I've taken a few IQ tests online -- one this morning which told me I have an IQ of 140. A while back, I took tests that gave me 130 and 156. (I also took one that told me my IQ was 22, but somehow I don't think that test was accurate.)
I wonder which type of test is the most accurate. A lot of these tests are 'pick the shape that would best complete this series' sort of questions -- which I think are a load of bunk, because that's usually open to interpretation. (What if I'm seeing a different pattern than the test makers thought I should see? Every test that's like that, it always seems like 2 or 3 of the possible answers COULD be correct...)
My conclusion is that the existence of these tests must be a practical joke. If you're willing to spend your time taking them, you're dim. Nuff said.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Free tuition? Yes please
Although the article's a bit short on details, this sounds like a really good idea: free tuition for math, science, and engineering students.
Monday, August 20, 2007
I even bought a UCSF t-shirt
So I'm finally here, all settled in, got my new place all furnished and organized. It's really great here. I love the apartment, and it's amazingly cheap for the area, especially considering how new and nice it is. The fastest internet connection I've ever been on is included with the rent, no less! Water is included. Electricity is included. I'm 2 blocks from the bay shore. The weather's perfect all the time. It's sunny and breezy every day, highs in the mid sixties, lows in the mid fifties. The fruit here's got to be twice as fresh as the stuff I was eating back in Georgia, and it's just as cheap. City's beautiful, the air's clean, the people are nice.
So, I'm about as happy as I could be with the new location! I figured, since I'd built this place up so much in my mind, that couldn't really help but disappoint me...but so far, I'm liking it as much as I'd hoped I would.
School starts on the 27th, and I'm actually looking forward to it. I'm ready to really devote myself to learning and doing science that I'm passionate about!
So, I'm about as happy as I could be with the new location! I figured, since I'd built this place up so much in my mind, that couldn't really help but disappoint me...but so far, I'm liking it as much as I'd hoped I would.
School starts on the 27th, and I'm actually looking forward to it. I'm ready to really devote myself to learning and doing science that I'm passionate about!
Saturday, August 18, 2007
To San Francisco, Part 4
Kettleman City, California: blazing hot in the summer, freezing cold in the winter, bone-dry yet humid as hell. Also, it's in the middle of nowhere. If there's an upside in all that, I'm not seeing it.
Interesting -- or really, not at all interesting -- story as to how I got here. Basically, after my misadventure in the Teton mountains, my legs were too beat up to even walk for the next few days, so instead of going up to Glacier, like I'd planned, I skipped that part of the trip entirely (gaining an extra 4 or 5 days) and went down into Utah early.
I discovered two things about Utah:
1. People in Utah are creepy.
2. In southern Utah, it's 110 degrees in the desert, making any kind of outdoors activity completely miserable.
There were 4 parks in the state that I'd intended to hit: Arches, Canyonlands, Zion, and Bryce. It was about 110 degrees at the first two, rendering them pretty much car-only trips. This sucked so bad I decided to skip the other two altogether and come back in a more forgiving season.
I drove through the Navajo Nation and got to the Grand Canyon after sunset and camped out for the night. The next day, I went for an 8-mile, fairly flat walk along the canyon rim...and it started raining. Now, rain in July in Arizona, you'd expect that to be fairly mild and warm...but in fact, it was absolutely freezing. My hands were numb by the time I made it back to the car. I checked the weather forecast...rain that night, rain the next day, rain the day after that.
Bleh.
So I figured, okay, I'll drive to Vegas, spend a few days gambling a bit. I set a firm $150 cap on my losses, and, between a disastrous slots session and a run of terrible poker luck (had a flush, and lost to a full house...how do you like that?), I lost all of it in one day. I dutifully set forth once more, to...well, somewhere, anyway. I stayed with my aunt in LA for a couple of days, and hung out with my friend Lisa. That was fun.
And then I had a full week left before I could move into my place at UCSF.
Not entirely sure what to do with myself, and my newfound lack of a plan, I figured I could spend a good chunk of the time just chilling on the beach and hiking in the hills along the coast. Unfortunately, because for some strange reason lots of people like to hang out along the California coast in the summer, I wasn't able to find any open campgrounds...at all. After spending a sad night in a fleabag motel north of LA, I decided to head inland for the next night. Since I'd spent most of the day puttering along the coast, I ended up having to motel it out that night, too, in good old Kettleman City, California. I pigged out a local In-And-Out, where I had possibly the world's worst tasting two hamburgers. That was really the only noteworthy thing about Kettleman City. Bad hamburgers.
The next day, I drove through Fresno. I have a peculiar affection for the city of Fresno. I'm not really sure why. It's not a particularly appealing place: it's in the central valley, so it's hot as hell there, bone-dry in the summer, and from what I've seen of it, it's basically one big strip mall. But I remember Isabel and I came here in 2004, en route to Yosemite, and ate a bunch of ice cream. I think that's why I liked the place: I associate it with ice cream. So, as you might expect, I dutifully stopped, and had ice cream at the same place Isabel and I had come to a few years ago. It turns out that ice cream, without a girlfriend to accompany it, really isn't quite the same.
I made it to a place called Millerton Lake that afternoon, which was not nearly as high up as I'd hoped...so it was blazing - BLAZING! - hot there. Every day I was there it got up to about 105 degrees, and not a bit of cloud to be found. The lake water was cool, though, and I went for a little day hike around the lake the first day I was there. Since I seem to be the world's worst trail follower, I somehow managed to end up on a dirt track, then found myself climbing up and over about a mile of huge boulders above the lakeshore. I would have turned back, but climbing over the rocks was actually a fairly interesting challenge, and the granite gives you such good traction that you can jump and land on some pretty unlikely looking surfaces, even wearing a pack loaded up with water. I climbed up the steepest trail I've ever climbed before (seriously...this thing was at least a 60 degree angle), then hiked back. And holy crud, it was hot. A ranger actually stopped by my campsite after I got back to express her amazement that I'd made it out there and back in the ridiculous heat.
