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1,000 Switchbacks to Mugwort
Pete and Holly's Northern Yosemite Backpack Ramble
On Saturday, July 13th, Mike and Jennifer, Pete's son and daughter-in-law, met us at noon in Yosemite's Tuolumne Meadows. We stowed our backpacks in their vehicle and parked our pickup truck (license plate: MUGWORT). We drove to Bridgeport on route 395 where we spent the night. Very early the next morning we drove to Leavitt Meadows Pack Station on route 108 east of Sonora Pass. We had arranged with Bart Cranney, the pack station owner, to have ourselves and our gear packed 16 miles up to Stella Lake, just outside the northern Yosemite boundary. Mike and Jen were to ride along part of the way as a day ride.
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We rode horseback for 6½ hours, a long and tough ride, according to Bart, even for thoroughly experienced riders. It proved to be very tough for novices Pete and Holly. Mike and Jen at some point decided to accompany us all the way to our drop-off point. They then had a punishing 6-hour ride back with Craig, our packer/guide, to the pack station.
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Mike and Jen in Tuolumne Meadows
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After being dropped off we recovered sufficiently to hike a mile and a half to Dorothy Lake, just inside Yosemite. Over the next 8 days we hiked south on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) from Dorothy Lake to Tuolumne Meadows, a distance of 55 miles. Trail elevations ranged from 7581' at Benson Lake to 10125' at Benson Pass, with numerous elevation gains and losses along the way. A tough week, but we enjoyed it! We had hoped to do lots of flyfishing in the lakes and creeks along the way, but the need to make daily hiking progress limited our angling possibilities. However, there was plenty of awesome scenery in a part of Yosemite we had never seen. Wildflowers were in riot, mosquitoes were in swarms. We reached Tuolumne late in the afternoon of Monday, July 22nd. Then it was on to Oakdale to sleep in a bed after 8 nights on the ground.
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Bart's office building, Leavitt Meadows Pack Station
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We took lots of digital photos. Holly took about 200 with an Olympus C-3040; Pete took about 140 using a Canon S200. We have included a representative number from each day. Compared to film cameras, digital cameras are especially convenient when backpacking. There are no extra and weighty rolls of film to haul along, no need to find shade for changing film, and no need to swat mosquitos during changes. And any poor shots can be instantly erased. Back home the images can be shared in e-mails with relative ease. Or uploaded onto a dynamite web page without the need to scan.
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About the title of our trip... There certainly aren't 1000 switchbacks on the PCT from Dorothy Lake to Tuolumne Meadows and MUGWORT. There are probably more like 339 switchbacks. (In truth, there probably aren't even 339 switchbacks, as we just made that number up.) However many switchbacks there were, it's enough to say that there were too many for a weary hiker to count. And a round number has a smoother ring to it than 339.
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Packer/guide Craig loads our backpack gear
onto "Princess" the mule
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Here are some photo highlights ...
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