California Adventures

I'm going to be heading to California for March break with Cait for a week.  We are planning to travel from San Diego up to San Francisco, stopping along the way to see the sights.  We are going to camp at various spots including Joshua Tree National Park, Redwood State Park and at spots along the coast!  We will be flying from Buffalo to Los Angeles and then flying out of San Jose after our trip is over.

I will also be heading back to California in August to do the annual backpacking trip with Jensen, Kyle and Mike.  We are planning to stop at Yosemite and hike some trails and then do a longer backpacking trip in Ansel Adams Wilderness.  We will be flying into and out of Las Vegas.  This is my first time booking a trip in the Sierra Nevadas, and it is a bit of a pain.  Unlike many other wilderness areas, the ones in California get heavy usage, and so permits are awarded based on a quota system of first come-first serve.  With 30 million people within just a few hours drive, these fill up fast!  Yosemite is apparently booked almost immediately.

I did some research and picked us a spot on the east side of the Sierra Nevadas.  We will travel through part of the John Muir trail, Pacific Crest Trail and will camp for 5 nights in some of the most scenic parts of this mountain range.  The Sierra Nevadas have some towering mountains, including Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the continental U.S at 14,505ft.  We will be a good ways to the north of this, but will still have plenty of mountains to choose from.  We are planning to climb Mount Ritter, the 16th highest in California at just over 13,000ft. I took a shot of a 3D rendering from Google Earth of the area we are planning to stay in Ansel Adams Wilderness.  I love using Google Earth for trip planning, it is really helpful to visualize the terrain!

Mount Ritter is in the background