TR Redwood Mountain 05/11/18

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Satchel Buddah
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TR Redwood Mountain 05/11/18

Post by Satchel Buddah »

Through the years this has become my little spring ritual - Going for a quick jaunt into Redwood Mountain in Seki early may, before permit season begins.
I am still very much in love with this little place and its giant trees and hidden granite shelves and boulders, and as I explore its ridges and slopes I keep discovering little hidden fairy tale spots that I tag for a future camp. While accessible and easy to reach, it is hidden enough that crowds are no show, and in this early season the weekdays are full of solitude. Its small size is perfect to introduce friends and family to backpacking, with easy egress if things go wrong.

So we were aiming for a nice little 3 day adventure with 2 friends, taking off from LA at 5 am. We made good time on the road and reached Grant Grove at 8:30 to fill a self issue permit.

We started the hike on the Hart tree trail, zigzagging around the trail to identify lovely campsites, and set up camp 1 barely 3 miles away from the trailhead in a lovely spot I had flagged the previous year. The day temperatures were about 55 which was perfect for hiking, but the sun was nice and warm when it was popping out from behind nice puffy clouds.
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Chris and I had much energy to spare still, and while Jay stayed to enjoy the camp we started bushwhacking up a ridge that eventually led us to the summit of little baldy, overlooking the whole canyon.
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From the top we identified a slightly different route back to camp going through granite boulders and shelves, and it led us to a discovery of a fantastic future camp, granite shelves and pools of DG for perfect LNT pitches with an open view of the canyon - perfect for beautiful sunset photography if the skyscape wants to play along. This will be my first camp for next year!
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Lovely dinner then a lovely night hike to the car and back to camp to snatch forgotten foods and cigarettes and enjoy the magic of the tall trees under the stars. All in all the phone recorded about 14.5 miles of hiking that day, a good day! Legs were stiff and feet a little flattened but it was a lovely feeling of being spent for the good cause.

The night was clear and dark and I dragged my pad off the tent to a granite platform with a full view of the stars. As I slowly fell into sleep, a large heavy animal was breaking branches in the bush, in the general direction of our bear canister hideout inside a hollow tree, but I found the cans seemingly undisturbed the next morning. The night temp on day 1 was probably a little under 40, quite tender.
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Our goal on day 2 was to switch to the other side of the canyon and find a lovely camp on the ridge of the sugar bowl grove, to enjoy the view of Big Baldy's granite plates dressed up in sunset colors. We lazily made our way along the Hart tree trail, and spent some time enjoying the ice cold river at the bottom of the canyon. We discovered large patches of dandelions in bloom along the river, and Chris harvested some of their leaves to complement our day's dinner with fresh greens.
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Because of my silliness we packed water too early, from the bottom and hiked up the ridge with 3 liters each - I had completely forgotten that there is a pretty reliable stream about halfway up, where I filled up the previous year. My buddies were graceful about it but I felt pretty terrible to impose the unnecessary workout :) Spent some time scouting the east side of the ridge for a nice pitch that would accommodate our two tents, dropped camp and cooked a very fancy dinner while enjoying the sunset colors taking over the valley.
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We snacked on toasted tortilla with spicy tuna and gruyere, Chris rolled the dandelion greens in fresh lemon juice, Jay fixed up a wonderful ramen soup with extra bits of sausage, nori and fresh greens, while I prepared a mix of chocolate-rhum-cinnamon-lemon hot grog that turned out perfect. The temperature was dropping fast, as this time we were quite a bit higher, more exposed, and on the shaded east side of the mountain, and we were now barely over freezing, or maybe under. Nothing unexpected and so far everything was going perfectly according to plan.

This is when Chris noticed that Jay had become uncontrollably cold. Despite wearing all his layers, and wrapping himself in a 20f quilt, our friend could not get warm and was shaking uncontrollably. He had kept it to himself thinking it would pass but it seemed to keep getting worse. His legs could not get warm that evening while hiking up the ridge, meanwhile I had been sweating buckets with shorts and a tee-shirt going up. Something was obviously wrong, in hindsight it looked like a form of shock spiraling down, altho we have no clue about the trigger.

We broke camp in a hurry and hiked into the night through sugar bowl back to the trailhead and the car. Despite Jay's condition, the general tiredness and the feeling of urgency we could not resist enjoying the lovely night hike in the giant grove. At some point two perfectly round circles were reflecting our headlamps lower on the slope, moving then stopping - From the shape of it, a bear staring at us from the bush. By the time we made it to the car, we had done over 13 miles that day.

We drove to the nearby Montecito sequoia lodge and by miracle someone was still working at the front desk late in the evening, and they had one available room. Jay warmed up by the fire in the lodge and we enjoyed a second lovely dinner with luxurious leftovers from the kitchen and fresh beer. Sadly the boiler of the outdoor hot tub at Montecito had died the night before. Can’t win at everything! Still all in all we managed to turn our predicament into another victory with no downside and all was well.

The warm night and food did good to all of us, and Jay was fine the next morning. We hiked up the Big baldy ridge the next morning for the lovely vista before heading back to LA.

My next trip to redwood mountain is already planned! On the menu, camp on that remote granite terrace with the wide open vista of the canyon, and two climbs along two different ridges to big baldy summit.
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bobby49
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Re: TR Redwood Mountain 05/11/18

Post by bobby49 »

You know, I've been in lots of situations when somebody got uncontrollably cold. I just got in the habit of filling them up with hot Gatorade.
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thegib
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Re: TR Redwood Mountain 05/11/18

Post by thegib »

Last October at 8500', after a normal day and excellent dinner, I developed uncontrollable full body shivering despite a very warm sleeping bag and lots of clothes. Nothing would help and I could barely move. And then searing pain in my chest. Turns out that's also classic symptoms of pneumonia.
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