Trip Date: May 24, 2013
This is week two of what I hope is three straight weekends camping. Several of the boys (Ken, Tom, Vince, and Bill) headed up to Monitor Pass yesterday where I will meet them today. I left the house by 8:00 after minimal preparation since the truck was still mostly packed from last weekend’s trip to Lindsey Lake with Kristen. I rarely unload the truck immediately after trips, other than the ice chest – and even that may not get done for a day or two. Otherwise, I am usually too tired or just plain don’t wanna, and I leave it until I feel up to it. There is always a tinge of sadness with another trip having come to an end and not unloading eases that disappointment. It is bittersweet coming home – glad to be home safe and somewhat sound and to be back with Kristen and the kitties, but I love these trips and, although we fully expect to have another trip, and another soon after that one, we are now old enough to know it ain’t always gonna be so.
This morning, I felt something like my youthful self – coming home from one party only to freshen up a tad before heading off to another. This never happened in college, but I remember once Gabe and I were up in the woods cutting firewood and spent the night rather than driving down the hill with a full load after having gotten after it all day. When we got home, there was a message from Ken that he was heading up to Cherokee Bar for the night, so with a twinkle in our eye and a spasm in our loin, we unloaded the wood, resupplied the wagon, and shot back up the hill for another night of keeping Ken company. Such boyish exuberance.
On this morn, Highway 50 heading East had very little traffic and I was turning onto Mormon Emigrant Trail in Pollock Pines within an hour. I wanted to stop at the old Iron Mountain Ski Resort which is just before Mormon Emigrant dumps into Highway 88. The elevation of the ski resort is about 7400’ and the views North of Pyramid Peak and Desolation Wilderness and East towards Kirkwood Ski Resort are spectacular. Iron Mountain has been closed for many years now and neglect, vandalism, and the weather have taken their toll. Most buildings remain; however, roofs are caved in, windows are broken, and all of the interiors have been trashed. A large section of the roof of the motel or dormitory housing has caved in, yet much of that structure is still intact. Another large building burned to the ground, leaving mounds of twisted metal and charred remains. The building interiors are a little creepy, but from the outside, you can still feel the excitement and happiness of skiers and children playing in the snow, and all the young kids having a great time working at a ski resort. The air is very clean and the breeze, common at higher elevations, is refreshing. The massive steel ski lifts, towers, cables, and even some chairs remain in waiting – either to be brought back to life or to have the demolition and removal completed; perhaps the landscape will someday return to some semblance of its prior state.
I was assisting this process by removing some of the beautifully weathered Cedar shingles off one of the buildings. My friend Bob and I had stopped at the ski resort last year on our way to Risue Canyon – a few more hours East along the Nevada border. We had a beverage and peeked inside and up and down each structure to see what we could see. I had been imagining some of these shingles being used to make a small roof over a new brick mail box structure I wanted to build at my house so I had kept a stop like this in mind. Now was the time since I was alone and could take my time. I had a hammer, two small pry bars, and a big black plastic garbage bag and perhaps a beverage or two for medicinal purposes.
I received confirmation that this was a good thing to do as I approached the parking area. Someone had pulled aside one of the boulders blocking access to the buildings, allowing me to drive right up to the one I wanted to work on. Unfortunately, in the year between being here with Bob, someone had removed 80 percent of the shingles from this building and apparently burned them in the road just outside. Fortunately, on the back side of the building, several walls had collapsed with most of the shingles intact. It was real easy pickings as I didn’t even need my tools, I just pried the bottom row of shingles up from the bottom of the plywood wall and they popped right off. Unfortunately, this side of the building didn’t get much sun, and so the shingles didn’t have that weathered cinnamon/orange rusty color that is so classic of many wooden buildings still surviving in the Old West. I filled my plus-sized baggy nonetheless, like a teenager trick-or-treating, and after poking around a little, and having a celebratory beverage, I was back on the road. Soon I was passing Silver and Caples lakes before ascending to Carson Pass at about 8600’.
