Last weekend I went to the California Conservation Corps (CCC) backcountry program camp where Devin has been the supervisor since late April. In the first few months, the corps goes out and does “front country” work, where they are within access to a vehicle for supplies and connection. But in the latter months they hike out into the backcountry, where they sleep in their individual tents, work a full-time job doing trail maintenance, then hike back to camp for the night. Once a week, on Tuesday, a supply mule train comes up with provisions for the week and other needs, and takes back the trash. On weekends, the crew goes  — backpacking.

I visited the camp at Sunrise Lakes in Yosemite.

On the way there I stopped at Olmsted point (see map below) and got a good view of the famous Half Dome. You can see how smoky the air is. It is actually due to a management fire in Yosemite (induced by the forest service) and they have signs up telling people not to “call in” the fire. Unfortunately, Half Dome was in a smoky haze.

Here is an overview map [as always, click to enlarge pictures]. Olmsted point from where I took the photograph above is indicated (blue arrow).  You can see the location of Half Dome (green arrow), the peak of Clouds Rest (orange arrow) and the location of the CCC camp where I went (red arrow).  In the lower left of the picture is Yosemite Valley, which is what most people think of as Yosemite. In reality, it’s a huge area of wilderness.

My hike started at the Sunrise Lakes Trailhead off Highway 120 right by Tenaya Lake. The colors indicate my speed. Red is fastest, blue is slowest. You can see where the switchbacks were and of course where I rested by the blue.

Here is a typical section of the trail. Huge boulders as one expects in Yosemite are everywhere.

Another section of trail.

Here I arrived at the “First Lake” and you can see the spot on the map above. The lakes are pristine, and as you can see, there is nobody there.

It took me about three hours to get to the CCC camp. Here is Devin at the hand washing station.

The crew does trail maintenance work, which would be felling trees, building rock steps, filling in washed out gaps, building retaining walls. All in all backbreakingly hard labor. That’s why it says on the back of Devin’s CCC business card: “Hard Work, Low Pay, Miserable Conditions and More.” Here you can see their “tool shed” with sledge hammers, chain saws, and various gear. A tarp above keeps out the rain.

Here are more tools, clippers, rakes, shovels, all nicely organized.

Here is a picture of the “living room” which consists of a fire pit in the middle, log benches all around, and a large tarp over the top to keep out the rain, but mostly the sun. To the left is the kitchen. All the food needs to be stored in bear boxes, which are those big brown cases.

The crew members pitch their tents in the surrounding area, usually away from others for privacy and quiet. So they are actually quite spread out. Here is Devin’s tent, where he has lived and spent pretty much every night in the last two months, except for when he went off backpacking on some weekends. This is his home. Right now, the temperature goes down to the low forties over night, so it’s quite nippy already, and it will get much colder over the next few weeks. The sun goes down at about 7:30pm and it’s dark very quickly, and stays dark until about 6:00am. That makes for a long night in the tent.

There is a spot on a giant granite incline not far from the camp where they get phone reception. The picture below shows me on that spot. You can see the peak of Clouds Rest (red arrow), a sliver of Half Dome (green arrow) and the approximate spot of the cell phone tower (blue arrow) over Yosemite Valley, about 13 miles away, which brings in the signal. I got 3 bars on my iPhone from that spot, but when I hiked back the couple of hundred yards to the camp – nothing.

Below is a close-up of Clouds Rest and Half Dome from that same spot.

And while I was there, I checked my messages and my email. Here is yours truly, the Software CEO doing a bit of work while out hiking, answering a few urgent emails, making a few appointments, before walking back “off the grid” to get some dinner at the camp.

The next day we hiked down to the trailhead. Here is a picture of Devin in front of Tenaya Lake. The peak behind him is Tenaya Peak. That’s a 10,301 foot peak with no trail going to it. The next day, Devin was going to do a solo hike off-trail to that peak from the CCC camp, which is located to the right behind the peak. I wasn’t comfortable enough for cross country hiking at that altitude for that distance (at my age) so I didn’t volunteer to participate. Devin, as a crew supervisor, carries an emergency satellite phone with GPS, so he feels safe enough to go alone.

As I am writing this a couple of days after, I know Devin made it and has already sent me a picture from the top, looking down on the lake, But that’s for another post.

