First Summer in the (western) Sierra

Ranger Meadow and Elizabeth Pass from my first backpacking trip in the summer of 2010. Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park.

Being away from California and the Sierra this past summer I did not make it up to the Western Sierra, where I have been going every year since 2010 when I first got my seasonal park ranger gig there in Kings Canyon National Park.


I had never been to the west side of the Sierra before I found that job in Kings Canyon, even though I grew up and lived just 3-4 hours away from the Giant Sequoia groves and the famous national parks that protect them. Like many of my friends I was lucky to be able to visit the east side of the Sierras often over the years, but I never knew what I was missing over on the other side. Of course many people prefer the east side due to its scenic and dramatic beauty, as well as the easy access into the high country it allows. On the west side however, one finds rolling savanna like hills eventually leading to some of the most beautiful groves of large Valley Oaks before the hills get steeper and the oaks start to mix with pines. And eventually as you go up the mountain roads and above 6,000 feet, you reach the mixed conifer forest, the finest forest in the West. Made up of Ponderosa and Geoffrey pines, interspersed with White Firs, Incense Cedars, Black Oaks, Junipers, and in some places, Giant Sequoias. This is where I worked, in the Grant Grove district of Kings Canyon NP. And it was there during that first summer in 2010 when I would go on my first backpacking trip.

I had car camped all over California and Baja up until then, and I had hiked plenty too, but I knew nothing about this other world beyond the day-hike. I was fortunate that first summer to fall into a group and meet a whole new cast of characters and friends, whom I would listen closely to as they spoke of the lore of the "backcountry." Their were magic places up there they assured me, tucked between mountain passes, away from the summer crowds. I yearned to know, heck, I was a ranger working the main visitor center there, I had to know. It is not always easy to get into the backcountry while working a seasonal NPS gig. Contrary to popular belief, we did not get paid to go roam around the trails all day, just part of the day.

Eventually, I was ready to get out there and I found my chance. I was told that every ranger was allotted 2 personal development days to work outside of their district, or to go out into the backcountry, on official reconnaissance of course. I decided to take my two days and link them back to back with my two day weekend to come up with four days. I had four days now to test out my new backpack  and lightweight tent that I had just bought down in Fresno at the REI. I had my gear, I was feeling good, and I was more than ready to find out what all my friends had been talking about. As luck would have it, when things work, sometimes they really work, and there's no better feeling when things start to click into place before a trip. It just so happened that a backcountry ranger, Ranger Cindy, was going back out to her station at Roaring River the same day I was heading out. So she offered to give me a ride to the station on one of her horses. Ranger Cindy was one of only a couple of wilderness rangers that still used 'stock' or horses and mules. I was excited to have the chance to work with a wilderness ranger and to get a lift on a horse part of the way.

I met up with Cindy and her horses and mules over off of a long dirt road at the trailhead. She loaded me up on a fairly young horse that would be leading the stock train. I had not been on any kind of horse or four legged animal in quite some time, and I was a little curious to see how things would go as we rode into the afternoon. At one point we were descending one particularly steep pass as a full moon rose over Deadman Canyon. I was able to pull out my old Nikon N90s and take a shot on horseback. After making it to the station in the dark I found a spot in the station to sleep and rest. The next day I would head out alone over Elizabeth Pass and into the Kings Canyon and Sequoia NP Wilderness. When I woke up, Ranger Cindy was making scrambled eggs. This is a lady who took her young son into the backcountry since he was a little baby, and at that time in 2010 she split her time between her home in Utah and the park, and her son was now a teen and still joining her often into the wilderness each summer. After the eggs, I grabbed my pack and headed out to find my first camp.

Not long after leaving Roaring River station I came upon this view (shown above) of Ranger Meadow. Everything around me and the meadow was literally just glowing green. I was alone, I saw a coyote off in the distance, and I felt like I now knew what my new mountain friends had been talking about. There were places out there where one could feel the vibrations of the earth, under the bright sun, with the granite pass ahead, and only you and what you have in your pack to survive. My first night backpacking I found a campsite above a large lake and had to set me tent up next to some recent bear scat, but due to the rocky terrain there we're not many other options. And the scat appeared to be at least a couple of days old, so I summoned that the bear was probably long gone. I spent that first night there, above a glacial blue lake surrounded by steep granite walls, like some wild ancient amphitheater.