I ended up staying at Millerton Lake for a few days. In spite of the heat, it was very dry, so it was still pleasant in the shade. (Not like in Georgia, where the high humidity makes it unbearably nasty no matter where you are.) I actually spent much of the second day reviewing my old physics textbook, for want of something more entertaining to do, since the blistering heat made most outdoor activities unbearable. (I did go for a swim. That was nice, and the water was pleasantly cool.) And if you're a nerd, reading physics is actually kind of fun...
The third day, I departed Millerton and ended up heading up towards Yosemite. I was so close, it would have been a shame not to go there, even though I'd been there already a few years ago. I spent two days in Yosemite, hiking, sightseeing, and starting to feel thoroughly gross from spending so many consecutive nights outside. I walked from Yosemite Valley up to Glacier Point, which had two fantastic views...but only those two, which I saw over and over and over again. Still a very nice walk, though. Plus there was a fast food sort of restaurant at the top, where I fueled up on a sandwich, root beer, and a hot dog, then, fortified, practically skipped all the way back down the trail to the valley floor. The second day I went for another hike, more in the backcountry, then left the park and drove down to the coast. I got a motel in a town called Tracy, mostly because I really really wanted a shower, then went down to Sunset Beach the next day. I spent the day walking along the beach and exploring the hills near the coast...then, the next day, at long last, I drove up into San Francisco.
Interesting -- or really, not at all interesting -- story as to how I got here. Basically, after my misadventure in the Teton mountains, my legs were too beat up to even walk for the next few days, so instead of going up to Glacier, like I'd planned, I skipped that part of the trip entirely (gaining an extra 4 or 5 days) and went down into Utah early.
I discovered two things about Utah:
1. People in Utah are creepy.
2. In southern Utah, it's 110 degrees in the desert, making any kind of outdoors activity completely miserable.
There were 4 parks in the state that I'd intended to hit: Arches, Canyonlands, Zion, and Bryce. It was about 110 degrees at the first two, rendering them pretty much car-only trips. This sucked so bad I decided to skip the other two altogether and come back in a more forgiving season.
I drove through the Navajo Nation and got to the Grand Canyon after sunset and camped out for the night. The next day, I went for an 8-mile, fairly flat walk along the canyon rim...and it started raining. Now, rain in July in Arizona, you'd expect that to be fairly mild and warm...but in fact, it was absolutely freezing. My hands were numb by the time I made it back to the car. I checked the weather forecast...rain that night, rain the next day, rain the day after that.
Bleh.
So I figured, okay, I'll drive to Vegas, spend a few days gambling a bit. I set a firm $150 cap on my losses, and, between a disastrous slots session and a run of terrible poker luck (had a flush, and lost to a full house...how do you like that?), I lost all of it in one day. I dutifully set forth once more, to...well, somewhere, anyway. I stayed with my aunt in LA for a couple of days, and hung out with my friend Lisa. That was fun.
And then I had a full week left before I could move into my place at UCSF.
Not entirely sure what to do with myself, and my newfound lack of a plan, I figured I could spend a good chunk of the time just chilling on the beach and hiking in the hills along the coast. Unfortunately, because for some strange reason lots of people like to hang out along the California coast in the summer, I wasn't able to find any open campgrounds...at all. After spending a sad night in a fleabag motel north of LA, I decided to head inland for the next night. Since I'd spent most of the day puttering along the coast, I ended up having to motel it out that night, too, in good old Kettleman City, California. I pigged out a local In-And-Out, where I had possibly the world's worst tasting two hamburgers. That was really the only noteworthy thing about Kettleman City. Bad hamburgers.
The next day, I drove through Fresno. I have a peculiar affection for the city of Fresno. I'm not really sure why. It's not a particularly appealing place: it's in the central valley, so it's hot as hell there, bone-dry in the summer, and from what I've seen of it, it's basically one big strip mall. But I remember Isabel and I came here in 2004, en route to Yosemite, and ate a bunch of ice cream. I think that's why I liked the place: I associate it with ice cream. So, as you might expect, I dutifully stopped, and had ice cream at the same place Isabel and I had come to a few years ago. It turns out that ice cream, without a girlfriend to accompany it, really isn't quite the same.
I made it to a place called Millerton Lake that afternoon, which was not nearly as high up as I'd hoped...so it was blazing - BLAZING! - hot there. Every day I was there it got up to about 105 degrees, and not a bit of cloud to be found. The lake water was cool, though, and I went for a little day hike around the lake the first day I was there. Since I seem to be the world's worst trail follower, I somehow managed to end up on a dirt track, then found myself climbing up and over about a mile of huge boulders above the lakeshore. I would have turned back, but climbing over the rocks was actually a fairly interesting challenge, and the granite gives you such good traction that you can jump and land on some pretty unlikely looking surfaces, even wearing a pack loaded up with water. I climbed up the steepest trail I've ever climbed before (seriously...this thing was at least a 60 degree angle), then hiked back. And holy crud, it was hot. A ranger actually stopped by my campsite after I got back to express her amazement that I'd made it out there and back in the ridiculous heat.
I ended up staying at Millerton Lake for a few days. In spite of the heat, it was very dry, so it was still pleasant in the shade. (Not like in Georgia, where the high humidity makes it unbearably nasty no matter where you are.) I actually spent much of the second day reviewing my old physics textbook, for want of something more entertaining to do, since the blistering heat made most outdoor activities unbearable. (I did go for a swim. That was nice, and the water was pleasantly cool.) And if you're a nerd, reading physics is actually kind of fun...
The third day, I departed Millerton and ended up heading up towards Yosemite. I was so close, it would have been a shame not to go there, even though I'd been there already a few years ago. I spent two days in Yosemite, hiking, sightseeing, and starting to feel thoroughly gross from spending so many consecutive nights outside. I walked from Yosemite Valley up to Glacier Point, which had two fantastic views...but only those two, which I saw over and over and over again. Still a very nice walk, though. Plus there was a fast food sort of restaurant at the top, where I fueled up on a sandwich, root beer, and a hot dog, then, fortified, practically skipped all the way back down the trail to the valley floor. The second day I went for another hike, more in the backcountry, then left the park and drove down to the coast. I got a motel in a town called Tracy, mostly because I really really wanted a shower, then went down to Sunset Beach the next day. I spent the day walking along the beach and exploring the hills near the coast...then, the next day, at long last, I drove up into San Francisco.
