A Stormy Dry Meadow & Needles Hike

Yesterday we went hiking up above Johnsondale, just as the first snow of the season was brewing in the distance. After months and months of perfect sunshine and blue skies, seeing the ominous clouds was energizing! There is so much to explore in this area ranging from the Western Divide and the upper Kern River.

We started hiking near Elephant Knob and followed Dry Meadow Creek (an epic steep creek kayak run) for a bit. We ended up wandering a trail running perpendicular towards Peppermint Creek miles to the north. The views were awesome...Sentinel Dome, Dome Rock, the Needles and several other geological features were in view.

We took a lunch break on a granite slab that overlooked the Forks of the Kern run and the Kern River Trail, another spectacular hike. We could see all the way from Split Mountain in Wofford Heights and into Golden Trout Wilderness to the north.


The only evidence of humans was an old motorcycle track; otherwise it was just deer prints, bear track, and coyote poo. Rad! We'll have to check out more of the trail, but it could make a good mountain bike ride.

After looping back, we got the urge to go check out The Needles on the Western Divide. The Needles are a group of huge granite spires and domes that lunge out above the Forks of the Kern, and are extremely popular for rock climbing.

The storm seemed far enough away, that there could still be some excellent views. We did see newly snow covered peaks out towards Mt Whitney.

But - of course - the storm intensified right when we got to one of the best viewpoints in the Sierras; the Needles fire lookout. (See the fire tower perched on top of one of the granite knobs in the picture below.)



The wind picked up and it started snowing as the visibility dumped. After climbing all the rickety steps up to the tower, we had about 2 minutes before the ranger closed it down due to lightning.

The only thing was that there was no lightning! It was the deer hunting season opener, and some poor deer bit the dust. It was very obviously a gun shot to everyone up there...except the ranger lady. She was all panicked and argued that there was lighting RIGHT above us! Oh well... we couldnt even see to the bottom of the Needles at this point. It was fun enough just hiking in a storm! Finally some precipitation!

Here's a GPX file of our wanderings.

Kiteboarding Lake Isabella

Kiteboarding is a brand new sport for us, but it allows recreation in yet another Sierra environment: windy lakes! With the newer technology that allows full-depowering of the kite, sudden gusts are not an issue anymore. Last week, we flew the kite at Lake Isabella in the Kern River Valley. Completely surrounded by scenic mountain views, this lake almost always has wind. Perfect!

Here is a short video of our first real day kiteboarding:

Hiking Black Mountain North of Mono Lake

One of our favorite hikes is the Black Mountain Peak loop! Our whole family joined in for this one. Starting at the Virginia Lakes in the eastern Sierra, we hiked up the wilderness trail for a few miles and then turned at Green Lake to hike up flank of Black Mountain.

I still cant believe how AWESOME the views are!! From any of the 3 peaks that we climb on this hike, you can see into Yosemite, east towards Bodie ghost town and Mono Lake, down into Lundy Canyon, and on and on.

Here's the loop as seen on Google Earth. The actual hiking varies from shale climbing, to a popular hiking trail, to jumping and skipping down the steep slope of pure shale. Good boots really help on this one!



Its hard to tell, but in the picture above, i'm hiking with my dog on the flat part of the ridge. Just an indicator of how massive this area is. Thats Mono Lake in the background.

After hiking the Black Mountain peak, we descended along this ridge and then climbed up to the top of Mt Olsen.

One of the most fun parts of the hike is the descent back down to the lakes. We traversed around until we could find some of the smaller and looser chutes of shale. Then we just jumped and slid the whole way down! After a full day of hiking, we were back down in less than 10 minutes.


It was super hot at 10,000 feet, so we ended the hike with a refreshing jump in Red Lake!

GPX file of the hike is here.

MCcloud River & Mt. Shasta Adventure

On our way north this summer, we couldn't avoid the attraction of that prominent feature in the distance: Mount Shasta. In the most northern region of The Sierras, the 14,000 ft volcano's glaciers glimmered for miles.

Until the 1920's, the mountain was called Mt Sisson. But, that was just too wimpy of a name.

All the glaciers, valleys, thriller trails and ultra-scenic whitewater make it quite the adventure destination. So we spent a couple days exploring this area - which was clearly not enough!

