Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Tough hitch

Since I'm a little behind on posting, I'll make this a quick set of posts. In brief, my past hitch was short but exhausting. All the sites needed a steep walk-in at way too early in the morning. Also plagued by high winds during the day and oppressively hot nights. I was to do one more grid before taking some days off, but after driving two hours over hair-raising roads I got stymied by one bad rocky slope. Couldn't get my car over it after rearranging rocks and retrying approaches, and in reflection if I hadn't been exhausted I wouldn't have even tried. Impractical to walk in from there, so I backed off and saved it until the next hitch.

View from campsite at Steve's Mountain site

Columbines at Steve's Mountain

So before that I managed to do some pretty grids, Steve's Mountain and Thickets. Steve's Mountain, from the shots above, was a nice break from the heat, getting me up into deciduous forests, fir forests, and montane meadows. Also oak thickets and steep slopes. And my backup grid to the impassable was Thickets, which also granted a nice camp spot on top of a sage ridge. Not actually that bad thicket-wise, but again with tortuous slopes mixed in with a little shrubbery, which does not go well.

Sage ridge from Thickets campsite

Wild roses (Woods' rose?)

Anyway, I did finish the sites, got a vacation, and currently back to work. I'll post about the vacation days when I can.

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