the Divine as I have ever gotten.
When I first started hiking in the Sierras, we just drank the water directly out of of the streams. Now we filter everything. I wonder if it is really necessary and I am pretty sure that it isn't. But I also don't want to get Giardia and, even more, I don't want to be responsible for somebody else getting it – or getting lost. So much of the day is spent pumping water through the filters and confirming where we are on our maps.
I think that we all felt that we could stay here for another couple of hours, but the time was getting late and we had miles to go before dark. Fortunately, most of it downhill so we would have time to celebrate when we got back to camp. .