My first backpacking trip was in Sequoia National Park. My brother David and I set out on our bicycles from Tulare one hot August day toward Lake Kaweah. I was 16 and David was just turning 14. Along the way, our bedrolls would occasionally spill out onto the road, and at one point David tossed his bike's broken derailleur into an orange orchard. We got pizza in Lemoncove and rode and walked up past Terminus Dam. We were shocked to discover that Lake Kaweah was nowhere to be found. We did find the campground there, however, and in the morning discovered that the lake was nearly dry. That was our introduction to seasonal water levels.
| The next day we pushed our bikes up South Fork Road toward Sequoia National Park. That was a very strenuous walk in the August heat, and water was hard to come by. The road crosses the Kaweah River twice. We finally arrived at South Fork Campground well after nightfall, where I suddenly started having nosebleeds for the first time. I haven't had a nosebleed since. That was a tough day. | |
David and I continued up to Garfield Grove the next day. There we finally got up to the temperate zone of the Sierra. We laid there in our cheap sleeping bags under the big trees and the stars that managed to peek through, and listened for the sound of bear paws on Sequoia needles. All that we heard was the campfire talk of a huge group of hikers nearby, but that night the Sierra was all ours.
The first time we backpacked in the High Sierra was when David had just turned 14. It was September, and everything had a dry, yellow look to it. Mom and Dad drove us up to Sequoia and dropped us off at Lodgepole. As soon as we arrived at Twin Lakes, we hung our food and just about everything else in a tree, which left us very little to do while we watched night fall, though we did hike up to Silliman Pass. We made camp at about 9,500 feet, and I couldn't sleep until late. I kept hearing the pulse in my ear, and before too long we heard a haunting cacophany of cries, which we eventually figured was the yelping and howling of coyotes. It sounded like they were all around the rim of the glacial bowl, celebrating before descending upon us.
| In November, we took another backpacking trip. Mom and Dad dropped us off at Hospital Rock in Sequoia. We hiked up beyond Moro Creek, then turned up slope to follow an old trail that our map showed climbing up to the High Sierra Trail. We soon lost the trail, and never got back to it. We climbed and climbed, crashing through manzanita and slipping on loose soil. At one point we thought we were at the top, and nearly took a wrong turn back down the same slope we had climbed. Early on we joked saying "the mountain has a mind of its own", but as the daylight grew dimmer and dimmer, we began to lose hope. Just when we began to unravel. David was getting weepy and I was feeling blameworthy, we heard a voice "are you guys lost?". Of course I said "no". Fortunately, we were steps from the High Sierra Trail, which is a superhighway of a trail.7 |  |
We camped (illegally) at Crescent Meadow, and had hot dogs and ketchup for dinner. When we met Mom and Dad back at Hospital Rock, they said there were reports of two boys lost in the park.
A month later, I returned to the Moro Creek area with my friend Juan Briseno. It's a wonder he ever backpacked with me again after this disaster. We set out from Hospital Rock. It was raining by the time we got to Moro Creek, so we set up camp downstream on the east side of the stream. The rain didn't stop until morning. What wasn't drenched was burnt from attempts at drying with my new propane stove.