I'm leaving tomorrow (today??) for a three day trip in the shennys. Pictures and a report to follow.
Weather expected:
Sunday-40*H, 28*L
Monday-52*H, 32*L
Tuesday-56*H, 34*L
Sunny and clear all three days, beginning as rather breezy (12mph, gust 28mph) and calming down the next day to about 8mph gust to 10mph and calm on the third day.
First trip of the new year!!!:banana
-Bred
Good luck Bred. Have a great hike. Looking forward to pics...
Unfortunately, I lent my camera to my dad, he took it to work and forgot to bring it back :(. So no pictures. Also, it turned out that it was WAY colder than predicted and much windier as well. Sunday was a high of about 38 on the mtns with high winds, blowing about 20mph+ steadily out of the northwest and gusting to 40mph+. So on the leighward side of the mtns you didn't feel much breeze and it was nice, but at the top, you could hardly stand up :eek:. At night, it was in the low 20s.
Anywho, I cranked out about 17 miles from Mary's Rock (Thornton Gap) south to Big Meadows. I ended up setting my hammock/tarp up around an hour before dark and hit the sack soon after. I noticed about two minutes after I set up camp and bear-bagged my food that there were signs of deer activity (scat, scratched up earth, etc.) but was too lazy to move and figured that it wouldn't be a problem. Well it was.
Around 10pm after I had been asleep for an hour or two I was awoken by footfalls and breaking branches. At first I was startled and a little worried (bear?) but after 30seconds or so I dismissed it, threw my boots on and got my headlamp to take a look. It was about 15-20 deer just munching away not paying me any mind. So I shoed (sp?) them off a little ways and went back to sleep. Unfortunately I was awoken twice more by the same deer. At 5.30 or so I could take no more and packed up camp and hit the trail. I wasn't in a great mood so instead of doing another day of hiking out and back, camping, then hiking out...I just hiked out.
Yesterday was much more pleasant, little to no wind with temps in the mid 40s to low 50s depending on elevation, amount of sun etc. Just had a nice hike back to panorama and drove home.
Highlights:
-Saw two barred owls, and heard them calling at night
-Finally saw some spring activity from squirrels and chipmunks, in my winter dayhikes the trail in that area was devoid entirely of life, save one piliated woodpecker
-Ran into an incompetant guy at Rock Spring shelter who was taking his girlfriend for her first hiking trip. He had lots of outdated and mostly un-needed gear, totaling something like 50lbs and his girlfriend had an additional 25. They arrived at the shelter when I was just stopping to make some lunch. The girl was obviously very cold and shivering. After he talked to me for about ten minutes, he decided that the best course of action would be to start a fire. He was pretty inept at this and even tried to light a disc of wetted and dried toilet paper that he thought was pine pitch. I suggested that a hot meal would get the girl warm faster than a small fire, and he agreed but continued to "start" the fire anyway. Eventually he used some MSR whitegas to get it going. Then he let on that they didn't have any water left, that's why he wasn't cooking. So I gave them about 750ml out of my nalgene (I had another three liters in my water bladder) and headed down the trail. He gave me fleeting warning of bear tracks, but said they were small. About a mile down the trail, where he said they would be I saw RACCOON tracks :-?. I'm a little unsure how one could confuse the two...
-Bear Tracks (http://www.visitrenotahoe.com/what_did_you_do/archives/ma-beartracks.jpg)
-Raccoon tracks (http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/preserves/images/fototrax.jpg):rolleyes:
Anyway, all in all a good trip.
Also as an afterthought, it's good that I didn't stay out the third day because they had freezing rain on the mtn. Coulda hacked it...but who wants to?