When, and where did it all start?

Grab your bear can or camp chair, kick your feet up and chew the fat about anything Sierra Nevada related that doesn't quite fit in any of the other forums. Within reason, (and the HST rules and guidelines) this is also an anything goes forum. Tell stories, discuss wilderness issues, music, or whatever else the High Sierra stirs up in your mind.
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rlown
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Re: When, and where did it all start?

Post by rlown »

maverick wrote:Rlown wrote "when did it start for you, Mav?".
..
Now yours Rlown.
ok, then..

I was 7, i think. My parents took me camping somewhere up on the June Lakes Loop as we lived in La Crescenta, CA at the time. I caught a 16" brown on an ol' fiberglass rod with a Mitchell 300 reel. I don't remember actually doing it but it was a nice picture.

My parents never backpacked, but my dad liked to hunt and some of those trips allowed exploration.

I joined the boy scouts in ~ `71. Our scoutmaster decided that he liked winter trips, so off to the Salmon Lakes in Tahoe Nat forest we went; canvas tents, cheap sleeping bags, and those ol' external frame packs with the unpadded hip belts. It was cold. So cold, that we bugged out early. I never liked that guy.

His next trip was to near Camp Sacramento; Same gear. It was colder and snowier. My friend and I woke up and saw everyone gone. We found their tracks where they broke into a cabin there to get warm.

His next trip was down to Kirby Cove near the headlands of SF Bay. Now you'd think they came prepared.. Not! My friend and i brought a great tent and plastic to cover it (think fog).

We wake up, and everyone is gone again. We see smoke billowing out of one of the ol' bunkers, and we duck in. There is the scoutmaster and every other scout, hudled around a fire, with the smoke hovering above their heads.

That's when i realized I was done with scouts.

Later, my family spent a couple weeks near Silver Lk on 88. It was beautiful!! I started to think maybe there was more stuff up there to see.

I got my drivers license at 16, and I had some likeminded friends that wanted to backpack. We spent some time at the Berkeley REI, and bought "Sierra North" (great book), and some camptrails backpacks, beefy mountaineer boots (still have them, but they are relics), and good bags. Ordered our maps which came in those triangular cardboard containers in the mail, and poured over them. I mowed lawns to make the money for the gear.

Our first trip was out of Carson Pass over to 4th of july lk. Amazing. We spent the next 4 summers exploring all of the Moke wilderness. An amazing place, except for the ascent up Horse Canyon. That and the western end near Salt springs which is snake infested.

It was mostly about mileage and places back then. I didn't realize until about 18 that I should be fishing (doh). I was fishing for striper and sturgeon in the bay area the whole time, but then I started to see the fish up there. I (and they) were hooked.

After that we moved on to Emigrant, which was nice. I thought Yose valley was pretty, but too many people. Then, I found Tioga pass. Fell in love with the venue.

After all that, I never looked back. I feel free up there, and only got away with 2-3 trips a year.

Russ
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balzaccom
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Re: When, and where did it all start?

Post by balzaccom »

My dad was a California State Park Ranger, so I spent my very first summer in a cabin at Donner Lake. And just about every summer since, if I was in the country, I took time to get up into the mountains. Back-packed through high school and college. Worked at a summer camp during college outside of Yosemite, car-camped when the kids were small. Car-camped when the kids were big and didn't want to hike that much.

Now that we're empty nesters, we are back on the trails again, and loving every minute of it.
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Re: When, and where did it all start?

Post by Timberline »

Great thread, everyone!
In my case, my dad was a capable woodsman and hunter who built his own cabin when he was 18; however he died when I was 8 years old, so in 1950 we moved to California. In those days, you could get an extended camping permit in state parks, so I spent my whole first summer in California living in Samuel P. Taylor Park in Marin County, catching crawdads in Lagunitas Creek, exploring redwood groves, and having a nightly campfire at the doorstep of our trailer with any other kids who happened to be there with their families, too. Later, living across the Bay, I joined Boy Scouts and spent two summer vacations at Wolfeboro on the Stanislaus River. I had an excellent, dedicated Scoutmaster who understood fatherless kids like me, and those days were times of wonder for me in lots of ways. We backpacked overnight up Highland Creek, and from then on I wanted to be in the wilderness as often as I could muster it. Later in high school, two buddies, bless 'em, made it possible with a car and weekend or summer fishing trips to the Carson Pass region. I was lucky enough while in college to find summer jobs with the Forest Service that paid me to go backpacking in the Sierra backcountry. So, when and where did it all start? I'd have to say, every time I've taken that first step on the trail, any trail, it has started again.
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Re: When, and where did it all start?

