Watching the Sierra

I'm sitting here wondering what it looks like at 10,000 feet. I know what Fresno looks like right now: It's hazy, dark, wet, cold, unhealthy. Other than that, it's a real garden day out there.

But at 10,000 feet, the sun is shining. So I went online and found the photo above from a Webcam. It's at Tioga Pass in Yosemite National Park. I've been through there many times, but it has been a while since I've been there in winter.

That's because you can't drive the Tioga Road in winter. They don't plow it. I don't blame them. It runs about 45 miles on glacial rubble at 8,000 to 10,000 feet. By far, it's the longest trans-Sierra route in California. It is fabulous and virtually isolated in late December.

So Happy New Year in the high Sierra. We're watching those Web cams.

For the holiday ...

A storm is supposed to dump 4 feet of snow on the Sierra today.

Merry Christmas.

It's not a pointy peak

People think Mount Whitney is a peak with a point. Well, it sort of has a point, but it's mostly flat on top.

That's why I loaded this picture. It was taken from the air. There's a little hut on top. You can barely see it.

That's the hut right behind me in the other photo, which is goofy beyond belief -- the guy in the funky jacket, not the hut.

It may be the highest mountain in the continental U.S., but you don't scale it like it's a pointy peak.

One good reason to live in Fresno

I'm not too subtle sometimes. I really like wonderful outdoor photographs. Whether they're mine or not.

I took the photo above at frozen Huntington Lake. It's at about 7,000 feet across the street -- Highway 168 -- from Sierra Summit, a Sierra ski resort in Central California.

I'm sure it looks like this up there now. When people ask me why I would live in Fresno, I show them photos like this one. This is about 75 minutes from my house. Merry Christmas.

Trail Camp on the way to Whitney

This was the scene up at Trail Camp on the way to Mount Whitney. It's from the 1995 trip.

I didn't bring a tent. Crazy. I wound up bunking with one of my friends in his Boy Scout pup tent, which flapped wildly in the wind at night. Never really slept.

Trail Camp was an abomination. People were everywhere. The tarns were terribly polluted. You can't imagine what I saw on huge mounds of ancient ice. It was like a sewer in one place. That was 13 years ago. I hear it's worse now.

I remember seeing a lone woman who was probably in her mid-50s. Tough lady. Camped and climbed by herself. I'm in my mid-50s now. I wouldn't think of doing that trip alone.

Whtney in '95

I'm still putting together the daily blogs -- the journal, if you will -- from the trip to Mount Mendel. I'm trying to put them in the logical order and parenthetically fill in the gaps that my elevation-addled mind left out.

Meanwhile, I found photos of our '95 excursion to Mount Whitney. I had never slept above 12,000 feet until then.

I took the photo above after we cleared the ice field above Trail Camp. I don't know if the ice is still there or not. Haven't been back since.

But I do remember how it felt at 14,997 feet. Cool and breathless. Incredible views on both sides. I kept my down jacket with me the whole way and it was late August.

I couldn't make my usual stupid remark -- where's the Starbucks -- when we reached the top. I was Starbucks illiterate at that point. There were something like 680 Starbucks locations at the time, none of them in places I frequented.

Now they're getting ready to close down my favorite Starbucks, and I'm thinking about going back to Whitney.

Those magical scenes in Yosemite

I thought the Kenny Karst photo on the last blog item was so stunning that I thought I'd put out another one.

This is one is also in Cooks Meadow at Yosemite National Park with iconic Half Dome in the background.

I've been talking with Kenny on the phone for a few years now. Just met him in Yosemite Valley a couple of weeks ago when I was up there to do a story on the rockfalls at Curry Village.

I suppose I could turn this whole blog into a Yosemite forum. I've been covering the park for the last 15 years. A lot has happened.

Look for more photos from Kenny. I've also got a few shots of the Lyell Glacier in Yosemite. This is not exactly the stuff of Glacial Mystery, but it's pretty cool.