Eastern California Petroglyphs - May 2019

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An Anniversary, Ancient Rock Art, & When the World Went Dark

It was a perfect morning.  Moments like this are why we travel, why we love to wake up in what many mistakenly call the middle of nowhere. We think of it as the center of everything. The light was just beginning to build. It was around 30 minutes before the first songs of day birds would ease into the quiet. The low was around 40° so all our windows were open. We were wrapped in the scent of sage as the first coyote's song whispered toward us from far to the east. Other coyotes joined in and the chorus lasted only a few seconds and again it was only us and quiet and sage. As I said, it was a perfect morning, one filled with life, contentment, and possibilities.

We were not alone so I must back up in this narrative to explain.

We left home Sunday, Cinco de Mayo, and it was our friend's, Barking & Mom Spider, 35th wedding anniversary. We were honored that they wished to join us on an adventure as a way to celebrate. We had a surprise for them. Our friends, The Teds, would be joining us at our first campsite.

Mrs. Ted was  watching the resident herd of feral horses when we arrived. Ted is doing remarkably well with his chemotherapy and is able to camp on his non-infusion weekends. Mom Spider stayed at camp with Ted as the rest of us walked and explored the surrounding granite mountains.

We found a series of bore holes for core samples from one of the intrusions.

We suspect these are for a geologic study of this area. The late afternoon was incredible as we returned to camp. Thunderstorms built and we wondered if we would get hit.

We sat out in the night after dinner and enjoyed the pleasant company of our friends. The Spiders, with their milestone anniversary, were the deserving center of attention. Barking launched into wonderful well worn stories recounting their early years. Mom Spider artfully corrected the facts when necessary. We heard how Mom did not answer Barking's proposal of marriage until a year later. You need to be sure about such things. A favorite story was about how clean she found the kitchen in Barking's house when she first visited, very unusual, she thought, for a single male. Turns out that Barking Spider's survival strategy for getting fed was to date waitresses. Laughter drifted across our campsite until it was time to turn in for the night. The storm passed us by just to the north.

The stories continued the next morning.

We said our goodbyes to The Teds as they headed toward home. Our first stop for the Spiders was a well known petroglyph site in the Volcanic Tablelands north of Bishop.

This site has an incredible array of petroglyphs of different ages showing long use of this area as a canvas for rock art.

Here is a very old and primitive sheep depiction.

What continues to draw us to visit this site is the multitude of footprints.

There are also bear tracks and another interesting style.

We took our time and thoroughly explored this fascinating area.

I especially like this one that, to me, could be a California Condor.

I noticed a large nest up on a cliff face and pointed it out to the others. A raven flew from the nest, confirming our thought that it was a raven nest. The bird seemed undisturbed and was joined by its mate on a nearby high point to watch us. The two kids in our group, Barking Spider and the Lady, had to, just had to, climb up and investigate.

The raven quickly returned to the nest and eggs.

Our little buddy, Barking Spider, celebrated not getting carried off and eaten by the ravens.

It was time to call it a day and head to our private hot spring campsite for the night.

Tuesday we put our friends, the Spiders, to work. There is an ancient rock art site we've been searching for for several years. The Lady and I are getting to know the area quite well. "We know a lot of places where it is not," the Lady explains. 

We first visited an old homestead.

We really wished we had Ted along with us when we discovered the old car. With Ted we could have gotten this relic running again.

We enjoyed a long lunch before driving on to our search area. Having the extra pairs of eyes helped as we found so many new clues, but still not the main site we searched for.

Wandering among the pinyon pines, sage, and indian paintbrush was a wonderful way to spend a day with friends.

We returned to camp for another incredibly relaxing night.

Wednesday we continued our tour of ancient rock art sites with our friends. But first we wanted to share a marvelous view of the meandering Owens River.

A long drive took us to another area to explore and search out ancient rock art.

Days spent like this, one after another, are a treasure.

Again it was time to head to a private hot spring campsite. Three nights in a roll after long days exploring and searching was well deserved decadence. Our final evening delivered with nice colors.

Our trip was over Thursday morning and we found it hard to leave.

At the top of this story I gave this adventure three  titles - An Anniversary, Ancient Rock Art, and When the World Went Dark. Forgive me, but I expect you will find this third part unnerving. I do. The vision in my left eye went dark during this trip. I found I could no longer see any of the focus points through my camera's viewfinder. It got worse, to the point that I called when we had cell service and set up an appointment with my ophthalmologist as soon as we returned home. The Lady took over driving. Since I had cataracts removed and lens implants iin both eyes in  February, I expected I was experiencing posterior capsule opacification, a common complication.This was not the case as I heard during the examination, "New retinal detachment. He needs to see a retinal surgeon today!"

 

I am now two weeks post eye surgery. My vision is still poor. I expect it will be a slow and gradual recovery. How will this new adventure of ours turn out? As in everything else, we'll find out. There are not two more positive people than the Lady and me. Just like we will someday find that elusive petroglyph site we have put so much effort in finding, I'll heal up fine and the view through the camera viewfinder will be clear and bright again.

 

I will tell you, editing these photos and typing up this narrative has been a real chore. I must really enjoy doing this. I do.