We filled up one day with some superb mountain biking. A big 'Thanks!' goes out to the adventure girl from Israel that helped out with a shuttle. Here's a quick clip of one of the many the trails in this northern region:


The diamond in the adventure ruff is McCloud River, however.

Its gorgeous, fun, and always changing....but ICE cold. The river flows through a gorge surrounded on all sides by the immense and private Hearst estate; completely inaccessible to the public except by boat. We couldn't believe that this run inst more popular...it just felt like a classic.

The shuttle is kind of a hassle if you don't have 2 cars; its not exactly on a main route. We lucked out though! After parking our camper at Lake McCloud, the take-out, we found some nice local fisherman to give us a ride in the back of their truck all the way to the put-in! This saved us one loooong bike ride to get back up to our boats, which were hidden in the bushes near the river. In hindsight, this hitchhiking ride really saved our day. We paddled back to our camper right at sunset. With the additional bike ride shuttle, we would've been kayaking hours after dark.

The water was flowing super low...less than 200cfs... so we started at the lowest put-in near the border of the Hearst property. The McCloud is basically a narrow lush creek at this point, and there's definitely a lot of maneuvering and sliding over rocks for the first couple miles.

But all of a sudden you hear a roar, and the little creek changes! Big Springs, several pure natural springs gushing out of the hillside, adds 1000-1500 or so cfs to the flow. Immediately the creek turns into a river! And coming from the land of drought, this was truly amazing!

We were also stoked that you can just drink the purest coldest water right out of the springs; no water bottles needed on this trip. We stopped and drank our fill at a few large springs along the way.

So once we passed Big Springs, we were immediately in a 3 mile long class 3/3+ rapid! There wasn't even one pool in this section,
just continuous whitewater!

We passed lots of play spots and waves, but the water was just too cold to roll very often. I'll certainly be wearing gloves and a hood next time.



During the last few miles of the run, the river mellows out and some of the most odd sights appear. We came around a bend, and there was a neighborhood of Old European-style mansions lining the water....out in the middle of no-where!

Some of the houses where Medieval dungeon-looking, some were like giant Danish cottages painted with mythological frescoes, and one was A GIANT castle-replica that went on and on in size. It was situated on a peninsula, where the entire river rapped around it on almost all sides. It was too big to get a picture of. Just the pool situated on the edge of the river was too big to take a picture of! The strangest thing was being able to float RIGHT under their windows and peak in!

After passing all these places, a glacial creek comes in and turns the crystal clear water into a milky aqua color.

Then the river, which is dammed far below, slowly widens and becomes the scenic McCloud Lake. Just as the sun was about to set, we paddled a couple more miles on this lake to the edge of public land, where our camper was parked and Charly was eagerly waiting.

What a day!!

Here's a short clip of Big Springs near the top section of the river, and the Hearst Mansions toward the end of the run:

Mountain Biking South Lake Tahoe

Most people have heard of the great mountain biking available in South Lake Tahoe. Toads, Christmas Valley, and The Flume are "must-do" trails for most visiting bikers. (Toads is our favorite! ...and CV rules too! Ah but the Flume trail is unrivaled in beauty!) Anyways, on our last trip up there, we decided expand our horizons and check out 2 new trails (new to us, that is).



One day we rode one section of the Tahoe Rim Trail is called 'The Bench', a great out & back ride on the southeastern side of the lake. The Google Earth view of the ride is shown above (you are looking southwest.)

This trail had a little of everything fun in mountain biking; some smooth fast sections, plenty of technical challenges, a great view of the lake at the end.... I think it was about 12 miles long with around 1200 feet of cumulative climbing. Although, it seemed a bit longer than that. Maybe because we went with our local friends that have superhuman lungs and technical skills. No time to sit and enjoy the scenery - we were jamming!!

Later we stumbled upon a trail called Corral Creek near the bottom of Toads. We didn't expect too much since its an OHV trail, but we believe in serendipity. This trail rocked! Lots of back to back banked turns with little natural hits all over the place gave this trail great rhythm. Even our dog looked like he was carving turns as he sprinted the entire way down. It was way too short though, less than 3 miles, but there were many offshoots that we didn't have time to explore. We'll be back.....

Here's another views of the ride looking southeast over Heavenly ski resort. We made a loop by riding up a parallel dirt road. It appears that many people do shuttle runs on the singletrack section though.



Our rides are on this GPX file.