A Yosemite Adventure

In early May Todd Rutan, Brad Rexroat, and myself took a couple of days after the manager's meeting to venture in Yosemite National Park. We had three main goals... have a good time, return home safely, and see a bear. In true TNF associate fashion we each brought our own tents. That's right three tents for three people, maybe a smidge of an overkill. Anyway Brad used his stores demo tent the Minibus 2 and Todd brought his Mica 12. I originally planned on using an old Diad 2 that I had brought to Cali with me but when I was pitching my tent at the managers meeting I realized that I had a broken tent pole. Luckily, my hommie from across the river donated his stores Meso 22 to my cause and I was able to sleep solo.

We didn't get out of Berkeley until about 6pm and after a bad but not regrettable stop at In and Out we got to Yosemite at 1 in the morning. Unfortunately for Brad and Todd they were relying on my previous experience to get us to our campsite at 1 a.m. It should be know that my previous experience was for two days in the day light a year prior. I don't do anything particularly well at 1am let alone navigate. We ended up at our campsite to get some rest at 2 a.m. which gave us exactly 4 hours of sleep until we needed to get up to move our illegally parked car.

When we got there we had a permit to go all the way to Merced Lake from the Yosemite Valley. Outside of the ridiculous distance, 24 miles there and back, we would have had to cover in two days there was two feet of snow in the high country. Thanks to the wise park ranger we got a permit to camp in Little Yosemite Valley. To get their we needed to hike up Nevada Falls which is about 2000 feet of elevation gain in around 4 miles. I would have liked to think I was in the best of shape to handle a hike of this magnitude at elevation, but Todd Rutan can climb like a freaking Sherpa while setting a blazing pace. We made it to the top of Nevada Falls in about 5 hours and the LYV in 6 thanks to a little freeze dried (p.s. steer clear of freeze dried Phad Thai) lunch break on the way.

Once we got to base camp at LYV we hiked around for a few hours before we decided to set camp up and eat some dinner. After dinner and hours of hiking we were all ready to sleep by around 8 p.m. In my defense it was 10 p.m. central time which is about my normal bed time. I fell asleep rather quickly dreaming I was on a tempurpedic mattress as opposed the half inflated Thermarest that I have ignored to fix for years. I used the Beeline sleeping bag which is an old 30 degree 900 fill bag that we used to make. For those of you who forget what I look like I'm a 5'10" white guy that weighs a buck forty on a good day, so it's safe to say I froze my ear lobes off that night.

Anyway, I awoke about 9:30 pm to hear some rummaging around near our bear box. My mind immediately shot to the park ranger telling us to put all food and toiletries in the bear box and not to keep anything with a scent in our tents. I immediately scanned my tent and luckily found nothing that would attract a bear, as I said I way a buck forty and might be the least delicious looking human a bear has ever seen. It would be like a human grabbing a drum stick with the least amount of chicken, so I felt pretty safe. My mind then shot back to the conversation with the park ranger when he asked what to do if we saw a bear. I said "I faster than Todd and Brad so you'd have to ask them." He did not see the humor and told me I should get loud and throw something in the direction of the bear. Instinctively I grabbed a trekking pole and began to peer out the window of my tent. I look across and saw Todd's face in his tent window at the same time with a look of nervous curiosity that I must have had as well because, after all, seeing a bear was one of our goals. What I thought was a bear was actually Brad putting away sun block in the bear box (after remembering the same conversation with the ranger that I did) that he had in his tent with him. Fortunately this was my only interaction with a "bear" but going two for three with our goals is not bad. Hey, if it was baseball and you went two for three in your career you'd be a hall of famer.

Going down the mountain was a different story for me than going up. This is where I could put the hurt on Todd and Brad. With my demo El Lobo pack I was able to scamper down the mountain like a jungle cat (It was probably more like a rolling stone as I didn't have a ton of control but this is my story and jungle cats are cool). I'd be lying if said I didn't want to see a bear sitting in the driver seat of Todd's rental car snacking on the trail mix we left in it, but to my disappointment there was no bear. It was a great trip and a heck of a work out. This is the second year in a row that a few of us have gone out there after the meeting and you can sure bet that we'll do it again next year.

Brett Knight