Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Alaska Travelog #19
Now getting dinner - Mon, 17 Jun 2024, 7pm

We reached our turnaround point on the trail to the Harding Ice Field just before 4pm. It's not that it was too late in the afternoon to continue; there'd still be more than 7 hours of daylight plus 2 hours of dusk. It's that to go further really would have benefited from snow/ice equipment and we were too exhausted to fake it. So we did the safe thing, the thing recommended by the ranger anyway, and turned back.



The way down on out-and-back trails can become a forgettable thing. You've already seen all the sights, now it's just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other 5,000 times. So it helps to remind oneself, In Beauty I Walk. And it helps when nature is stinkin' beautiful with constant panoramic views.



We do still have to walk those thousands of steps, though, so we can't stop constantly for pictures. Though it does serve a dual purpose of letting us rest our aching legs. 😅



Well, actually, our legs weren't aching while we were still up here. It was about halfway down the relentless descent that our knees and toes were crying out for mercy.

We made it back to our car at 5:45pm and then to town around 6:15. We went straight to dinner.

North Las Vegas Travelog #17
Desert National Wildlife Refuge - Mon, 19 Feb 2023, 5pm

I wrote two blogs before this one about driving the Mormon Well Road. It's an unpaved 4x4 route that crosses 40 miles through the Sheep Range Mountains of Desert National Wildlife Refuge. We tackled it in our rented Toyota Rav4— a vehicle that I didn't think terribly much of on the pavement. Would it handle the 4x4 route okay?

At first it seemed like the answer was Yes, it would handle the route just fine. I had already checked recent posts on a wheeling website as well as asked at the ranger station in the morning. Both indicated the trail was in fine shape for 4x4s with a bit of extra ground clearance. Indeed, the first nearly 20 miles of the trail were fairly well graded gravel. Then it got tough. And by tough I mean muddy.



As the trail neared its crest of 6,683 ft. (2,037 meters) the gravel surface ended. What a place to stop with the gravel— pretty much at the snow line! And since the snow had fallen several days earlier (remember that storm that screwed up my day getting to Vegas on Tuesday?) it was now melting and forming puddles of mud.

The mud started out patchy at first. It seemed like just one stretch to get through, and I could avoid most of it by staying to one side of the road as I drove. But then that one stretch was followed by another, and another, and then more. And soon the mud spread across the whole trail. I was driving with two wheels up on the berm at the side of the trail most of the time, dodging trees and bushes while trying to keep two wheels out of the goop.

It was tough going. I used all my 4x4 skills, picking lines, maintaining speed, avoiding digging in with tire spin, and steering into the many skids as the vehicle bucked back and forth in the mud. Meanwhile the Rav4 was doing yeoman's work. The AWD selector offered a "Mud and Sand" mode which I engaged, suspicious it was mostly a button for show, but it really delivered the goods. There were at least two spots where I thought we were surely stuck, but between my resolve and the Rav4's unwillingness to quit, we got through.



We pulled aside at the trail's crest. The mud looked a little easier going downhill ahead. Of course, it looked a lot easier coming up before we really got into it!



This is what our vehicle looked like at this point on the journey. I'm only surprised there wasn't more mud on it!

As we were getting ready to continue onward, another 4x4er came up the trail from the opposite direction. Driving a heavily modified Jeep Wrangler he was surprised we'd gotten up here "in this". He meant the Rav4, not the mud. But also the mud, I guess. Anyway, the other driver had good news for us: the route down was less muddy than what we'd already gotten through. Plus, I figured, driving gently downhill in mud is easier than driving gently uphill; the pull of gravity helps with maintaining forward momentum.

The second 20 miles of the offroad trek passed subjectively much faster than the first 20. This is the phenomenon I've warned about when hiking back out on a trail. You feel you've been there, done that, seen everything. You focus on putting one foot in front of the other, at the risk of sort of sleep-walking through half the trek. Here, our adrenaline was spent from slogging through the mud. We had already seen plenty of the scenery, too. Now we were focused on getting back on time— and continuing to not get stuck.