To San Francisco, Part 3
Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write: I'm spending two days in a motel in Brigham City, Utah, and I couldn't be happier.
I arrived here filthy and exhausted. I guess going four days without a shower, getting lost in the mountains, then driving all night will do that to you. Hair was all spiked up; looked kind of stylish, actually. Sort of ruined the effect when you realized that it was all natural. When I got to the Howard Johnson here, the first thing I did was shower. Twice. It felt wonderful.
The drive from the Missouri River to the Badlands took 'uneventful' to a whole new level, although I think the open plains have a strange appeal all their own. Perhaps they share it with the desert. The half-mad impulse to wander into the blank is, I think, the same. This is what I expected to find at the Badlands, but I was wrong. I wouldn't travel the open prairie on foot until I got to the Wind Cave.
The lands west of the Missouri are surprisingly different than the lands to the east. Uncle Ron mentioned that you really felt like you were 'out west' once you crossed over the Missouri, and I immediately saw what he meant. The land changed from endless flats to low rolling hills, and farmlands turned to ranchlands.
More than anything else, the Badlands reminded me of the Grand Canyon. The first overlook you drive up to is a sweeping panorama of the strange rusty red and gray of the unusual rock formations there, and as you continue on, you find yourself confronted with landscape that looks, more than anything else, misplaced. All around you are the rolling plains, and then in the middle of it, you've got the Badlands.
I was eager to get in some hiking, after spending so much time in the car. I parked at the trailhead near Saddle Pass. The path up the pass was a steep switchback trail that headed up into the rock formations. There was a prominent sign at the start of the trail warning about rattlesnakes, which kept me fully focused for the entire hike.
After less than a mile, I reached the top of the pass, and the rest of the hike was a pleasant walk across the flat, dry prairie. I'd heard that the Badlands area was in a cold snap, but it was still hot up there. I shudder to think what it's like normally! I was pretty well sun scorched by the time I made my way back down to the car several hours later.
After doing some more sightseeing around the park, I drove into the town of Wall.
A word about Wall. There's apparently a drugstore there, Wall Drug, that is really something. They've placed billboards all the way to the Minnesota border enthusiastically proclaiming how wonderful Wall Drug is. Driving through South Dakota, you literally see one of these billboards every 15 or 20 miles. It's very odd, but I guess it worked, because I drove into the town of Wall and the first thing I did was look for the drugstore. Ironically, after all that publicity, I couldn't even find the damn place...so I hopped back in the car and headed west to Rapid City.
With a name like Rapid City, you'd expect the place to be pretty exciting...but it wasn't. (Although I did have an exciting drive through a Rapid City ghetto while I was looking for a place to spend the night.) After entering several nicer places, and determining that they were well out of my price range, eventually I decided I'd splurge on a room at the local Motel 6.
The next day, dutiful tourist that I am, I hit up Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial (actually, the first thing I did was hit up Pizza Hut...which I remember as being unusually good. My waitress was very attractive, though, which may be biasing my opinion somewhat...). In my opinion, once it's finished, the Crazy Horse Memorial will be much more impressive than Mount Rushmore. That sucker's HUGE! And the carving strikes a very dynamic pose, too.
That took up a good chunk of the day, so by the time I got down to Wind Cave National Park, farther south into the Black Hills, it was late afternoon. I did manage to catch the last guided tour of the cave itself before the visitor center closed, which was pretty cool. The ranger who led the tour reminded me incongruously of Captain N, which actually made me enjoy the tour a lot more.
I camped out in the park that night, then set out the next day to do the Adventure Magazine-recommended Highland Creek Trail. It was a pretty cool hike, and would have been even cooler if I'd brought about 3 times as much water as I did. I figured I'd just hike until my water was about halfway gone, then turn around and hike back. But, as luck would have it, I ended up getting to the fateful halfway mark right near the intersection of the Highland Creek and Centennial Trails, so I figured, okay, I'll just hike back on Centennial, instead. It didn't look any longer, and I'd get to see some new stuff on the way back!
Funny thing about the backcountry trails at Wind Cave. I guess because the park itself isn't too well-trafficked, the backcountry trails are deserted. I didn't see a single other hiker the whole day. The upshot of this is that the trails are not as well-marked as they could be, and, sure enough, after clambering up a rocky hillside a little ways into the Centennial Trail, I lost the trail altogether. Or rather, I got on a trail...but not the right one. There were at least four different trails, leading in different directions, at the top of the hill. The funny thing about the prairie trails is that, when in doubt, you generally don't want to take the most well-marked path, because it's almost certainly just a game trail. The buffalo on the plains are great trail-makers...but there's absolutely no reason to think that they were going where I wanted to go. Plus, July is rutting season, when the two-thousand-pound beasts are notoriously unpredictable.
Buffalo can run at speeds up to 30 miles per hour, I recalled reading earlier. Do not approach. Many visitors have been gored to death. I'd actually encountered several along the trail already. One had been blocking the trail, so I walked around...giving it a very wide berth.
So I ended up getting on the wrong trail. It went nowhere, ended after four miles or so, and placed me somewhere in the big white blank on my map. This experience is, in part, why I bought USGS topo trail maps of places where I did big hikes from here on out. I did have a compass, though, and a rough idea of where I was, so I ended up wandering back onto the Highland Creek Trail...and I was almost out of water by the time I found it again. The remainder of the hike was a very thirsty trek across some very hot, very dry prairie. To say I was relieved to see the car again would be a gruesome understatement. I drove back to the previous night's campsite and joyfully stuck my head under the faucet there.
It was mid-to-late afternoon by the time I drove out of the park, and it was evening by the time I entered Wyoming. I found an awesome campground in a town called Buffalo that had a swimming pool, wireless internet, and free showers. The next day, I went to the town of Cody, right outside Yellowstone, and happened upon the Yellowstone Jazz Festival, which was a pretty good show.
