Sword Lake Backpacking Trip
Time to catch up on an overdue update or three! Starting with this one.
Stacey and Ron invited a bunch of people to go backpacking at Sword Lake in the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness (in the Sierra Nevada) last weekend. The group consisted of them and their daughter Kara; Steve and his daughter Julia; Antony and his daughter Alex; Lance and his son Luke and his son’s friend Emmy; Laurent; Sam; and of course me, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about this…
So really, except for the kids, the entire group was composed of geocachers or retired geocachers. Because we were in a designated wilderness, there were no caches to be had on this trip though. Steve and I made a half-hearted attempt to find one in a parking lot on the way home, but we quickly gave up.
My pack weighed in around 30lb with all the trimmings, including food, water, and a 4-pack of Boddington’s. I have mixed feelings about my A640 camera, which is heavy as it is for a backpacking point-and-shoot camera, but for photo quality I wish I’d had my EOS-10D dSLR.
The youngest girls were eight and ten, if I’m remembering correctly. They did very well for their ages, although all three of the young girls went through some impressive exclamations of despair on the hike out, which was mostly uphill. As you would expect, they all quickly reverted to their happy selves once we were back at the trailhead parking. I’m hoping to bring Allison next year, assuming she wants to go and seems up for it.
A splendid time was had by all, and the setting was certainly beautiful. The weather was warm but pleasant, the sunset was simply stunning, and the excellent company was the icing on the cake. It only took a day or two after returning home before I found myself daydreaming about this trip, and going out on another sometime.
AWESOME photos! Looks like a fantastic trip! It’s 6 pm on Friday and I’m still in the office, so just quickly. . .
* Great photo of you!
* Loved the rounded texture of the ‘unusual geography’.
* The photo captioned ‘We arrive at Sword Lake’ is gorgeous!!
* Snake! Good thing my husband isn’t here or he might be wearing brown trousers. 😉 He hates snakes, with good reason as all of ours are amongst the most poisonous in the world (but bad teeth luckily). When we were in CA in 2006 he ran over a garter snake on a push bike; his reaction was hilarious! Snake was much calmer.
* Snuset in the Dardenelles WOW!
* Fire photos – WOW!
Thanks for putting this post and the photos up; I really enjoyed that!
August 5th, 2010 at 11:53 pmThanks Snuva!
I’m not a big fan of snakes, either, but they’re a lot more tolerable once identified as not being filled with poison and huge fangs.
I liked your typo too: “Snuset”. I think that’s when Snuva dozes off for the night, a Snuset! ;^)
August 6th, 2010 at 5:26 pmOop – yeah, that’s right – I MEANT to type ‘snuset’. Showed those photos to my husband and he loved them; I did not show the snake photo to him.
August 8th, 2010 at 7:01 pmI obviously need a “hide snake photos” plugin for WordPress…
August 8th, 2010 at 7:27 pmMy son-in-law has taken his girls backpacking out of Fallen Leaf lake. They did fine (the youngest is 6). Last year the 8 yr old landed a 14″ trout. The video is hilarious for the excitement. This yr no such luck. PM me if you want more details.
August 13th, 2010 at 3:28 pmWe’ve got reservations to do our first family backpack at Pt. Reyes! Since it’s the first time backpacking (not camping) for the Mrs. and the kiddo, I’m going to have my work cut out for me, planning and getting the gear in order, but we’re all looking forward to it!
August 13th, 2010 at 5:40 pm