One Week—Two Peaks

Monday-Wednesday the entire YCC staff was on a mini-spike for training. We did an abbreviated park tour on Monday and on Tuesday we did trailwork. On Wednesday, the crew leaders did trail work again and the rec rangers and SCAs went on a hike to Mystic Falls to discuss more rec ranger things. To be entirely honest, I would’ve rather been doing trailwork…it was a rather enjoyable experience and I like tangible results. The hike to Mystic Falls was okay—it was really pretty, but we had to stop five million times either so that people could take a break or so that we could talk about stuff. The entire loop was only 3 miles. It took so long.

Mystic Falls

On Wednesday afternoon/evening, four of the Youth Leaders got here. Basically, they were enrollees last year that got invited back to be Youth Leaders because they rock. There will be two more in a couple weeks, but high school graduation and stuff got in the way I guess.

I was in charge on Thursday night rec, so the YLs and I went and hiked up Bunsen Peak for a sunset hike, per their request—which I was more than okay with. :) Those kids killed it! We stopped less times on the way up that mountain peak than we did on the .7 mile trip to Mystic Falls. I was so proud of them. Also, there was a giant area of snow that we basically had to go straight up and they knocked it out like champs. When we got to the top, I made them sign the summit log, and given the way Lexie started it, I told them all they had to sign it like the Breakfast Club. ;)

Bunsen Peak Summit Log

Sunset from Bunsen Peak

View from Bunsen Peak

Youth Leaders at Bunsen Peak

So it took us just shy of an hour to make it to the top and we were kind of hanging out at the top when I looked at my watch and it said 8:50. Yikes—back down we go! Lights out is at 10:00 and I didn’t want them to be late on my first rec trip. Also, sunset is at about 9:20 and even though we all had headlamps, I prefer hiking down in the light—especially with all the snow.

Speaking of snow, when we got to that part, we had an interesting time getting down. Avery, a champion skier from Montana, had no trouble at all. Neither did Elijah or Matt. Matt’s super into taking pictures so he would pause at a random spot on the slope and just keep snapping pictures of the mountains. Bold. Lexie, on the other hand, isn’t afraid of heights, but is a bit nervous of falling—which I can totally relate to—so to make it interesting, we slid down on our butts. On the way up, we had seen many tracks of people doing the same thing, and frankly, it was an insane amount of fun. :D

Headed down Bunsen Peak--Avery and Elijah up ahead

from the bottom of the snow...

So we completely booked it all the way back to the bottom and I had the YLs guess an ETA of when we’d be back to the burb. The stipulation was that I couldn’t look at my watch anymore after we all guessed, and that nearest time that hadn’t passed won. So Elijah had 9:31, Avery—9:35, Lexie—9:38, and Matt—9:41. I came in at 9:34.

We got back at 9:32.37. Winner winner chicken dinner. Thank you, thank you very much. We were back to the YCC facility by 9:45 and they made it to bed before lights out. First rec trip done. (I seriously got paid to take students hiking. What more can you want?)

On Friday during training, we had an absolute ton of people that weren’t first aid certified yet, so they and all the youth leaders went to First Aid/CPR training. The rest of us stayed and cleaned. They were seriously gone from 0800 to 1530 for what’s usually a 2.5-3 hour class. I don’t understand. And also, I had to pay for my certifications and they got paid to get theirs. I really don’t understand. It was just a really interesting day all around and I was mentally exhausted with some of my coworkers by the end of it. I’m ready to vote two people off the island. No joke—if I could, I would. They drive me bonkers.

Anyways, on Saturday I planned to hike Purple Mountain in the morning and Sepulcher (pronounced Sep-uh-ker) in the afternoon. Well the weather had other plans and it rained and snowed all Friday night/Saturday morning, so I had to ditch the Sepulcher plan. I still went up Purple Mountain in the morning. It was insanely cold. I wore pants while hiking for the first time ever. Absolutely freezing (okay, so it was in the 40s…but with all the wind up there, it was really cold). I seriously drank hot chocolate when I got back to the YCC facility.

It’s not very far—only 3.4 one way. It took me slightly over an hour to get to the top and then about fifty minutes on the way down. Unfortunately, the drive there with the road construction between Mammoth and Norris is also about an hour each direction. So two hours of hiking, two hours of driving. Crappy ratio. That’s something that I really miss about Yosemite—there were so many trailheads and loops that could be done from the Valley that I didn’t need a car to get anywhere. Here I have to drive everywhere because everything is so spread out—and almost everything is either a there-and-back route or a swap-keys route with someone else if you hike it one-way. Bummers.

On a sad note, Purple/Sepulcher was actually my back-up plan for the day. Some of the NPS YCC staff were going to go assist with the SAR in the Rescue Creek area today, but Friday afternoon we were told our assistance was no longer needed. The man had been found dead by searchers a few hours earlier. Suspected fall. A real downer.

I did enjoy the top of Purple Mountain though! Madison Junction is visible below, as is the Gibbon River and National Park Mountain.

South from the top of Purple Mountain

Gibbon River and National Park Moutain visible

If anyone wants a super fun fact, for the last question on our staff info sheet that the SCAs are making to post on one of our bulletin boards, it asked about significant numbers (ex. # of bumper logs made, # of water bars of check dams installed, etc.). Well, not having done trail work with the YCC before, the only cool thing I could think of was to add up the number of miles I hiked last summer. I thought I’d have written it down somewhere already, but apparently I hadn’t done that yet. I don’t know how—I really don’t. So I went back through every single one of my hikes and added up the mileages. Talk about time-consuming. And the most bizarre thing happened. Even with all of my crazy decimals, my total number of miles from last summer in Yosemite was 300.0. No joke. Three hundred on the dot. I’m still incredulous as to how that happened. So that’s my fun fact of the day! :)

The enrollees get here tomorrow and I work from 0930 to 2300, so I’m sure I’ll have fun with that. *fingers crossed*