Finally, Yellowstone. The good part: very pretty. The bad part: unbelievably freaking crowded. I did a few day hikes the day I got there, including a particularly scenic hike up the Elephant Back Trail, then drove to one of the park campsites for the night. I'd only planned to spend a couple of days in Yellowstone, since I wanted to spend more time in Grand Teton, so I spent the next day trying to cram in all the sightseeing I could. I saw Old Faithful and the rest of the geysers and springs (Morning Glory Pool was especially pretty), Grand Prismatic Spring, went through Mammoth Country and Roosevelt Country and all the rest. Did a short hike down to the brink of the lower falls. By the time I drove south into Grand Teton national park, it was almost 8, and I didn't get to speak to a ranger that night about my planned Teton Crest Trail hike. This sucked, because I had no real sense of how practical what I was planning to do was. I could see a ranger telling me what a godawful idea it was to hike up to above 10,000 feet, alone, into occasionally snow-covered trails, in an area I was unfamiliar with, in grizzly bear country...or I could just as easily have seen him telling me Sure, no biggie. Have fun. I did meet a couple of other Georgians, randomly enough, working at the lodge. One told me that he thought my plan sounded fine, the other said I'd be crazy to go alone.
"You don't want to get mauled by a bear, do you?" she inquired, before rushing back into the kitchen.
Well, that seemed like a fair enough point.
So I was second-guessing myself all night as I lay in the tent. Now, I've done plenty of hiking in bear country (which includes pretty much all of North Georgia), so I'm pretty unconcerned about black bears. I've only actually seen one in all my hiking, and he seemed just as wary of me as I was of him. I understand they're pretty shy, and if you're reasonably careful about storing your food and to make a lot of noise as you walk, they'll almost always steer clear of you.
Grizzly bears, on the other hand, I had no experience with, and am quite a bit more scared of. They're much more aggressive than black bears. They're much larger. They weigh more than some cars. They can run as fast as a horse. In short, they are able and willing to tear you a new one.
I took some comfort in the fact that I'd bought some bear mace back in Minnesota, which is basically super-powerful pepper spray with a 30-foot range. I asked the clerk at the REI that I bought it from if this stuff really worked, or if it would just piss a bear off. The guy said he'd used it before and guaranteed, "This stuff will fuck a bear up." So I felt a bit better about the whole bear situation with a canister of it attached to my belt.
I woke in my tent feeling determined. This was, after all, a steep climb, but a well-traveled one, and I was only planning to be out there for three days! Any self-respecting backpacker would have laughed at me if they'd seen even an inkling of my apprehension. I pulled up to the ranger station and got a topo map, a backcountry camping permit, and a bear canister.
A word about bear canisters. These things are heavy plastic cylinders a little over a foot tall and about half that in diameter, and there really is no practical way to strap them to the back of your pack. Meaning that you've got to make room to stuff that think inside the pack somehow. The ranger assured me that it was highly recommended, and that my second night's campside would not have any good trees to hang my bag from.
I parked my car at the Granite Canyon trailhead, and hired a taxi to take me up to the String Lake trailhead. The ranger warned me that my planned route would be pretty grueling, since most people split this hike up into 4 or 5 days:
So I would travel from String Lake, up Paintbrush Canyon, and camp in the South Fork of the Cascade Canyon the first night. This was to be my most diffcult day: 14 miles. 14 miles with a heavy pack is no picnic even on flat ground, and, if you examine the topo map above and pay close attention to the elevation gain, you can see that my first day was absolute murder. The String Lake trailhead is at 6,500 feet, and Paintbrush Divide is at 10,700 feet. That means that the trail up the canyon is just one long, steep climb. Compounding the difficulty was the fact that I'd had to stop off at the camping supply store near the park to pick up a few extra small things I'd neglected to get at REI, so I didn't end up actually hitting the trail until 12:30 PM.
I was about an hour into the walk, just starting up the canyon, when it began pouring rain. Cursing, I set down my pack and tried to pull out my rain gear, which I'd stupidly packed near the bottom. By the time I'd gotten it out and covered everything, my gear was damp enough to cause headaches for the rest of the day. Thankfully, my two-plastic-bags strategy for my (down) sleeping bag worked, and it stayed dry!
The downpour slowed to a resentful drizzle after about ten minutes, and the rest of the way up the canyon was an on-and-off drizzle and mist, which got colder and colder the higher I went. By the time I passed the Holly Lake campgrounds, I was wishing I'd had the great good sense to split the hike into 4 days, and stared at the family behind me, hiking off to their high canyon campgrounds with not a little envy. Sighing, and eating a powerbar (bleh), plus two or three wedges of dried mango for morale that little burst of sugar energy, I hoisted my pack again and began trudging up the endless incline, towards Paintbrush Divide. At about 8,500 feet, the thinning forest gives way to rocky grasses, and soon the Paintbrush Canyon Trail becomes too rocky even for the grass to survive. The first snowfield I had to cross was a small dying patch, but the second, higher snowfield was 50 to 60 feet across, with a long, steep slide down to an icy mountain lake on the down side. I dug my hiking staff into the snow and slowly made my way across.
I found out the next day that the reason this part of the trail was so exceptionally treacherous was because there had been an avalanche and rockslide earlier, which had covered sections of the path. (The ranger had neglected to mention that little fact to me.) I actually lost the trail for about half a mile, during the steepest, nastiest section, right before you get to the Paintbrush Divide. The trail sort of looked like it went one way, so I followed it, and soon found myself having to do technical climbing up the rocky mountainside.
This can't be right, I thought, grimly turning over and making my way back down to near the second snowfield, where the trail had vanished. Climbing down a 'trail' that steep with a huge pack on is not much fun. Eventually, I spotted another vaguely flat-looking patch of rocks that turned out to be what was left of the Paintbrush Canyon trail, and dragged myself to the top of the Divide. I was puffing with exertion, but it was cold at the top, and the wind cut like a knife.
