Age is a fickle thing. I spent the very last night of my 20s in a little cabin in the Sierra Nevada mountains, listening to Bob Dylan records by a fireplace with Owen and Denali. It could not have been more perfect. But to be completely honest, I was kind of freaking out. A couple days prior, I started having abdominal pain, nothing major, but according to Google it could be anything from a stomach bug to appendicitis. It set in motion the realization that even though I could run far, carry a heavy pack, and hike long days, I wasn’t invincible. And for the first time in my life, I felt old. My aunt wrote to me, “I’ll bet 30 feels ancient to you. But take it from someone on the other side of 60, it’s a drop in the bucket.” And she’s right. It’s just taking some time for that to sink in.
The first day of my 30s, I tried to push aside my worries and enjoy the day. On the recommendation of the cabin owner, we went on a quest to find Sardine Lake. We had vague directions to park at the nearby general store and walk a couple miles. It wasn’t hard to find, though. All we had to do was follow the snowmobiles cruising up an unpaved road and eventually we arrived at Lower Sardine Lake. It was completely frozen and Denali loved walking on the ice. We carefully made our way along a smaller trail to Upper Sardine Lake. It was stunning, mostly frozen and surrounded by snow covered peaks. The best part was that we had it almost entirely to ourselves. Denali was beside herself playing in the snow and only took out Owen once.
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Upper Sardine Lake
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| En route to the lakes |
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| Our cabin for the weekend |
I love doing snowy trips in the winter but sometimes it’s nice to have a change of pace. A long weekend in Big Sur back in January provided just that. We wanted to check out Sykes Hot Springs, which had recently reopened after five years of closures due to wildfire damage and overuse. This was our first time backpacking since last summer, and it was the perfect trip to ease back into it with just enough adventure to keep it interesting. For example, I used an open air toilet for the first time, which is not for the faint of heart. And we navigated multiple stream crossings and a steep, muddy trail to the hot springs. The springs were pretty small, so small that it was more like a foot bath than a full body soak. But I’m just grateful we were finally able to go. A week later, a wildfire burned a couple hundred acres in Big Sur, not too far from the hot springs.
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| Hiking through the Ventana Wilderness |
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| One of many stream crossings |
Come President’s Day weekend in February, it was time for our annual trip to Death Valley. We planned to go back to Saline Valley (that’s the hot springs we discovered on a whim a couple years ago). This year for the first time we were driving the 4Runner, instead of the motorcycle, so we could bring Denali. And also so we could be a little more comfortable. See? We’re getting old!
Our first night we camped just inside the park boundary in a Joshua tree forest, and enjoyed a star-filled night sky until something even better happened: the moonrise over the Nelson Range. The next morning we had an uneventful drive over 40 miles of unpaved roads into Saline Valley. Arriving at the hot springs after that quiet, desolate drive through the desert was like being transported into a different planet. There were hundreds of tents, people and dogs everywhere, and naked people. Naked people hanging off the backs of trucks and riding bikes and walking through camp. It shouldn’t have been a surprise but when we’d been here in years past it had always been cold and windy, and everyone was bundled up if they weren't in the springs.
After we finally found a spot to set up camp, we went into full on relaxation mode for the next couple days. This wasn’t a trip for big mileage, minimalist gear, and type II fun. This was a trip for lounging in the sun, taking midday naps, and eating like kings. Exhibit A: we had steak, mashed potatoes, broccoli and wine one night. Eaten with spoons, of course, because that’s all we brought. When we got bored of doing nothing, we went exploring. At the suggestion of the camp host, we went in search of Beveridge Canyon, which supposedly had an abandoned mine. Finding it on our map was the easy part. Finding it in real life was another story. There are endless canyons in the Inyo Mountains and they all look the same to the unfamiliar eye. Eventually we found a couple landmarks, picked a dirt road to try, and guessed right. We explored the old ruins, and found a cabin claiming that you could stay the night (if you wanted to promptly contract hantavirus). On our drive back to camp we spotted two hitchhikers. It took us half a second to agree to offer them a ride, as long as they were okay cramming into our vehicle with Denali, which they were. We were happy to pay it back for all the rides we had gotten over the years.
