Category: Stays

This last weekend, I headed down to Palm Springs and made an attempt at hiking the Cactus to Clouds route. Starting in Palm Springs and climbing all of the way to the summit of San Jacinto peak, it is often cited as one of the most difficult day hikes in the country. It made for a blast of a day!

This weekend, I decided to play it somewhat easy and head up into the White Mountains to visit the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. I ended up doing about 5 and a half miles of hiking, checking out these amazing trees, some over 4000 years old, along with a good amount of fun driving. The following day, I decided to also go and visit Hot Creek up in the Long Valley Caldera.

On Friday evening, I packed up and headed down to Mono Lake. Saturday morning, I woke up early and drove into Yosemite National Park, where I ended up hiking up to Vogelsang Pass and back in a day. It was a wonderful although difficult hike to cap off the summer.

With several weeks of hiking and backpacking over, I headed into Bend, OR to rest for a couple of weeks. But I couldn’t stay resting for too long, so I headed down to Northern California, and ended up at Lassen Volcanic National Park this weekend. I ended up hiking up Lassen Peak on Saturday and Cinder Cone on Sunday before finding camp nearby for the week.

For Labor Day Weekend, I decided to head over to Hells Canyon National Recreation Area. Since visiting the area last year, doing a large hike has been on my list of things I’ve been wanting to do. With some research, I decided to do the Seven Devils Loop, looping around the Seven Devils Mountains on the Idaho side of the canyon. Along with taking several side trips along the way, I had a difficult but amazing weekend of backpacking.

For “Eclipse Weekend”, I decided to spend 3 nights and 4 days out backpacking in the Sawtooth Wilderness. I planned out a large loop route that would give me a wonderful view of several sites throughout the wilderness, including a great view for the eclipse itself.

On Saturday, I woke up early and headed to the trailhead, intending to hike up to Hyndman Peak, the high point of Central Idaho’s Pioneer Mountains. The overall hike ended up being a difficult one, with more constant beauty than I had expected. It has easily become one of my favorite hikes of the year so far!

Originally I intended to spend a weekend in Yellowstone doing some hiking, but as I had to go find usable internet reception on Friday for work, I gave up and headed to Central Idaho. I found a lovely boondocking site in Sun Valley, allowing 16 days stay. On Sunday, I ended up also going on a hike nearby, to Pioneer Cabin–an historic ski lodge high up in the Pioneer Mountains.

Through all of the hiking and adventure in Colorado, I finally decided I had enough of it and moved on this past weekend. With one night at Rabbit Ears Pass outside of Steamboat Springs, I spent Saturday traveling through Wyoming to Grand Teton. After dealing with some unexpected car troubles, on Monday, I finally made myself to a boondocking site at Red Rock Pass in Idaho.