The path down into Cascade Canyon was a cakewalk by comparison, and the view of Lake Solitude was beautiful. I love the way high alpine lakes look, especially in the sunlight:
As I descended into Cascade, the rocks gave way to lush meadowlands. The wildflowers bloom in July, carpeting the meadows with their reds and yellows and purples. My walk down through the canyon's North Fork was gentle and swift, and the meadows turned to sparse, then thicker pine forest. Nearing the central part of the canyon, I ran into another party of hikers. There were three of them, one of whom was a tall brunette with, I think, the most shapely legs I've ever seen, and they assured me that the South Fork was only a couple of miles away.
It made me very sad that the trail began to climb again about a half mile after that, and I dragged myself numbly through the last couple miles to the first open South Fork campground. I finally arrived at the site with about 45 minutes of daylight left to spare. I was camped out on a high ledge, and I could hear of the waterfall as I went to sleep.
The next day, my legs and shoulders hurt before I even began hiking, but, not having much of a choice, I strapped on my pack and hiked up the rest of Cascade Canyon. After a while, I settled into a nice rhythm, walking through the flowering alpine meadows. It got pretty steep again for the last half-mile before Hurricane Pass, and, true to its name, there was a fierce, cold wind blowing across the top of the pass. I met a couple from Texas at the top, and we stopped and had lunch (meaning dried fruit and granola...) together. I hiked along with them for a while the second day, as we descended into the Alaska Basin.
These pictures of the Alaska Basin do not in any way do the place justice. The basin was probably the most beautiful place I'd ever seen in my life, bar none. I stopped for an hour or so to rest by Sunset Lake, and went for a short (very short) swim in its ice-cold waters. And then I got back on the trail, and promptly got lost.
I'm not 100% sure what happened, but I think I just somehow missed one turn, then another, and I ended up on the Alaska Basin Trail, instead of the Teton Crest Trail. I was headed for a place called the Death Canyon Shelf for the night, and needed to cross the Mount Meek Pass to get there. The reason that the second day was supposed to be my 'easy day' was because the walk from South Fork to the Shelf was only about 11 miles, and the elevation gains were not that severe. Unfortunately, the trails in the basin are not as well-marked as they could be, and after walking up a high, rocky trail for several hours, I finally saw a sign: the Static Peak Divide.
I took out my map, and scanned it for Static Peak. I groaned when I found it. I was completely on the other side of the basin's south end, and I would have to go all the way back down into the basin, cut across the South Teton Trail, then go back up to the Mount Meek Pass to get to the Shelf. According to the map, I'd gone 12 miles to get to where I was, and it was about 6 miles to the Death Canyon Trailhead...but it was almost all downhill, whereas going back to the shelf would be nearly that far, and down-and-up. Already tired, I decided to just hike to the trailhead and hope for the best.
The Static Peak Divide was amazing. It was the highest point of my trip, and the views down across the valley and down into Death Canyon were breathtaking. I began to get worried as I started down the long decline to the canyon floor. There were no camping areas in between where I was and the floor, and I hadn't planned to come this way, so no one would know that I was on this trail if something happened, and the trail was very narrow, with usually a hundred-foot drop off to the side. I needed to move relatively quickly if I was going to make the trailhead before sunset.
My shoulders, legs, hips, and feet were, by this point, actually pretty numb, but I was nonetheless on the verge of saying, Fuck this, bushwhacking my way into the woods, and setting up a nice illegal little camp. But I did manage to make it to the Death Canyon trailhead, which presented me with a completely novel problem: I'd actually started at the Granite Canyon trailhead, which was about 5 miles down the road. I'd been aware of this up at Static Peak, but I just figured that I could hitch a ride with someone when I got there. As I surveyed the noticeably human-less parking lot, I grew less sure of myself.
I walked through the dirt parking lot for a few minutes, until I finally spied a person -- an attractive woman, no less -- walking in my direction. She looked at me skeptically as I asked her if she'd be willing to give me a lift.
She agreed, after a moment. "You're cool because you've got that backpack on," she explained, grinning at me as I hoisted my exhausted rear end up into her truck.
We actually ended up striking up a nice conversation. Her name was Sheena, and she was a cook from Phoenix, Arizona. We had a fair bit in common, not limited to a love of the outdoors and a general disdain for car-bound chubs who drive lazily through national parks to see animals. She had very green eyes. I remember that, because she had deep bronze skin, and the contrast was striking. I wonder if she was wearing colored contacts.
I ended up giving her my bear spray, since I was planning on heading south into the desert, and she mentioned that it was one thing she didn't have, and didn't want to spring for the $50 or so required to buy a can. I gave her my email address and she promised she'd look me up if she ever wanted to do some hiking in California.
So I finally found myself back in my car, and immediately headed into Dornan's, the small park-run area with a bar and restaurant, sat down, and ordered a pizza. As I sat there, eagerly shoveling pieces of the meat-lovers pizza into my mouth, the bartender, a wiry blonde woman who was pretty in an outdoorsy sort of way, asked me where I was staying for the night.
I shrugged. "I'm, uh...not really sure." I grinned stupidly. "I was supposed to camp up on the Death Canyon Shelf."
She grinned back. "Well, I don't think you're gonna make it up there tonight."
"Yeah..." My grin faded, and I told her the whole sad story about getting lost. She commiserated with me for a bit, told me a decent place for camping nearby, and then I took my leave.
Instead of camping at the spot the bartender had pointed me to, like a sensible person would have, I for some reason decided that I wanted to sleep in a motel that night, so I ended up jumping in my car and driving down into Jackson, looking for a room. They were full up, and looked altogether too touristy and faux-old western for my budget, anyway. So I headed out in the pitch black on twisty mountain roads into Idaho, and, if you can believe this, every motel I came to in the city of Idaho Falls was full. So I drove down into Blackfoot. All full.
"Why's everything so full?" I demanded of the desk clerk of the Blackfoot Best Western, in frustration.
She shrugged apologetically. "Don't know. Everyone's headed to the park or from the park, I guess. I hear everything's booked solid down to the Utah border."
So I ended up saying, the hell with it, stopping off at a grocery store in Pocatello, Idaho, and buying:
- iced tea
- pickles
- V8
- bananas
- milk
...and a few other essentials, and I drove until 5 in the morning, when I pulled off onto a little country road in northern Utah and crashed for a few hours in my car. The next morning, I made it to Brigham City, Utah, where I finally found a room, checked in at noon, and pretty much just happily sat inside with the curtains drawn for the remainder of the day.
