Who likes rocks? (Yosemite Update)

 Hiking into Yosemite was a fun, easy little section. Mosquito swarms are blooming everywhere with all the snowmelt and warm temperatures.  It doesn't take more than 30 seconds for over two dozen to sink and feast in many places. Another annoying swarm on the trail near and in Yosemite is the crowds of people everywhere, I must have seen 5 times as many people from Mammoth to the end of the Muir Trail in Yosemite Valley as I have on the entire hike combined. One place I was able to avoid the crowds fortunately was climbing Half-Dome. Normally the is the most crowded trail in the park, but I went up only a few hours before sunset and saw only a handful of people the entire climb. I got up to the top around 6 and decided to stay for sunset the only three people I met who going up were nice enough to take a few pics for me but left within thirty minutes. They didn't want to come down in the dark. The sunset was beautiful but mostly it was nice having such a dramatic and beautiful place all to myself for a few hours. All I'll say about coming down in the dark is its a hell of a lot harder than going up in good light.

San Francisco, 3am sitting in the hostel lounge.

As I polish of my Anchor Steam, a decent enough "local" brew, I try to savor the last hours of my retreat in the horn of plenty filled with beer, hobos, ungodly amounts of food, girls, beaches, and productive members of society known as San Francisco. I mistakenly fooled myself into thinking I would be able to carve out enough time to write some crazy amount of posts to actually get the blog to the content level I originally planned for. So, I'll work backwards and hope I get far.

The city here hasn't quite won me over this time but it certainly has grown on me. After doing all the touristy things the first couple days, I ventured off on my own to run some errands and was able to walk a good bit of some more 'authentic' parts city. It sucks to have to walk on days I'm not hiking, especially several miles on cement sidewalks, but I was able to get a feel for San Francisco beyond Union Square, Chinatown, The Wharf, etc...  We were also able to run into some better nightlife places the last few nights as well. My biggest beef with this city is the 2am closing time for bars and how the place turns into a ghost town quickly after.

Lonely Pier 39 Sea Lion

Alcatraz

Coastal Redwoods hiking around Mount Tamalpais in SF.

View from the top of Mount Tamalpais

High Sierra In a Photo-Packed Nutshell

Updating from the very cool town of Mammoth Lakes after a few weeks immersed in the most beautiful backcountry I have been in to date.  If there I have a place of worship, places like this are my holy grounds.  If you need a nudge to remind you how incredibly beautiful the Earth is come to the High Sierra and its beauty will punch you in the face.
Enough about that though and more about me. I left Kennedy Meadows, the unofficial start of the Sierra on the PCT, a little bored and tired of the routine nature of thru-hiking.  I tried to make things interesting though the desert by catching my own food one night, making several stops looking around old Native American camps marked by chips of obsidian, and an unscheduled trip to Lake Isabella for cheeseburgers but somehow ended up in the Kernville Brewery three towns away; but I was getting burnt out.

The first couple days out of Kennedy Meadows didn't help much either, the trail is like walking on a beach up hill the whole time. But I finally made it to the High Sierra. I'll let the pictures do the talking for now. I'll be taking a few days off to tear down San Francisco with my brother and will try to fill in the volumes of missing stories on the journey there.

Well posting this took way to long even with the lack of narrative. Blogging sucks! Hope you guys are enjoying it. I'm off to try a burger challenge (eat it all and its free!)