Hetch Hetchy

This last trip was gorgeous and a challenge. We had to drive down a long winding road for 24 miles until we got to our trailhead. (Insert car breakdown here. I won’t bore you with the details, but as a result we got started on the trail six hours after we had planned.)

It started at Lake Eleanor, a dammed lake up in Hetch Hetchy.

View of a part of Lake Eleanor from a ways up the trail

This was the first time I had gotten to go to that area of the park. It is more wild (i.e., much less traveled) than the other areas of the park. It also feels different … I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Perhaps I will by the end of this post. We had planned on doing nine miles and we did get that finished before the sun went down. Right about 7:30 p.m. we arrived at Laurel Lake, where we were meeting up with two other people in our group. We had time for a swim in the warm water of the lake. It was weird because it stayed shallow far out into the lake, and there was this weird muddy scum that you stirred up when you walked out in the water. It was fun to wade in, and nice to have a bath. We had hiked mostly uphill the whole way, and I was a sweaty mess. Oh – it had also thunderstormed while we were driving back in to the trailhead, so we were fortunate to miss that, and then had cloudy skies and muggy air for the hike. The cloudy skies were a good thing; the muggy air was weird. It looked like it was clearing up after dinner, so Bob and Melanie and I (this time I was with two other people because we had to survey two large sites) discussed and decided we would sleep out without the tarp over us. So, sticking to my tentless ways, I settled down for a cozy night’s sleep in the open air. I looked up at the stars as I went to sleep. At some point in the middle of the night I remember waking up and noticing that the stars were gone. I didn’t really think much about this until a few hours later when the loud “pluonks!” I was hearing in my dream clearly made themselves out to be raindrops hitting my groundsheet. Bob and I were up in a flash and grabbed the tarp. We started running around with our headlamps, looking for sticks to set it up. Thankfully Bob is skilled in these things; I hadn’t a clue. After a few minutes, I realized Melanie was still sound asleep, even though she was sleeping right next to us. I remembered her telling me she was a really sound sleeper, so tried the direct approach and said, “Mel, get up! It’s raining! Throw your stuff under the tarp." It got set up quickly (no thanks to me) and we all fell back to sleep. I'm glad we didn’t have to get up at 4:00 a.m. to start a survey. It was about 3:45 when we got to fall back to sleep under the dryness of the tarp.

The next day we hiked ten miles through some gorgeous country – again all mostly uphill, but with gentle elevation gain. We arrived at our camp and had time to bathe in a beautiful pool of the stream where we camped.

We slept on a white sand beach that was on the shore.

As we were falling asleep, bats come out and then the stars did, too. I could see the Milky Way.The only problem with any of this is that we were not under cover of trees, so all the dew settled on our bags/sleeping pads/clothes. This was a bummer when I got up at 4:00 a.m. and had to figure out what to do with a wet bag, which I had to haul back across the creek before I went to survey.

The survey was fine, except for the mosquitoes. These were the worst I had experienced all this summer, but still not as bad as last year. I had to put on my head net.

Guess who? From my survey site.

After getting up at 4:00 and doing the survey, we returned to camp at 9:00 and then had to pack up and hike out. We started to hike around 9:30 a.m., and were going to do all 19 miles in one day. We took a few breaks and had lunch, but mainly just hauled ass all the way through. After about 12 miles my feet hurt; there is nothing to be done about that in my experience. What I didn’t realize is that I was getting some nasty blisters and on the side of my heel. This is a new one for me. I didn’t know you could get blisters there. When we arrived at the car at about 5:00, two others were waiting for us, and we stuffed our five smelly bodies in a car meant for no more than four people. We opened all the windows.

More pictures of Hetch Hetchy

Now, I’m wrapping things up – entering data into a computer spreadsheet, and returning the equipment and helping our crew leader clean up the house a bit.

I went banding with the MAPS crew yesterday morning and got these great photos of some handsome birds. I handled a few more myself, but wanted to stop after I managed to let three go before I was finished processing them. This led to some teasing from everyone, but they insisted on letting me do more. They are very nice.

Williamson’s Sapsucker/Male & Female
For a while, scientists thought they were two separate species because they look so different.

Juvenile Red-Breasted Sapsucker
S/he came out of the bag with constant squawking. We had an adult at the same time that was also carrying on. It was quite the ruckus.

Orange-Crowned Warbler

Audubon’s Warbler

Western Tanager