I arrived here filthy and exhausted. I guess going four days without a shower, getting lost in the mountains, then driving all night will do that to you. Hair was all spiked up; looked kind of stylish, actually. Sort of ruined the effect when you realized that it was all natural. When I got to the Howard Johnson here, the first thing I did was shower. Twice. It felt wonderful.
The drive from the Missouri River to the Badlands took 'uneventful' to a whole new level, although I think the open plains have a strange appeal all their own. Perhaps they share it with the desert. The half-mad impulse to wander into the blank is, I think, the same. This is what I expected to find at the Badlands, but I was wrong. I wouldn't travel the open prairie on foot until I got to the Wind Cave.
The lands west of the Missouri are surprisingly different than the lands to the east. Uncle Ron mentioned that you really felt like you were 'out west' once you crossed over the Missouri, and I immediately saw what he meant. The land changed from endless flats to low rolling hills, and farmlands turned to ranchlands.
More than anything else, the Badlands reminded me of the Grand Canyon. The first overlook you drive up to is a sweeping panorama of the strange rusty red and gray of the unusual rock formations there, and as you continue on, you find yourself confronted with landscape that looks, more than anything else, misplaced. All around you are the rolling plains, and then in the middle of it, you've got the Badlands.
I was eager to get in some hiking, after spending so much time in the car. I parked at the trailhead near Saddle Pass. The path up the pass was a steep switchback trail that headed up into the rock formations. There was a prominent sign at the start of the trail warning about rattlesnakes, which kept me fully focused for the entire hike.
After less than a mile, I reached the top of the pass, and the rest of the hike was a pleasant walk across the flat, dry prairie. I'd heard that the Badlands area was in a cold snap, but it was still hot up there. I shudder to think what it's like normally! I was pretty well sun scorched by the time I made my way back down to the car several hours later.
After doing some more sightseeing around the park, I drove into the town of Wall.
A word about Wall. There's apparently a drugstore there, Wall Drug, that is really something. They've placed billboards all the way to the Minnesota border enthusiastically proclaiming how wonderful Wall Drug is. Driving through South Dakota, you literally see one of these billboards every 15 or 20 miles. It's very odd, but I guess it worked, because I drove into the town of Wall and the first thing I did was look for the drugstore. Ironically, after all that publicity, I couldn't even find the damn place...so I hopped back in the car and headed west to Rapid City.
With a name like Rapid City, you'd expect the place to be pretty exciting...but it wasn't. (Although I did have an exciting drive through a Rapid City ghetto while I was looking for a place to spend the night.) After entering several nicer places, and determining that they were well out of my price range, eventually I decided I'd splurge on a room at the local Motel 6.
The next day, dutiful tourist that I am, I hit up Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial (actually, the first thing I did was hit up Pizza Hut...which I remember as being unusually good. My waitress was very attractive, though, which may be biasing my opinion somewhat...). In my opinion, once it's finished, the Crazy Horse Memorial will be much more impressive than Mount Rushmore. That sucker's HUGE! And the carving strikes a very dynamic pose, too.
That took up a good chunk of the day, so by the time I got down to Wind Cave National Park, farther south into the Black Hills, it was late afternoon. I did manage to catch the last guided tour of the cave itself before the visitor center closed, which was pretty cool. The ranger who led the tour reminded me incongruously of Captain N, which actually made me enjoy the tour a lot more.
I camped out in the park that night, then set out the next day to do the Adventure Magazine-recommended Highland Creek Trail. It was a pretty cool hike, and would have been even cooler if I'd brought about 3 times as much water as I did. I figured I'd just hike until my water was about halfway gone, then turn around and hike back. But, as luck would have it, I ended up getting to the fateful halfway mark right near the intersection of the Highland Creek and Centennial Trails, so I figured, okay, I'll just hike back on Centennial, instead. It didn't look any longer, and I'd get to see some new stuff on the way back!
Funny thing about the backcountry trails at Wind Cave. I guess because the park itself isn't too well-trafficked, the backcountry trails are deserted. I didn't see a single other hiker the whole day. The upshot of this is that the trails are not as well-marked as they could be, and, sure enough, after clambering up a rocky hillside a little ways into the Centennial Trail, I lost the trail altogether. Or rather, I got on a trail...but not the right one. There were at least four different trails, leading in different directions, at the top of the hill. The funny thing about the prairie trails is that, when in doubt, you generally don't want to take the most well-marked path, because it's almost certainly just a game trail. The buffalo on the plains are great trail-makers...but there's absolutely no reason to think that they were going where I wanted to go. Plus, July is rutting season, when the two-thousand-pound beasts are notoriously unpredictable.
Buffalo can run at speeds up to 30 miles per hour, I recalled reading earlier. Do not approach. Many visitors have been gored to death. I'd actually encountered several along the trail already. One had been blocking the trail, so I walked around...giving it a very wide berth.
So I ended up getting on the wrong trail. It went nowhere, ended after four miles or so, and placed me somewhere in the big white blank on my map. This experience is, in part, why I bought USGS topo trail maps of places where I did big hikes from here on out. I did have a compass, though, and a rough idea of where I was, so I ended up wandering back onto the Highland Creek Trail...and I was almost out of water by the time I found it again. The remainder of the hike was a very thirsty trek across some very hot, very dry prairie. To say I was relieved to see the car again would be a gruesome understatement. I drove back to the previous night's campsite and joyfully stuck my head under the faucet there.
It was mid-to-late afternoon by the time I drove out of the park, and it was evening by the time I entered Wyoming. I found an awesome campground in a town called Buffalo that had a swimming pool, wireless internet, and free showers. The next day, I went to the town of Cody, right outside Yellowstone, and happened upon the Yellowstone Jazz Festival, which was a pretty good show.