The next day I repacked my gear and started up towards Elizabeth Pass. The pass that Cindy had been telling me about, not so bad to hike she said, but to get over and back down with stock was another story. Horse wrecks were not uncommon in the Sierra, and they can cause some serious damage to gear, people, and horses. Having no horses to worry about this day, and having the entire day to myself, it was good to know that it was my own two legs that would carry me and my pack over the pass. Elizabeth Pass is officially where the boundary lines of Kings Canyon and Sequoia meet, and sits at just about 12,000 feet. After hoofing it up and over the granite steps in the full sun I was thirsty and hot as I hobbled down into the Sequoia side of the barren and rocky pass. And again the universe was smiling down upon me. Not long after coming down I found a clear full creek running into a slot like pool. I quickly filled up my nalgene and drank, and then took off all my gear and jumped in their naked, feeling the ice cold water surround my body, out there on that mountain pass I was again feeling the magic that I had hoped existed.

That was the beginning of a relationship with the Sierra that I still can't get over. The day after my season ended that same year, my friend Jason and I got a ride out to the Florence Lake trailhead from a coworker. From there we would go on a 7-day backpacking trip down the John Muir Trail and through the heart of the Kings Canyon Wilderness. It was truly epic. I was able to work in Kings Canyon for only one more season after that, the following year in 2011. I would not go back to work there again because had I reluctantly took a permanent job with the Santa Monica Mountains NRA, meaning that I would not be able to work at Sequoia and Kings the next summer. However, I would find adventure, great work, and so many amazing and adventurous friends at the SMMNRA too. I would also be able to go back and visit my old friends and my favorite places every year after, except this past one. Just two years ago on one of those trips I got engaged to Magdalena, and that moment has set me on the track that I am now following, far away from California. There are still so many places I would like to explore in Sequoia and Kings Canyon and the Sierra, there are so many adventures to dream up and too many sun filled days out there ahead in time when one can imagine doing nothing better than just wondering around the colossal granite wilderness all day. It can drive one crazy thinking about all that space, all that time. All that being said, South America holds a whole new world for us both to discover together. And those rocks in the Sierra, they're not going any where any time soon.

Southern Sierra

 Montanista Maria Magdalena

Sunset Campground

California Days

What once was, where did the Grizzly and Condor roam, and what did California look like 500 hundred years ago? I find myself always asking these questions, pondering them as I drive up the 99 or down the 101. In this awesome state of ours so much has changed, yet so much remains. In Laura Cunningham's landmark book, A State of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California, the author portrays these old California scenes in her paintings, sketches, and vivid accounts gathered from years of biological investigation and good old ground truthing and researching multiple sources while speaking with native Paiutes and experts in all fields California flora, fauna, history. Her book has inspired in me a desire to investigate and to find those relic populations of vast marshes, antelope herds, Grizzly tunnels, and vanished lakes.

I got to do some of this this past weekend when I spent two days with Jim Lowery of Earth Skills. I have taken a few classes with him now and every time I do I leave with a valuable and tangible experience that helps me to understand and identify with this place in a way I have been yearning to for decades. Over this recent two-day Wilderness Skills course that myself and a father son duo were enrolled in we learned how to build a debris hut (that I slept in, immersed in Jeffrey Pine needles), create cordage from local plants, find food in the forest, and make fire among so much more. Spending time with Jim is like living inside of all of the best field guides for a little while.

After the class I went on down to the foothills where Kern, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura counties all merge. There I was searching for California Condors flying free, and I soon found two soaring over the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge just after I had passed the sign indicating that you are now driving through Condor country. I watched one, then another, most likely a mated pair. They flew high and then dropped low soaring over the canyon side by side probably looking for carrion to feed their chick. Some say that we will forever have to provide carcasses for these birds, but here they are reproducing in the same place where the last wild Condors were trapped to begin the captive breeding program over 20 years ago.

I couldn't stop there, so I drove up the Great Central Valley and then East towards those huge mountains beyond the haze. I was heading for Mineral King in Sequoia National Park, a place I had never been to even though I had worked two summers in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. After making my way up the one lane road to about '7500 elevation I found myself transformed, immediately at ease among that magnificent landscape, removed, as best as it could be from modern times. A truly magical place that was once destined to be a Disney ski resort, and thank the creator it was not to be. Up there the small cabins from the people of the Kaweah who came up from the Valley in the early 1900s still stand. And even more impressive than the history is the lush alpine valley that leads to the high peaks of the Southern Sierra. I explored the White Chief Canyon where mines and caves are spread out all around like gopher tunnels. From there I went up and over to Eagle Lake after losing my way and trekking across loose talus for a good while I finally found the lake. Looking down over it and beyond the tall granite peaks of the Sierra high in the blue sky, a sacred space. I had the place largely to myself besides the Kestrel hovering by White Chief Lake, a Pika guarding White Chief mine, a feisty little chipmunk that couldn't stop bobbing its tail every time it chirped loudly in my direction, and a tiny Calliope Hummingbird buzzed by me while I was delicately making my way across a high ridge as it went from one Columbine flower to the next. In that part of the high country one can still see a California removed, one can still feel a sense of the beauty and immensity that remains.

