climbergirl blog

We met at 7am to hike Telescope Peak. I was excited because I just knew I would finally get to bag the peak. Participants were Charles, Mary, Tim (& Doggy), Dennis, and I. The hike is really moderate, and I bet Charles will someday go back and run to the top! It’s about 7 miles total, with approximately 2500 feet of gain. The drive up was fine, very little traffic on the road! Weather was a bit hazy, but it looked like a great day was upon us.

Up at the trailhead, around 9am, we were about to set off when US Forrest Ranger Rick pulls up and promptly tells Tim to go home. No dogs allowed in “undeveloped” forrest land.

We were all upset as we didn’t see any posted signs or have any prior knowledge that the hike up Telescope was part of a National Park! Apparently, the trailhead area is a part of Death Valley National Park. What Tim found out later was that a road is “developed” forrest land, so he *could* have walked the dog up and down the road!

So, Tim heads home and we head up the trail. The hike up was pleasant, with a slight breeze the warm temps felt fine. After about 4 hours of hiking, we gained the peak. Wow! What vistas, on one side, the snow covered Sierras and on the other Badwater. It’s neat to see the lowest and highest point of the US from the same spot!

It was clear enough to see Owens, Olancha, Williamson, Langley, Whitney, Russell, and more. We all stood around at the top gawking at the view, and swatting off flying ant like creatures. There were approximately 14 people out hiking that day, and we all converged for a moment on the summit. We headed back to the car at around 1:45pm.

We got back just fine, and were cruising into Ridgecrest a little after 6pm. We invited folks over to our place for dinner to celebrate my b-day later that night. Rebecca made me a lovely lemon blueberry cake-and Evan graced us with his jovial presence. Charles & Mary brought 4 different Ben & Jerry’s ice creams, so by 9pm we were all stuffed!

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 3rd, 2006 at 11:49 am and is filed under Mountaineering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.