First, an apology for the lack of blog updates recently, which can only mean one of two things: either we've been off having too much fun to write about our lives in cyberspace, or we went off and did something crazy, like settled down and re-joined the working class. Believe it or not, it's been so long since we've written that we've gone off and done both.
Knowing that we were headed back to Berkeley and Mat was going to jump into his first year of real, credentialed teaching, we decided to make the most of the end of our summer, which turned out to be a highly successful endeavor. Manipulating our time between new teacher trainings, meetings, and HR appointments, we spent a good chunk of August in one of our favorite spots on the planet - the Yosemite High Country. Some of you may remember that about one year ago we started this crazy trip with a 30+ day through-hike of the Sierra, following Steve Roper's "Sierra High Route", a mainly off-trail route that stays as high as possible while following the Sierra Crest from South to North. Last summer we completed about 80% of the route, from King's Canyon to Tuolumne, and had it in our sights to finish up since last September. August seemed the perfect time to do it, and we set out from Tuolumne Meadows on a six day trip that would take us North along the crest, around Conness and up to the Matterhorn, and then back down to the Meadows to meet the Cane family for a first-ever (almost)-full-family camping trip.
The hike itself was amazing, and a wonderful way to finish the High Route. What the Northern section lacked in good fishing and desolation it made up for in stunning scenery and clean granite. As we never strayed too far away from an easy East Side entry point there were quite a few folks back there, but only two other souls doing a route similar to ours, and always plenty of places to camp far away from the crowds. We gained an appreciation for how the massive Mt. Conness and her satellites dominate the area by circumnavigating the peak, and discovered an absolutely beautiful off-trail gem in Spiller Canyon as part of our route back to TM. We loved Spiller so much that we dropped our packs at 2 pm on a day that we intended to walk much further, and instead made coffee, swam, fished, and read until the sun set - ahhh, the mountain life.
We rushed out of the backcountry to get in line on Monday morning for a campsite in the TM campground for the arriving and ever-growing Cane clan. Using our charm, humor, and bargaining abilities we scored the two absolute best sites in the whole 200+ site campground - a secluded corner of the A loop right along the river, with beautiful views and vistas right from the camp. The family rolled in, and a hectic yet entirely fun 3 days followed before they packed up and went home. Jean-Paul and Elena surprised us all with an announcement of their engagement around the campfire the second night, and we celebrated and felt blessed to hear the good news in such a magnificent locale.
We packed up Edric and Wyn's car and headed back to Sacramento with them, as the Eurovan was stranded in Bishop after towing it down the pass with Jason's well-timed AAA Plus card. The story around the van is another blog posting in itself, but it turns out that absolutely nothing was wrong with the van - it was just an idiotic move Mat made with the key that caused the engine security immobilizer to become active. Unfortunately we had to tow it all the way to a VW specialist in Bishop to figure out the issue, and after he asked Mat "How long has the key been like this" we immediately knew that it was our fault. It turns out those little batteries in the keys actually run a bit more than just the LED light. Who knew? After a few quick days in Carmichael we washed our bodies, washed our clothes, and got ready to head to our old/new home of Berkeley for the start of the school year.
Pictures of our hike are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/mat.glaser