As we crossed over the last ridge coming down out of the mountains we started playing a game of how far the road was. "I can see what looks like a building, it's probably 8 miles," said Hawk. "Now I can see tractor-trailers on the road, it can't be more than 2 miles," I countered. Soon enough we were back on pavement. We turned South and headed back to Vegas.



Once we got back to Vegas we looked for two things before returning the car: gas and car wash.

I thought we'd need a self-wash place to really knock all the mud off the car. Hawk suggested we try automated wash first. I agreed. It predictably got... most... of the exterior clean but did nothing about all the mud caked inside the wheel wells, the wheels, and around the suspension.

So next we found a self-wash place. It was much cheaper than those in our area back home. We started with $3 because that's the minimum back home for about 3 minutes. Here in Vegas $1 bought 3 minutes. We dropped all $3 in, and I got busy with the pressure hose. 9 minutes of heavy spraying was just enough to knock all the dirt off so you'd be hard pressed to figure out how much mud we drove through.

We parked next to one of the vacuums at the self-wash place to repack our suitcases and change into street clothes before returning to the airport. At first felt a bit self-conscious about changing clothes in a parking lot, but let's just say that self-wash garages tend to be in... not the most discerning... parts of town. Basically we were in the slums. We weren't bothering anybody, so nobody bothered us. Then, with the car sparkling clean and us back in our fancy clothes, we were ready to drive past the gleaming high-rise casino hotels to the airport for our flight back home.

This morning we got some snow in the Bay Area. That alone is not so unusual. What is unusual is where it fell.

Usually a few times each winter there's snow on the higher inland peaks around the region, above 3,000' - 3,500' elevation. On a cold morning after rain the day before I can look southeast toward San Jose's Mt. Hamilton and see snow at the top. This morning there was snow in the coast range mountains, and it was a lot lower down than elev. 3,000'.



This pic I snapped on the way back from lunch shows the view from an intersection in Cupertino. There's significant patchy snow up in the coast range mountains, and it's fairly low down. I estimate the snow in the pic above is below 1,000' elevation.

In 25+ years of living here I don't think I've ever seen snow in the coast range mountains. Although they get way more precipitation than the mountains to the east of us due to their proximity to the ocean, they're also kept warmer in the winter by the moderating temperatures of the Pacific Ocean.

This weird winter weather isn't limited to the SF Bay Area. I heard on radio news yesterday that there's a blizzard warning for Los Angeles. A blizzard, in Los Angeles!

...Now, the catch was that it's not the City of Los Angeles, which is almost entirely right down at sea level, but Los Angeles County. LA County includes mountains that reach to 10,000'. Interstate 5 crests over 4,000' in the Grapevine north of the area. State roads wind through the mountains at up to 6,000'. Those are the areas that had severe weather warnings.

Today is the long road home as we travel from Harrisburg, PA to Sunnyvale, CA. This morning at my inlaws' house just outside Harrisburg we awoke to a dusting of snow!



Snow is uncommon this time of year in this area. Just 100 miles north it's more common. When I attended college about 200 miles north of here we'd get the first snow of the season looking like this by the end of September!

This also reminded me how long it's been since I've stepped in snow. It doesn't snow at all at my house; the forecast today has a high of 70! So experiencing snow is something I have to travel for. And with travel reduced the past 21 months because... well, you know why... the last time I set foot in snow was 2½ years ago— ironically on the second day of summer while hiking in the Grouse Lakes Basin.



To be fair I didn't actually step in/on snow here. The pre-dawn lows only barely hit freezing, so snow melted right away on the sidewalk and driveway. There was a fun coating atop our car at 8am, as you can see above.

Right now were at Washington National Airport (DCA) awaiting the first leg of our flight home. The drive down here from Harrisburg was easy, 120 miles in 2 hours. We allowed extra time in our schedule in case there was traffic in the morning. The downside of not needing that that extra time for the drive is that we have to spend it waiting in the airport terminal. Our flight doesn't depart until 12:50, by which point we'll have been here almost 3 hours.