Finally, Yellowstone. The good part: very pretty. The bad part: unbelievably freaking crowded. I did a few day hikes the day I got there, including a particularly scenic hike up the Elephant Back Trail, then drove to one of the park campsites for the night. I'd only planned to spend a couple of days in Yellowstone, since I wanted to spend more time in Grand Teton, so I spent the next day trying to cram in all the sightseeing I could. I saw Old Faithful and the rest of the geysers and springs (Morning Glory Pool was especially pretty), Grand Prismatic Spring, went through Mammoth Country and Roosevelt Country and all the rest. Did a short hike down to the brink of the lower falls. By the time I drove south into Grand Teton national park, it was almost 8, and I didn't get to speak to a ranger that night about my planned Teton Crest Trail hike. This sucked, because I had no real sense of how practical what I was planning to do was. I could see a ranger telling me what a godawful idea it was to hike up to above 10,000 feet, alone, into occasionally snow-covered trails, in an area I was unfamiliar with, in grizzly bear country...or I could just as easily have seen him telling me Sure, no biggie. Have fun. I did meet a couple of other Georgians, randomly enough, working at the lodge. One told me that he thought my plan sounded fine, the other said I'd be crazy to go alone.
"You don't want to get mauled by a bear, do you?" she inquired, before rushing back into the kitchen.
Well, that seemed like a fair enough point.
So I was second-guessing myself all night as I lay in the tent. Now, I've done plenty of hiking in bear country (which includes pretty much all of North Georgia), so I'm pretty unconcerned about black bears. I've only actually seen one in all my hiking, and he seemed just as wary of me as I was of him. I understand they're pretty shy, and if you're reasonably careful about storing your food and to make a lot of noise as you walk, they'll almost always steer clear of you.
Grizzly bears, on the other hand, I had no experience with, and am quite a bit more scared of. They're much more aggressive than black bears. They're much larger. They weigh more than some cars. They can run as fast as a horse. In short, they are able and willing to tear you a new one.
I took some comfort in the fact that I'd bought some bear mace back in Minnesota, which is basically super-powerful pepper spray with a 30-foot range. I asked the clerk at the REI that I bought it from if this stuff really worked, or if it would just piss a bear off. The guy said he'd used it before and guaranteed, "This stuff will fuck a bear up." So I felt a bit better about the whole bear situation with a canister of it attached to my belt.
I woke in my tent feeling determined. This was, after all, a steep climb, but a well-traveled one, and I was only planning to be out there for three days! Any self-respecting backpacker would have laughed at me if they'd seen even an inkling of my apprehension. I pulled up to the ranger station and got a topo map, a backcountry camping permit, and a bear canister.
A word about bear canisters. These things are heavy plastic cylinders a little over a foot tall and about half that in diameter, and there really is no practical way to strap them to the back of your pack. Meaning that you've got to make room to stuff that think inside the pack somehow. The ranger assured me that it was highly recommended, and that my second night's campside would not have any good trees to hang my bag from.
I parked my car at the Granite Canyon trailhead, and hired a taxi to take me up to the String Lake trailhead. The ranger warned me that my planned route would be pretty grueling, since most people split this hike up into 4 or 5 days:
So I would travel from String Lake, up Paintbrush Canyon, and camp in the South Fork of the Cascade Canyon the first night. This was to be my most diffcult day: 14 miles. 14 miles with a heavy pack is no picnic even on flat ground, and, if you examine the topo map above and pay close attention to the elevation gain, you can see that my first day was absolute murder. The String Lake trailhead is at 6,500 feet, and Paintbrush Divide is at 10,700 feet. That means that the trail up the canyon is just one long, steep climb. Compounding the difficulty was the fact that I'd had to stop off at the camping supply store near the park to pick up a few extra small things I'd neglected to get at REI, so I didn't end up actually hitting the trail until 12:30 PM.
I was about an hour into the walk, just starting up the canyon, when it began pouring rain. Cursing, I set down my pack and tried to pull out my rain gear, which I'd stupidly packed near the bottom. By the time I'd gotten it out and covered everything, my gear was damp enough to cause headaches for the rest of the day. Thankfully, my two-plastic-bags strategy for my (down) sleeping bag worked, and it stayed dry!
The downpour slowed to a resentful drizzle after about ten minutes, and the rest of the way up the canyon was an on-and-off drizzle and mist, which got colder and colder the higher I went. By the time I passed the Holly Lake campgrounds, I was wishing I'd had the great good sense to split the hike into 4 days, and stared at the family behind me, hiking off to their high canyon campgrounds with not a little envy. Sighing, and eating a powerbar (bleh), plus two or three wedges of dried mango for morale that little burst of sugar energy, I hoisted my pack again and began trudging up the endless incline, towards Paintbrush Divide. At about 8,500 feet, the thinning forest gives way to rocky grasses, and soon the Paintbrush Canyon Trail becomes too rocky even for the grass to survive. The first snowfield I had to cross was a small dying patch, but the second, higher snowfield was 50 to 60 feet across, with a long, steep slide down to an icy mountain lake on the down side. I dug my hiking staff into the snow and slowly made my way across.
I found out the next day that the reason this part of the trail was so exceptionally treacherous was because there had been an avalanche and rockslide earlier, which had covered sections of the path. (The ranger had neglected to mention that little fact to me.) I actually lost the trail for about half a mile, during the steepest, nastiest section, right before you get to the Paintbrush Divide. The trail sort of looked like it went one way, so I followed it, and soon found myself having to do technical climbing up the rocky mountainside.
This can't be right, I thought, grimly turning over and making my way back down to near the second snowfield, where the trail had vanished. Climbing down a 'trail' that steep with a huge pack on is not much fun. Eventually, I spotted another vaguely flat-looking patch of rocks that turned out to be what was left of the Paintbrush Canyon trail, and dragged myself to the top of the Divide. I was puffing with exertion, but it was cold at the top, and the wind cut like a knife.
The path down into Cascade Canyon was a cakewalk by comparison, and the view of Lake Solitude was beautiful. I love the way high alpine lakes look, especially in the sunlight:
As I descended into Cascade, the rocks gave way to lush meadowlands. The wildflowers bloom in July, carpeting the meadows with their reds and yellows and purples. My walk down through the canyon's North Fork was gentle and swift, and the meadows turned to sparse, then thicker pine forest. Nearing the central part of the canyon, I ran into another party of hikers. There were three of them, one of whom was a tall brunette with, I think, the most shapely legs I've ever seen, and they assured me that the South Fork was only a couple of miles away.
