Sleeping Beneath the Stars
Jul. 20th, 2021 01:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerEldorado National Forest, California
Friday, 16 Jul 2021. 10pm.
After hiking to the fire lookout atop Bunker Hill— the one at over 7,500' in Eldorado National Forest, not the one in Boston— we drove across the Crystal Basin area to the vicinity of Wrights Lake.
As the crow flies it was a distance of about 15 miles— we could see Wrights Lake at the foot of the Crystal Mountain range clearly from the peak— but in the car it was a drive of about 30 miles as we wound around mountains, ridges, and lakes. Then, once there, we had to find a campsite.
There was good news and bad news on camping. The bad news was all the developed camps were full. We know; we checked several of them. And this was on a Friday, before the leave-after-work crowd had arrived. Earlier in the day a ranger advised us most of the sites were already full from Thursday night, with people staying through multiple days. "Revenge travel" is definitely a thing now. People are looking to get out again after Covid lockdowns have lifted. And indoors activities still carry some risk, so people are going all-out on the great outdoors.
Anyway, said it was good news/bad news. The bad news was all the developed campsites were full. The good news was we didn't need a developed campsite. We came ready to rough it.
Hawk finishes setting up our tent under a copse near a meadow 100' back from the forest road
In the national forests there's a practice called dispersed camping. You just pick a spot and camp there. There are rules to it. For example, you can't camp within 1 mile of a developed use area, within 150' of a stream, or in designated sensitive areas. And right now you can't have a fire except in a fire ring at a developed campsite. Fire danger is real— we know because we saw one this evening!
We found a nice little spot a few miles out the road from Wrights Lake. We parked our SUV in a gravelly pull-off (another one of the rules of dispersed camping is that you must park off the road) and toted our tent to a spot about 150' away underneath a stand of trees at the edge of a meadow. While we could still hear cars traveling the road we were far enough back to have some privacy.
While Hawk finished setting up the tent I cooked dinner
Hawk and I started setting up the tent together. Assembling the poles and threading them through the stays in the fabric is best done as a two-person job. Then I left her to finish the rest, including carrying our bedrolls out from the car, while I set up our camp kitchen and cooked dinner. I did the cooking next to the car to keep the food smells that might attract bears away from our tent. Also, it was easier not lugging all the cooking gear and food 150' away.
For dinner we ate hot dogs with tortilla chips and guacamole. The hotdogs we brought from home; the guac we picked up fresh-made at a grocery store this morning. I washed it all down with two bottles of beer while we sat on folding camp chairs beneath the darkening night sky next to our tent.
I stayed out until about 10pm, watching the stars come out. We walked out into the meadow next to us to get a clearer view. Even early in the evening there were so many stars out. It's amazing what the difference is when there's no light pollution. I would've taken some night-sky pictures but I'm still beat from our hikes earlier today. I'm going to hit my bedroll and try to get well rested for a big hike tomorrow in the Desolation Wilderness.
Friday, 16 Jul 2021. 10pm.
After hiking to the fire lookout atop Bunker Hill— the one at over 7,500' in Eldorado National Forest, not the one in Boston— we drove across the Crystal Basin area to the vicinity of Wrights Lake.
As the crow flies it was a distance of about 15 miles— we could see Wrights Lake at the foot of the Crystal Mountain range clearly from the peak— but in the car it was a drive of about 30 miles as we wound around mountains, ridges, and lakes. Then, once there, we had to find a campsite.There was good news and bad news on camping. The bad news was all the developed camps were full. We know; we checked several of them. And this was on a Friday, before the leave-after-work crowd had arrived. Earlier in the day a ranger advised us most of the sites were already full from Thursday night, with people staying through multiple days. "Revenge travel" is definitely a thing now. People are looking to get out again after Covid lockdowns have lifted. And indoors activities still carry some risk, so people are going all-out on the great outdoors.
Anyway, said it was good news/bad news. The bad news was all the developed campsites were full. The good news was we didn't need a developed campsite. We came ready to rough it.
Hawk finishes setting up our tent under a copse near a meadow 100' back from the forest road
In the national forests there's a practice called dispersed camping. You just pick a spot and camp there. There are rules to it. For example, you can't camp within 1 mile of a developed use area, within 150' of a stream, or in designated sensitive areas. And right now you can't have a fire except in a fire ring at a developed campsite. Fire danger is real— we know because we saw one this evening!
We found a nice little spot a few miles out the road from Wrights Lake. We parked our SUV in a gravelly pull-off (another one of the rules of dispersed camping is that you must park off the road) and toted our tent to a spot about 150' away underneath a stand of trees at the edge of a meadow. While we could still hear cars traveling the road we were far enough back to have some privacy.
While Hawk finished setting up the tent I cooked dinner
Hawk and I started setting up the tent together. Assembling the poles and threading them through the stays in the fabric is best done as a two-person job. Then I left her to finish the rest, including carrying our bedrolls out from the car, while I set up our camp kitchen and cooked dinner. I did the cooking next to the car to keep the food smells that might attract bears away from our tent. Also, it was easier not lugging all the cooking gear and food 150' away.
For dinner we ate hot dogs with tortilla chips and guacamole. The hotdogs we brought from home; the guac we picked up fresh-made at a grocery store this morning. I washed it all down with two bottles of beer while we sat on folding camp chairs beneath the darkening night sky next to our tent.
I stayed out until about 10pm, watching the stars come out. We walked out into the meadow next to us to get a clearer view. Even early in the evening there were so many stars out. It's amazing what the difference is when there's no light pollution. I would've taken some night-sky pictures but I'm still beat from our hikes earlier today. I'm going to hit my bedroll and try to get well rested for a big hike tomorrow in the Desolation Wilderness.