Post by markskor »

High school sophomore - (private Catholic school), late 60’s…newly transplanted family, now living San Fernando Valley (L.A.) from Ohio, and had never even thought about backpacking before - ever.
One of the school’s brothers/teachers (actually, the art teacher there) proposed a summer 5-week segmented backpacking adventure - a JMT trip (whatever that was?)...~$100/head, with all backpacks (Kelty Tiogas), (red)tube tents, sleeping bags, and all food provided – organized it too.

Sounded like a lot of work, but as he was my first art teacher, I raised my hand. The $100 would have to come from my paper route earnings but the boots I could not afford. I had to rely that my parents (who had never backpacked at all before either and were skeptical)- hoped they would get me a good pair of boots…Redwing Voyagers.
As I remember, 10 of us started out Yosemite Valley, and the plan was to trade packs and bags with the next shuttled-up group (another 10) at Reds...
After 1st leg, a few students had not showed/ dropped out last minute, (you know how that story goes), and since food was already pre-packaged/sorted for the next week for 10, they asked if anyone from the first week wanted to continue on another week for free.

Long story short - 5 weeks later at Whitney, I was hooked.
First backpacking trip = JMT = $100, plus the cost of boots...best money my parents ever spent on me.

BTW, thanks Brother E!
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Re: When, and where did it all start?

Post by Carne_DelMuerto »

Summer of '94 a good friend joined me on the final leg of my cross-country trip with the intention of introducing me to backpacking. After a warm-up trip in the Sangre de Cristo mountains in New Mexico, we headed to the Grand Canyon. Waking up to the sunrise on the edge of Horseshoe Mesa and I was hooked.
grandcanyon_1994.jpg
I grew up skiing, fishing, and car-camping in the Sierra Nevada a good amount, but I didn't start backpacking there until a few years after the Grand Canyon when my same friend and I did an early season (April) trip to Hamilton Lakes. Valhalla impressed us both and I wanted more Sierra trips. A few years after that we headed to Seven Gables Lakes and I was sold...the otherworldly environment calls to me.
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Re: When, and where did it all start?

Post by giantbrookie »

It started with family trips, which my dad led. I'm thinking the first trip to the Sierra might have been 1965 and would have been car camping (Tuolumne Meadows) and dayhiking--somewhere in the 1965-1966 range is a climb or at least an attempt on Mt. Hoffman. My first backpacking trip was in fall 1967 (I'm thinking probably October) to Pear Lake out of Wolverton and a climb of Alta Peak. This was just me and my dad and it set the stage for an ever escalating "trip of the year" that kept getting harder until our climactic trips in 1979 (2 day trip Lone Pine Pk, Irvine, Mallory, LeConte; latter in 2nd day w hike out and drive home) and 1980 (Split and Prater in 2 days via Taboose) but kept quite strong until at least 1988 (my dad celebrated 60th with a 3 day trip to do Seven Gables).

Without a doubt I owe the whole Sierra thing to my dad. As an unathletic young kid, I somehow had the tenacity for hiking and the like and I really enjoyed it. There was nothing I looked forward to more than those summer trips. This obsession crept into what I thought of as my 'dream girl'--a girl who would go backpacking with me. This didn't happen for me until 1981, the year after my senior year at Bezerkley, and that one only lasted one trip (LLV Treasure Lakes and climb of Mt Dade) although that trip ended up leading to a friend of mine marrying my cousin. I had a run with another girl from 1983-1986 (several trips a year), but it was Judy (my wife) who took things to another level starting in 1986. The sheer numbers of trips and days spent in the High Sierra went to a level it had never been at. This included longer and more difficult backpacking trips than I had ever attempted, the best of which were just me and Judy. During the years from 1981 onward, fishing gradually replaced peak bagging as my main reason for going to the High Sierra and my poor dad had but one trip a year reserved for him (my mom, fortunately, demanded that I do this one trip with him)--the annual strenuous peak bagging trip which we did around the time of his birthday. This kept up until his last moderately hard trip (Mt. Tom) in 1991, after which his hip, originally damaged in 1977 on a fall on Mt Goddard, really shut him down for backpacking, with the first sign of kryptonite rearing up in 1992 as we backpacked off trail to Burro Lakes above Lundy Canyon. He did his last backpack with me in 1995 and with it climbed his last 14,000er (Langley). Taking a year off in 1996 as a result of a massive heart attack and septuple bypass surgery, he bounced back to climb Gibbs with me and Judy in 1997 and did his very last Sierra peak, a climb of Dicks Peak with me and Judy in 1998 (hike in which Judy and I first tasted mackinaw success at Gilmore) about a year and a half before his death of pancreatic cancer in early 2000.