Land Art

Yesterday I went to see the Ends of the Earth exhibit at the MOCA Geffen which is displaying Land Art through 1974. I've never been a huge fan of so called Land Art, where people do all sorts of things to the earth to create art. If you ask me the truth is always stranger than fiction and to this day my favorite photographers and writers are those that can capture the reality and then expose it to us in a new light. That being said, attending the show was an intense experience and a worthwhile endeavor. I really enjoyed the many sketches of landscape architect Patricia Johanson who in 1969 created many of these way ahead of her time concepts for urban parks and structures like the one in the image below of the terraced living apartment concept. I would love to live there.

Since all I can do is document what I see I wanted to post an image of what I consider art from the landscape. Above is an image of the tufas at Mono Lake 2003.

Art work by Patrica Johanson

Winter Surf Dreaming

I haven't been around for the past two summers due to my two seasonal stints in the mountains. Often many of my amphibian friends would ask me how I'm going to deal with the loss of the summer surfing. I would try not to let on about my true feelings, with my friends or when anyone else  would mention that it must be tough to be a surfer and be away from the ocean, but all I could think was; Yeah, I'm really going to miss the June gloom, small and crowded waves, the throngs of biker clubs racing all over PCH, and all of those people and the trash they leave behind. Also, in the mountains I get little to no news and like it that way, no cell service, and not much internet access. I did have plenty of time however, to mindsurf and prepare for the Fall/ Winter season and for sessions like the one pictured here in late January.

I would just bow my head and say halfheartedly , 'yeah I'm really going to miss those south swells, oh well.'

All photos by Kendall Johnson

Parkies

It was with a heavy heart that I decided not to return to the Sierra this summer to work another season working in Kings Canyon National Park. A better opportunity awaited and I had to take that leap into a full time career but, I sure do miss those mountains.

So with a few days off I headed back to the place where I spent two of the best summers of my life not only to see the beauty but to be amongst friends. The best kind of friends, parkies.

I made many new friends, reconnected with old ones, and was welcomed like a brother by all. We formed a ragtag band of gypsies playing flutes, Bulgarian bagpipes, and whatever else we could find and then joined the annual 4th of July parade in Grant Grove. My new mate Rob and I climbed to the top of Alta peak (11,204 ft) where we could see Mt. Whitney in the distance. It was a much needed retreat and I feel as though I will always have a friend and somewhere to stay up there for a long time to come.

Wild and Scenic: The Kings River

      The Kings River was designated a wild and scenic river in 1987 and 81 miles of the river falls under the protection. The river has carved one of the deepest canyons in the world and shoots through some epic scenery. From pristine high alpine lakes to sharp and steep rocky canyons the river eventually hits Pine Flat Reservoir and Dam before being divided up and sent down to the massive agricultural landscape below.

      The history behind the dam construction is a very interesting one and it actually played a part in the creation of Kings Canyon National Park. The dam's role was such that if Central Valley farmers got their water they would approve a National Park. There's a whole lot more to the story of course, and if one would like to know more about this, you may want to head to an unlikely source. The story of an infamous San Joaquin Valley mega farmer reveals a little about this topic. The King of California: J. G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire by Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman sheds some light on the water battles of the mid 1900's that in some ways helped to create the park. However, the book mainly focuses on the life of the infamous Boswell who as a pioneer in factory farming becomes a super wealthy Agri Giant and in the process environmentally ravages the land he worked and owned. For the rest of the story on Sequoia and Kings Canyon one would have to go to Bill Tweeds Challenge of the Big Trees: A Resource History of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

This year the Kings was raging throughout the entire summer due to the heavy snow pack in the Sierra's. All of the images except one were taken this past summer at different times from May through September.

Nat Geo's new issue contains a superb photo essay on our Wild and Scenic Rivers.

Black Bear

Rizzo Bombs the Sierras

Sector 9 Trailer for "Second Nature" from Colin Blackshear on Vimeo.

Patrick Rizzo: downhill skateboarder, biological technician, wild man, friend.