Another picture of Tenaya Lake, facing due east.

While we there, as we’re crossing the highway, I found an iPhone in the middle of the road, obviously run over by cars already. But as I picked it up it still worked and showed a photograph of the owner and his wife on the cover. So we hiked around a bit trying to find them and give them back their phone, but no luck. I decided to take it with me, and wait for the first incoming call. Sure enough, about 3 hours later, as I had already left Yosemite, that call came in and I was able to connect with the owner and arrange to return the phone to him, albeit run over and scratched.

All in all it was a wonderful weekend. I saw Devin for the first time in 6 months, and were were able to catch up on life. I got in some good hiking and fresh air. I tested a new backpack and sleeping bag, and I am already looking forward to going back. To me, Yosemite is one of the best places on earth.

This morning I went on a short hike around Lake Calavera with my daughter and grandson in the backpack carrier. And there, right in front of us, with no fear at all, was a roadrunner. He was just six feet away, not afraid at all. He waited patiently for me to reach into my pocket, pull out the camera, and take his picture.

Ahh, and in case you wanted to see us too:

A couple of weeks ago, in the beginning of February, we took a few days off and went on a road trip to Sedona, Arizona. We spent one day hiking in the red rocks. The Devil’s Bridge is a popular hike north of town. It’s 1.8 miles from the trailhead, so about 3.6 miles round trip. The Devil’s Bridge is a natural rock bridge and definitely worth the hike.

The trail is well marked. It inclines gently for most of the way, but starts getting steeper during the last half mile, simply because it climbs up a cliff.

Speaking of cliffs, I noticed this major red rock, which is so typical for the Sedona area. As the hike went on, we kept getting closer to this wall, and I noticed a “band” in the red rocks. So you can see what I am talking about, I took the same photograph as above and put a green arrow on it. You can click to enlarge any of the photographs.

The arrow points to a narrow and slightly lighter-colored band. I found the same band on many other landmark rocks in the area. As I got closer to the wall, I took another picture:

Here you can see it more pronounced. And this got me thinking about the geology of Sedona and, for that matter, the entire Colorado Plateau, which includes the Grand Canyon. The large layers of red rock we find in Sedona are also visible in the Grand Canyon, about 600 feet below the rim. I have hiked through that red rock area many a times on hikes in the Grand Canyon, of course.

The red wall is called the “redwall limestone” area. It is in the Mississippian layer of the Colorado Plateau, which is about 340 million years old. The red layers are about 500 to 800 feet thick. Since the band I am pointing about is toward the lower end of the red rocks, I might estimate that his was laid down about 300 million years ago.

And that is the mindboggling feeling: 300 million years ago, when what is now the Colorado Plateau, was at the bottom of an ocean, there was a period where the sediments, for whatever reason that I am sure professional geologists can explain, were lighter than the red layers above and below them. Not only that, the rock is more brittle and the chunks seem to be larger. So for maybe 5 million years, the sediments in that sea collected this different band, until the red limestone layers came back on top of it.

5 million years!

And here I get to stand and take a picture of that band of rock that is now lifted up to 5,000 feet above sea level to show to you here.

Most people don’t realize that the Colorado Plateau is still being lifted up by about one inch in a human lifetime. In geological scales, that rising rapidly. The Grand Canyon is still being formed in front of our eyes, and the red rocks of Sedona are still growing in their glory.

And that is what I was thinking about all the way up to Devil’s Bridge.

When we finally got there, in the afternoon, the light was just “wrong” for a good photograph:

You see above, if you look carefully, the single hiker in the middle of the picture is standing on top of a natural bridge. You definitely want to click on this one to enlarge it. The valley far below behind him is so lit up that it’s difficult to catch the grandness of the bridge itself. If you look carefully you can see the void below.

On the way back down, I took another picture looking back up:

It’s hard to make out what you’re looking at, so I’ll put some more arrows on it:

The green arrow points to the natural bridge from below. Here you can see the depth of the void below the bridge from the other side. The blue arrow points to some people who are standing approximately where I was when I took the picture from above. And yes, you had to climb up that wall through a series of steps cut into the rocks which got a little scary at times.

Overall, hiking in Sedona is a wonderful experience and one day was nowhere near enough. We need to go back and hang out much, much longer.