Williamson and Tyndall – June 27-30

For the longest time I hadn’t decided if I was going to make it on this mountain climb. However, when I became quite depressed with my progress at chemistry and quite incensed with my collaborator, I decided I needed a weekend in the mountains. Also, my friend Nick was leading the climb and I needed to get to the top of Tyndall anyways. Wednesday night I packed my gear and intended to only work half a day Thursday. Chemistry is awful. I managed to escape the Sadness Factory around 3PM, got to Paige’s house and met up with Brett to carpool to Lone Pine. We stopped off at a Chick-fil-A and I discovered little packets of jam. I thought they could be new Gu packs but was disappointed to find that they only had 40 Calories. At any rate, it turns out that they are great in oatmeal. The drive was uneventful and the three of us got to the trailhead around 10:45PM and slept right in the parking lot. I skipped my tent and boy was that a great decision. They stars were amazing. I need to skip the tent more often. I have a warm sleeping bag and I’d rather bring a warmer bag and no tent than haul all that heavy crap up the mountain to obstruct my views of the stars.

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Split Mountain – June 21-23

Split Mountain happens again! Last year I failed on Split Mountain after getting to around 13,300ft and completing all the difficult climbing. This was my second time leading this climb and third attempt at the peak. I was determined to get to the top. It was also two weeks of me not drinking and I intended to discover how much damage beer had been doing to my physical abilities.

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Northfield Mountain – July 5

While home in Connecticut, my dad wanted to go on a hike with me. I happily agreed! After discussing some options, we settled on a new place that he hadn’t explored yet called Northfield Mountain. This is a man-made structure used for hydroelectric power generation and features a large reservoir at 1,100 ft.

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Mount Rainier – June 5-10

Long Intro – can / should skip
June 5th passed like any other Wednesday. I dragged myself to work, did some chemistry and went to group meeting at 5pm. But instead of going back to the hood to continue working, I grabbed my backpack and duffel bag and caught an Uber to the airport. There, I met up with my friends Nick and Alicia and boarded the same plane to Seattle. Once in Seattle, we picked up our rental car, a Ford Flex, which is one of the weirdest cars I’ve been in. It is four wheel drive, has a huge trunk and has about three inches of ground clearance… Who came up with that? Luckily, Alicia has a friend in Seattle who was gone for the weekend and allowed us to use her apartment as a pseudo base camp to organize gear and prepare for the hike. Around midnight we went to sleep.

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San Gorgonio with Dollar Lake Camp

We scheduled a San Gorgonio day hike from South Fork and during the preparations I learned that the lake levels for Dry and Dollar Lakes where as high as they hadn’t been in years. Since I had never seen Dollar Lake with water Srisuda and I decided to make it an overnight hike with a camp at Dollar Lake.

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Delamar and The Pinnacles April 27-28, 2019

There are 5 peaks in the Big Bear area that everyone is supposed to hike (Bertha, Delamar, Gold, Grey’s, and Sugarloaf) to get a Sierra Club patch. Dorie was missing Delamar and we had to bag it. It’s a very short 1.8-mile round trip, but the trail is faint and very steep. We made it, had a nice snack with views of snow-covered San Gorgonio. However, in researching how to get her patch, I found out that the summits had to be on a ranger guided hike. I don’t qualify.

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