Backcountry Skiing - March & April 2019

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Back To Our Roots - Our Backyard

Snow fell this winter in the Sierra Nevada. On the weekends we did not travel with our truck and camper, and it was not a blizzard, we took advantage of traveling over this layer of white with our backcountry skis.

A storm dropped a few inches of snow on Saturday March 9th. With clearing overnight, early Sunday we headed into our local area. The Lady and I played a big role in the creation of a marked ski & snowshoe trail out the ridge line south of Loon Reservoir called the Orion Trail.

Note: My friend Marcus Libkind authored several ski touring guide books. He was asked by his publisher to update the guidebooks with new editions. Instead, Marcus decided to offer his updated information for free through a website he created. Marcus is that kind of guy, incredibly generous.

The morning was wonderful as we skied east toward Brown Mountain. There was around six inches of new snow.

As we neared Brown Mountain the views opened up to the south and the northwest corner of Desolation Wilderness.

We skied up onto the west shoulder of Brown Mountain, a plug of columnar basalt.

The low pressure system had moved over the Sierra crest into the Great Basin. With the change in the wind direction as the low pressure passed, we had cloud build heading back over from the east.

We took a quick snack break after pulling on layers and looked back our route in.

As we ate I realized we had a confession to make.

We no longer use 3 pin ski bindings - the source of the name ski3pin. A year or so ago I mounted G3 cable bindings to our skis.

The temperatures were warm and the new snow was getting heavy. Although not fluffy cold powder, it was still very turnable as we cut teles down slope on our return. With most of the terrain downhill back to the trailhead, it did not take us long to get back to the car. The storm returned - wrapping around from the east - as we drove home.

We were back out to Loon two weeks later on Sunday March 24th. Cathy, the trailer woman, was along with us.

Another marked trail we helped create, mark, sign, and maintain is the Van Vleck Trail. This was our route today.

We were very pleased to see two back country ski patrollers at the trailhead, our friends Dave and Craig, going into service with our local interagency dispatch center for a day out patrolling.

This was very rewarding for the Lady and I because we helped with their intensive training to get them to patroller status. Good job you two!

The women were anxious to get going.

The Lady led the way on trails she knows so well.

Here is an idea of the snow depth with a covered campground vault CXT toilet.

The Van Vleck Trail took us south from the reservoir.

  

The trail climbs after crossing the South Fork of the Rubicon River.

We arrived at the Van Vleck Winter Storm Shelter. Here's a photo from February 2008.

With the incredible snowpack this season, we found the shelter completely buried.

The Lady & I went to work digging. My avalanche probe found the peak of the roof down about 3 feet. We continued down to reach the top of the high door that allows access to the inside with a bolted on ladder. We keep a stash of emergency supplies stashed inside - wool blankets, sleeping bags, MRE's.

Here is a photo from March 2009.

And one from several years ago of me with our friend, Marcus.

You may notice that the top of a CXT outhouse building was used for this shelter. It is tough, solid, and damn near indestructible.There is no vault underneath. It's affectionately known as, "The No Shit Shelter'.

Julie and Cathy argued a bit over who was tallest and pushed each other deeper into the snow.

I thought it was time to relax and illustrated how to accomplish it.

Cathy pulled a baggie of moose nuggets out of her pack, at least the Lady and I were pretty convinced, from all our experience in the Rocky Mountains, they were moose nuggets.

Cathy explained that they were chocolate covered espresso beans, very good for us, and a staple of her backcountry skiing diet.

The Lady led the way back down. The new rocket fuel may have been involved.

There was a few inches of wet slop on top of a buried breakable crust. The Lady and Cathy did not break through. I did, I weigh more, especially when weighting only one ski. A mistake and a lesson in basic science and inertia, as in once a skier is in motion he will remain in motion even when his ski is suddenly stopped. "Slapped down like a wet noodle," is the technical term we use. The snow was soft under the crust allowing me to go deep after punching through.

The women greatly enjoyed my sudden stops and subsequent burials but still treated me pretty darn well.

We had one final hill to climb before reaching the trailhead.

March moved aside for April. We received a few days without storms that, we hoped, may bring spring snow conditions. Sunday April 21st we headed out for a quick, longer ski tour.

Julie is always happiest when outside, especially when on skis.

We used the Orion Trail to ski out to Brown Mountain.

We came upon fresh tracks - this morning's - left by two small bears.

This was a glorious spring day in the mountains.

We left the Orion Trail and skied past Brown Mountain to explore the basin to the southeast.

We encountered two more sets of fresh bear tracks, this time from big bears.

We enjoyed our explorations on skis.

We took a break near one of our favorite old jeffery pines, a split top "old soldier" as the Lady likes to say.

We enjoyed a nice break.

We did a quick short loop around the area among the glacial erratics before skiing back past Brown Mountain.

It was not quite noon but time to head back before the snow turned too soft. The corn snow was perfect for some telemark turns.

This slope on Brown Mountain is marked up with our turns, washed out from the photo by the bright midday sun.

The Lady led the way back, often climbing high to take advantage of the several short, steep downhill sections along the ridge back to the trailhead.

This is where we live and where we love to play, lucky to have all this close by - our backyard.