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| Relaxing at camp |
A trip to the Saline Valley wouldn’t be complete without some soaks in the hot springs, so that was how we capped off each day. These hot springs are much larger than the ones in Big Sur, so we always had company and I never knew what kind of conversation to expect. One night the group talked at length about mountain biking in Lake Tahoe, another night it turned darker, to friends lost too young.
After we left the Saline Valley, we made one last stop in Death Valley, to Eureka Dunes in the remote northwest corner of the park. They're the tallest dunes in California and we had actually driven by them last year when we were on the motorcycle but we were too exhausted to appreciate them. And then we dropped the motorcycle on Owen’s foot in the deep sand. We were coming back for redemption, albeit in a less risky vehicle. We made it to the dunes just fine, and to celebrate I did a solo sunset hike up one of the smaller dunes. It was surprisingly windy up there as I walked along a knife edge and I was a little uneasy from the exposure, even though there was nothing to be afraid of. A fall would just mean playing in the sand.
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| Hiking Eureka Dunes |
That night as we were cooking dinner we spotted the glowing green eyes of an animal in our headlamps. Our special visitor was a little kit fox! As much as we wanted to get a closer look, we didn’t want to give it an opportunity to sample our dinner so we tried to scare it off. But he was a curious fellow and wandered around the outskirts of our camp throughout the evening. That night was the fourth night in a row of camping in the desert and we joked that our tent had turned into a dust prison. Over a month later, I’m still finding Death Valley dust in my gear.
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| Sunset over Eureka Dunes |
It hasn’t been a great snow year in California but we’ve been trying to enjoy what we can of it before spring turns to summer. We got lucky back in early March when the weekend we planned to go up coincided with a snow storm. When we arrived at our Airbnb just outside South Lake Tahoe late at night, Denali jumped out of the truck and immediately started doing zoomies in the snow. She could barely contain her excitement as she ran and leapt through the powder. And I was just as happy as her! It brought me back to my days as a kid, playing for hours outside on snow days. That weekend we all got our snow fix: Owen and I went snowboarding, and the next day we took Denali for a hike out to Silver Lake, which was totally frozen and covered with fresh powder. The only thing missing was a sled for Denali to pull us in.
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| Enjoying a powder day |
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| Getting her snow fix |
We took one more trip up to the snow last weekend. The objective was to go snowboarding, but also to sleep in the back of the 4Runner. As Kelli calls it, “car camping” in its truest form. First we took Denali for a hike, back to Silver Lake. It was just three weeks later, but the lake was no longer totally frozen. The ice along the lake edges was starting to melt so instead of a hike on the lake Denali went for a swim in the shallows. The upside of the warmer weather meant that it wasn’t miserably cold when we camped that night. Even though we were up at 6,700 feet, and there was still snow on the ground, we were cozy and warm packed in the back of the 4Runner. The next morning we snowboarded for a couple hours at Kirkwood and I felt like we were getting away with something: we finally hacked the system and went to a ski resort for the weekend without the overpriced hotel stay.
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| Swimming through the icy slush |
I’ve rounded out the past couple weeks with a few epic runs, proof that I can’t be getting that old if I can knock out some double digit runs with little training. One was up in Marin, with lots of views of the Golden Gate Bridge, with a small group of women and a dog that was in far better shape than me. The next was a group training run in Mount Diablo State Park. I wasn’t intending on going all the way to the summit of Mount Diablo, about seven miles each way, but I got so caught up in good conversation with others that I went all the way to the top. We all agreed afterwards that the run would have been a complete sufferfest if we’d done it solo. And that’s what these past few months have taught me. Health scares, work stress, general pandemic frustrations…it’s all much easier to get through with the companionship and support of others.
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| Trail running near the Golden Gate Bridge |