In any case my Sierran obsession started with my dad. I hope that the trips Judy and I take Dawn (5) and Lee (to turn 9 in April) will be as magical for them. They've been on one backpacking trip each of the last 3 summers and multiple dayhikes and car camping trips each year. Almost daily Dawn will look up at the mountains and say "Daddy, can we go to the mountains?" Lee will actually mention that fact that his absurdly heavy school pack (what on Earth to they make kids put in their packs these days, anyway?) helps get him in shape for backpacking.
Since my fishing (etc.) website is still down, you can be distracted by geology stuff at: http://www.fresnostate.edu/csm/ees/facu ... ayshi.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: When, and where did it all start?

Post by Ozark Flip »

giantbrookie:
It started with family trips, which my dad led
Same here GB. I grew up horse packing with family. I was raised on a rather large farm (just shy of 500 acres) with both dairy and horse businesses. We had around 15-25 horses at any given time, always buying, selling and trading. We broke horses, bred horses, shoed horses, and even showed horses. We were also big with the rodeo circuits. My father packed horses for hunting trips primarily and I starting going on these trips before I could even shoot a large caliber rifle. Just to hang with the big boys and tell big boy stories. What “hooked” me was the remoteness and feeling of solitude, a feeling that not many people have seen this or done this.

Neat stories,

Flip
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Re: When, and where did it all start?

Post by John Dittli »

long ago in a place far, far away
FIRST TRIP corrected.jpg
Actually, started in the Marble Mountain Wilderness (Pop would never go to the Sierra "to crowded")

First trip in the Sierra would have been the TY trail with a few neighborhood friends. We were 13-14 and unsupervised for three weeks. Some how managed to pull it off.
YB 3.jpg
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Re: When, and where did it all start?

Post by Pulpit »

Growing up in New Jersey, it started with friends as teenagers with weekend car camping trips with dayhikes off the sandy backroads of the Pine Barrens National Preserve, with occasional trips up to the "mountains" near the Delaware Water Gap in the NW corner of the state. These trips were usually organized by a friend from my childhood neighborhood, who is 12 or 13 years older than myself and my usual gang of friends. Growing up in the suburban flatlands outside of Philadelphia I give him all the credit to opening my eyes up to the wonders of the outdoors. My parents were not overly outdoorsy folks outside of my father's occasional pheasant hunting trips in Maryland where he grew up.

As we got older and our horizons started to expand, we decided to try our hand at a 4 day backpacking trip and picked the northern half of the Appalachian Trail in Smoky Mountains NP for the pilot journey. 5 of us made the journey, woefully understocked on food, but still had a great time and that trip unequivocally whet our appetites for backpacking. Many trips, mostly 3-4 nighters, up and down most every state of the Appalachians, came to pass in the years to come.

My brother then moved to San Diego for work about 8 years ago, which opened up the possibilities of affordable and logistically uncompromising trips to CA. My first trip to the Sierras was a 3 nighter out of TM out over Cathedral Pass to a little lake where we set up a base camp along Matthes Crest and did day hikes. I was "in love" with the experience of the High Sierra to say the least. We have done two more trip since the first, Big Pine Lakes and the 1000 Island Lake area of the AA Wilderness and now the lust has grown to the point where it will take many obstacles to deny us a yearly trip to the Sierras. It looks as if this year's trip is going to be in the Emigrant Wilderness somewhere.

I'd love to retire to the Bishop area someday and live out the golden years hiking and trout fishing in the Eastern Sierra.
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Re: When, and where did it all start?

Post by East Side Hiker »

My infatuation began when I was 11 and, as a Boy Scout, we did the JMT. I've done it 6 more times since then. Not to mention all the years thereafter as a wilderness ranger, peak bagger, and general adventurer.
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