Fourth of July Trip Canceled 😞

We made a decision to cancel our travel plans for the Fourth of July weekend. We were going to drive up to northern California and spend 4 days hiking in the Trinity mountains near Mt. Shasta. Now we'll stay home instead. I've even given up Friday as a PTO day. I'll work on Friday instead. 😢

We made this decision on Sunday, when we were home and resting up after our long day-and-a-half trip to the Sierras. It wasn't because we were too tired to take another trip so soon, though I was really tired on Sunday. I rolled into that Sierras trip less than 24 hours after coming home from a business trip and I was feeling ragged on Sunday. No, the reason was weather. Weather.

No, it's not that the weather's going to be cold or shitty (or both). Summer weather is predictably warm and sunny in Northern California. The problem is the opposite— it's going to be too warm and sunny. Look at those temps on the four days we'd be out hiking (Thu-Sun), with highs running well over 100° F! (For those outside the US, 108° F is about 42° C.)

Yeah, those temperature figures are for Yreka, the town where we'd be staying in a hotel. Weather up in the mountains at ~7,000' elevation where we'd be hiking would generally be cooler by 10-12° F. But still, temps in the mid to high 90s are not ideal for hiking. Especially not for physically demanding hikes climbing mountains.

It's a bummer canceling these plans. Even though I do find make plenty of opportunities to travel and do things I enjoy, I'm always looking for more opportunities. The challenge, of course, is balancing fun times with needing to work for a living. In that sense a holiday weekend is such an easy opportunity with free time away from work I feel like I'm squandering it, like I'm failing to step up and take what's mine. Thus Hawk and I did not come to this decision easily. We debated it and came to the decision reluctantly. But as we've asked ourselves since Sunday (it's now Tuesday) if we made the right call, our confidence has grown as the weather forecast has gotten even more extreme. 🥵

Are we being wusses? That's a question we've asked ourselves several times as part of our debate. We didn't used to cancel plans because of hot weather. But now we've done it at least twice in recent years. (The other time I'm thinking of is when we canceled a trip to Eastern Washington when the temperatures were so hot roads were melting.) Sadly, increasingly extreme hot weather is becoming increasingly more common with climate change. Yeah, we didn't used to cancel trips over weather. But worse weather is a new normal now.

What'll we do instead? We'll stay home. It's going to be hot here, too. Our local forecast has highs in the mid to high 90s. But instead of climbing mountains in those temperatures we'll hang out by the pool all day. Except Friday, when I'm working. 😢

Atop Fresno Dome & Back Down

On Saturday the second half of our hiking two-fer in the Sierra Nevada mountains near Oakhurst was Fresno Dome. I already posted part 1 of 2 of the hike, us getting to the first vista of Fresno Dome. From there we steeled ourselves for the ascent to the summit.



On the one hand the trail to the summit is not that steep. I mean, I've done worse. On the other hand, it is steep. And it's up, up, up. Thankfully it's short, maybe a bit over 1/4 mile. But man, is that the longest quarter mile. Knowing the views that await us at the top helped keep us going. Plus, we didn't come this far to quit early.



We had the summit of Fresno Dome mostly to ourselves. There were one other pair of hikers there. Fortunately, like us, they we relatively quiet, talking gently between themselves about life in general— a thing that one tends to think of when surrounded by 360° views like this.



The smoke in the area from a wildfire 50 miles away near Fresno kept the view from being as amazing as they should have been. But they were still inspiring.  On a clearer day you can see all the way down into the Central Valley from up here. Looking west, as the camera is pointed in the picture above, the next taller peak than Fresno Dome is Mt. Fuji. In Japan. 6,000 miles away.



Soon enough it was time to head down the mountain. We left the summit a bit after 4pm having worked out a schedule: We'd be back to the car around 4:30 and down the mountain to Oakhurst by 5:30. We'd stop in town for dinner somewhere delicious, aim to hit the road again by 6:15, and with a stop to stretch our legs in Los Banos in the middle of the rest of the drive home— and probably treat ourselves to ice cream there— we'd be home at 10pm. That would even leave us time for a soak in the hot tub after unloading the car, as the pool is open 'til 11pm Fri/Sat.

Updates (3): Dinner was absolutely delicious. A number of new restaurants seem to have opened in Oakhurst since last year, so it's no longer the dining desert it used to be. We did, in fact, stop for ice cream in Los Banos. It was also delicious. And we did get home just before 10pm but were too tired to use the hot tub until Sunday evening.

But before we did any of that— well, after we got back to our car but before we got down to Oakhurst— we caught an interesting view of Fresno Dome from the forest road.

Watch on YouTube

From atop Fresno Dome it's hard to get a sense of how high you are above the valley. Mostly you're looking at other peaks. Then from down here it's like, "Whoa, that's a tall mountain!"

In beauty I walk.