It made me very sad that the trail began to climb again about a half mile after that, and I dragged myself numbly through the last couple miles to the first open South Fork campground. I finally arrived at the site with about 45 minutes of daylight left to spare. I was camped out on a high ledge, and I could hear of the waterfall as I went to sleep.
The next day, my legs and shoulders hurt before I even began hiking, but, not having much of a choice, I strapped on my pack and hiked up the rest of Cascade Canyon. After a while, I settled into a nice rhythm, walking through the flowering alpine meadows. It got pretty steep again for the last half-mile before Hurricane Pass, and, true to its name, there was a fierce, cold wind blowing across the top of the pass. I met a couple from Texas at the top, and we stopped and had lunch (meaning dried fruit and granola...) together. I hiked along with them for a while the second day, as we descended into the Alaska Basin.
These pictures of the Alaska Basin do not in any way do the place justice. The basin was probably the most beautiful place I'd ever seen in my life, bar none. I stopped for an hour or so to rest by Sunset Lake, and went for a short (very short) swim in its ice-cold waters. And then I got back on the trail, and promptly got lost.
I'm not 100% sure what happened, but I think I just somehow missed one turn, then another, and I ended up on the Alaska Basin Trail, instead of the Teton Crest Trail. I was headed for a place called the Death Canyon Shelf for the night, and needed to cross the Mount Meek Pass to get there. The reason that the second day was supposed to be my 'easy day' was because the walk from South Fork to the Shelf was only about 11 miles, and the elevation gains were not that severe. Unfortunately, the trails in the basin are not as well-marked as they could be, and after walking up a high, rocky trail for several hours, I finally saw a sign: the Static Peak Divide.
I took out my map, and scanned it for Static Peak. I groaned when I found it. I was completely on the other side of the basin's south end, and I would have to go all the way back down into the basin, cut across the South Teton Trail, then go back up to the Mount Meek Pass to get to the Shelf. According to the map, I'd gone 12 miles to get to where I was, and it was about 6 miles to the Death Canyon Trailhead...but it was almost all downhill, whereas going back to the shelf would be nearly that far, and down-and-up. Already tired, I decided to just hike to the trailhead and hope for the best.
The Static Peak Divide was amazing. It was the highest point of my trip, and the views down across the valley and down into Death Canyon were breathtaking. I began to get worried as I started down the long decline to the canyon floor. There were no camping areas in between where I was and the floor, and I hadn't planned to come this way, so no one would know that I was on this trail if something happened, and the trail was very narrow, with usually a hundred-foot drop off to the side. I needed to move relatively quickly if I was going to make the trailhead before sunset.
My shoulders, legs, hips, and feet were, by this point, actually pretty numb, but I was nonetheless on the verge of saying, Fuck this, bushwhacking my way into the woods, and setting up a nice illegal little camp. But I did manage to make it to the Death Canyon trailhead, which presented me with a completely novel problem: I'd actually started at the Granite Canyon trailhead, which was about 5 miles down the road. I'd been aware of this up at Static Peak, but I just figured that I could hitch a ride with someone when I got there. As I surveyed the noticeably human-less parking lot, I grew less sure of myself.
I walked through the dirt parking lot for a few minutes, until I finally spied a person -- an attractive woman, no less -- walking in my direction. She looked at me skeptically as I asked her if she'd be willing to give me a lift.
She agreed, after a moment. "You're cool because you've got that backpack on," she explained, grinning at me as I hoisted my exhausted rear end up into her truck.
We actually ended up striking up a nice conversation. Her name was Sheena, and she was a cook from Phoenix, Arizona. We had a fair bit in common, not limited to a love of the outdoors and a general disdain for car-bound chubs who drive lazily through national parks to see animals. She had very green eyes. I remember that, because she had deep bronze skin, and the contrast was striking. I wonder if she was wearing colored contacts.
I ended up giving her my bear spray, since I was planning on heading south into the desert, and she mentioned that it was one thing she didn't have, and didn't want to spring for the $50 or so required to buy a can. I gave her my email address and she promised she'd look me up if she ever wanted to do some hiking in California.
So I finally found myself back in my car, and immediately headed into Dornan's, the small park-run area with a bar and restaurant, sat down, and ordered a pizza. As I sat there, eagerly shoveling pieces of the meat-lovers pizza into my mouth, the bartender, a wiry blonde woman who was pretty in an outdoorsy sort of way, asked me where I was staying for the night.
I shrugged. "I'm, uh...not really sure." I grinned stupidly. "I was supposed to camp up on the Death Canyon Shelf."
She grinned back. "Well, I don't think you're gonna make it up there tonight."
"Yeah..." My grin faded, and I told her the whole sad story about getting lost. She commiserated with me for a bit, told me a decent place for camping nearby, and then I took my leave.
Instead of camping at the spot the bartender had pointed me to, like a sensible person would have, I for some reason decided that I wanted to sleep in a motel that night, so I ended up jumping in my car and driving down into Jackson, looking for a room. They were full up, and looked altogether too touristy and faux-old western for my budget, anyway. So I headed out in the pitch black on twisty mountain roads into Idaho, and, if you can believe this, every motel I came to in the city of Idaho Falls was full. So I drove down into Blackfoot. All full.
"Why's everything so full?" I demanded of the desk clerk of the Blackfoot Best Western, in frustration.
She shrugged apologetically. "Don't know. Everyone's headed to the park or from the park, I guess. I hear everything's booked solid down to the Utah border."
So I ended up saying, the hell with it, stopping off at a grocery store in Pocatello, Idaho, and buying:
- iced tea
- pickles
- V8
- bananas
- milk
...and a few other essentials, and I drove until 5 in the morning, when I pulled off onto a little country road in northern Utah and crashed for a few hours in my car. The next morning, I made it to Brigham City, Utah, where I finally found a room, checked in at noon, and pretty much just happily sat inside with the curtains drawn for the remainder of the day.
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