Silver Divide and Pine Creek backpack features

[SSSdave]

After dozens of hours each evening after my work days and long weekend hours over the last 3 weeks, have finally completed processing images and html coding features for pages 11 through 14 of my 2016 Trip Chronicles that tells the story of my 9-day Silver Divide and 10-day Pine Creek backpacks. Use the following contents link to select pages or jump down into pages:

http://www.davidsenesac.com/2016_Trip_C ... les-0.html

Both trips are a long read if one has some time. Otherwise the Silver Divide trip that my brother Joe accompanied me on over pages 11 and 12 has 36 images and the Pine Creek trip a solo trip on pages 13 and 14 has 45 images. Weather was often breezy, cloudy, and or smoke hazed that severely crimped what I could do on parts of some days. That was balanced by a few calm clear mornings and magic on a stormy day when I nailed some strong material.

[nnmarsh88]

Great photos visiting Fish Creek later this week.

[balzaccom]

My first reaction was to wonder why your pack weighs so much! Then I started looking at the stunning photos, and I understood.

lovely report, and fabulous photos. Thanks for taking that camera equipment along!

[wildhiker]

Just read the second half of your Pine Creek trip. Absolutely stunning photos! And how do you remember all those details of your hikes and photo planning? They really give a sense of being out there with you.
-Phil

[kpeter]

It is such a treat to peruse your photos. What a fabulous job. But then again, after reading your posts over the years, I know what a consummate perfectionist you are with your photography. Well, it shows. Gorgeous work.

And I camped on the green bench with the pond in lower Granite Park in 1997.

I'm embarrassed to put my picture up, but I think we must have been camped in about the same place. This is a poor scan of a slide and somehow I messed up the saturation years ago when I did the scan. But does this angle look familiar?

Lower Granite Park.

I was a lot younger then, and we made it all the way from the trailhead to Granite park in one day, coming from sea level. It was brutal. But Granite Park was one of the most delightful places I have been.

I went back in 2009 but walked through when the light was especially poor. On the way back to the trailhead, however, I experienced a particularly dramatic sunrise when I was passing Pine Lake.

Sunrise near Pine Lake

[SSSdave]

kpeter, that's is the place! It is nice to know there are a few other Sierra enthusiasts that will camp at exceptionally scenic places they come upon on their day's hiking like this versus most groups that will continue on until they reach some target lake as though lake sides are the only worthy places to camp at. At lower left in your image is part of the small meadow pond. The green and orange turf on the far side is where I worked this image in the feature:



The elevation there is 11030 or about 3700 feet above the trailhead so no wonder you thought that was strenuous. However carrying weight makes a huge difference in how much uphill becomes strenuous. A decade ago, on the first day I managed to reach the meadow above Honeymoon that is 3400 feet and was carrying all my 4x5 gear. Last week with about 12 pounds less at about 58 pounds, it was unpleasant to hike all the way into Dusy Basin that was 2400 feet over 6 miles. That would have been an even greater sunrise experience up where all your orange light was. Granite Park as a world of bright reflective white granite, because it is unblocked for long miles eastward, is one of the finest places in the range to be on uncommon clear sunrises when clouds are about.

wildhiker, as for remembering details, the sooner one does so after a trip, the more one will recall which is of course common sense. Another help is I take more images than are in my features and those images in a visual sequence help my brain recall things one would otherwise have difficulty remembering. That is a prime reason photographs are so valuable as keys into otherwise forever inaccessible past experiences.

A similar thing happens when one revisits exciting places one had hiked through a decade or three before and visual keys allow one to recognize details of familiar locations. One suddenly knows a colorful seep spring with paintbrush and columbine is behind the next bend in the trail. Or one recalls subtle details from 20 years before of the shape and color of some boulder one is now standing on again to cast a lure out from on a lake shore. It is mind boggling the extent of that kind of memory normally hidden down in the subconscious. One of the great mysteries of current science is brain memory and consciousness.

[kpeter]

A similar thing happens when one revisits exciting places one had hiked through a decade or three before and visual keys allow one to recognize details of familiar locations. One suddenly knows a colorful seep spring with paintbrush and columbine is behind the next bend in the trail. Or one recalls subtle details from 20 years before of the shape and color of some boulder one is now standing on again to cast a lure out from on a lake shore. It is mind boggling the extent of that kind of memory normally hidden down in the subconscious. One of the great mysteries of current science is brain memory and consciousness. [/color]

I am glad to find someone else has this experience too! When, sitting at home and not consulting my photographs, I will remember highlights of a trip I did ten years ago, but I will almost certainly not remember many details of the trail itself. But when rehiking the trail, walking down the first 100 yards will bring back to memory what the next 100 yards around the corner are going to be like, etc. And I ask myself "where were those memories stored during the last 10 years!"

Also from lower Granite Park

[Wandering Daisy]

Yes, upper Pine Creek is classic high country. This photo is not as good as SSSDave's, but does show the area in late fall; no flowers, but interesting at sunrise when the ice is on the water.

[rimg]http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg23 ... _small.jpg[/rimg]