Remember how I said that this blog would return to its normal form about our family occurrences and such? Those guys are boring...
I went for a hike up White Mountain on Saturday of last week. It is the 3rd tallest peak in California at 14, 242ft. We camped in the Ancient Bristlecone pine forest on Friday night and took a 4 mile hike to see the trees.
The loop was neat. I'm not sure I spotted the official oldest living non-clonal organism on the planet, the Methuselah tree. They don't point it out since they don't want it harmed or vandalized but the trees are incredible and the scenery is sparse, harsh and amazing.
After a loud night in a party campground we woke up at 5:30 am, had breakfast, broke down camp and drove 16 miles on some pretty bad dirt roads in my Hyundai Accent 4cl 2 wheel drive. It was pretty slow going and kind of sketchy but we made it to the trailhead. We were the only non 4 wheel drive car there and it made us the butt of some jokes/ conversations about how we'd managed to pull that off.
The trail is actually a bad dirt/ rock road the whole way. The University of California has a research station 2 miles in and another one at the top. It is 15.5 miles long though and still you huff and puff over 12k ft.
I opted to take my big puffy coat up the mountain instead of my big camera so all of these shots are from Dylans (bearded dude) phone. Matt wasn't able to make it to the summit. Dylan managed but felt like he was going to die. He had never been above 13k ft before.
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| At the summit we were greeted by 30 UC Davis Graduate students who were "working" at the research station |
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| The summit hut/ research station |
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| Yours truly. |
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| At the summit overlooking the Owens Valley 11k ft below |
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| 2 stamps one says 14,224 the other says 14,242 |
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| It started to snow/ sleet/ grapple on us on our way down. |
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| White MT on the left. |
As for the rest of the family, the kids are doing well in school. Zoey is getting her talkative-ness under control and learning really quickly. Aiden is settled right in loves his classmates and teacher and looks forward to going to school every day. Teresa has 36 kindergarteners. The numbers are not in her favor. Hopefully they will add another class so she can get rid of 8-9 of those students. Aidens birthday is coming up so I'm sure there will be an actual blog update from that.
Till then-
RTSZA
3 comments:
THIRTY SIX?! Poor Teresa!
The bristle cone pines are amazing and so unique and you got to see them in person! What a great trip minus the party goers, students and snow. Glad your two are enjoying school and sorry that Teresa has soooo
many students--enough for two classes. She has an aide doesn't she? We look forward to seeing Aiden's birthday pics!
You take some great hikes and adventures. What dedication. I love seeing the pics and hearing about them.
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