In another hour or so I was climbing up Highway 89 to Monitor Pass. The top of Monitor is actually two humps, with the Eastern-most hump actually being Monitor Pass at about 8314’. As you crest the top of the first/Western-most hump, there are dirt roads leading to the left and the right of Highway 89. Although I have explored much of the area accessed by the road to the North, we have camped many times in several different spots down this South-side road. There are patches of BLM and private land, but it is mostly Toiyabe National Forest (now called Humboldt-Toiyabe NF) on the Bridgeport Ranger District.
On this particular trip, the boys had set up camp in a place we call the Aspen Grove. It is less than a mile below Highway 89 down a rough/high-clearance, but two-wheel drive road, just past the pond. I believe if push came to shove, this spot is technically on private property, but it is very near patches of BLM land and Forest Service land as well. In this era, there are very few people up here and very little activity and therefore, little need for such delineations. There is barbed wire fencing throughout the area, but it has come down in many places and no longer serves a purpose. They do still graze sheep seasonally up here, but not to such an extent that the fencing is still needed. The Aspen Grove sits along the road on the slope of a wide open valley, with views of the Sierras to the West, the sage covered valley spreading out below to the South, and, as you can imagine, a ring of Aspen and Juniper trees that frame the site.
I got to the spot before noon and was happy to see the boys still in camp. I had some real good tunes playing in the truck and they now spilled out into the camp. I was happy to have arrived so early and to have commandeered my shingles from the ski resort and was super excited to join the gang. I was raring to go, so I suggested we drive up to the top; an extraordinary camp spot with off-the-chart views, solitude, and positive vibes. Tom is our resident Manhattan tender, a skill he has improved over the years to such an extent that they are now expected and excellence is insisted upon. An offer was made and accepted, and before I could get to emptying my gear from the back seat of the truck, I had a beverage in hand and was sipping a most excellent concoction of Rye Whiskey, bitters, and Tom’s special cherries…
Shortly thereafter we were off, with another shot from my flask for good luck. Across the sage valley where once many vehicles got stuck; up the other side past another spot where many had gathered for a dual 40th birthday blow-out, then up through the woods on a pretty rough 4-wheel drive road. Finally exiting the Red Fir forest, past another pond in a small valley, we came to this camp spot – just a great, protected little dell, surrounded by Mountain Mahogany and Mountain Juniper, and lots of cool rock outcroppings. There were many wildflowers and black, orange, and yellow lichen on the rocks. However, this micro detail was almost completely overlooked as we scrambled up the rocks to get the massive views to the West and South of the Sierras – Carson, Ebbetts, and Sonora Passes filling our heads.
Monitor Pass is a very interesting place because you are East of the Sierras, yet you still feel like you are in them because they are very near and you are on top of a mountain at about 8000’. Monitor has large Jeffrey Pines on the West side at the lower elevations, but as you ascend, you definitely feel more like you are in the much drier Nevada Basin and Range country. It is very open dry, rock and sage-covered landscapes in the valleys and steep jagged north-south mountain ranges dotted with Jeffrey and Pinyon Pine, Juniper, and Aspen up top. We enjoyed the view and reminisced about several times we had stayed at this spot and tried to figure out what we were looking at and exactly where the passes are.
After a celebratory beverage, we loaded back up into the truck and followed the road further West, over the crest and down into the valley below. This was also probably a two-wheel drive road, but it also was rough and rocky, and I wouldn’t have gone down it if I didn’t have four-wheel drive to get out if need be. There really wasn’t much down there, so we eventually found a spot to turn around and came back up. By the time we got back to the Aspen Grove camp spot, I was wasted. I had absolutely nothing to eat, nothing for breakfast or lunch, so the whiskey really got me. Another vehicle had arrived with three more guys but I could do little more than greet them before I had to lie down for a wee nap.
I really never caught up to the trip from that point on. I slept for an hour maybe and that felt good, but when I woke up, I was still wasted, and had to really fight to stay awake, alert, semi-coherent, somewhat involved in the conversations, and connected to the fellas. The fire helped, and I got involved in some of the preparations for dinner; grill placement, briquette distribution, meat selection – whatever I could focus on within three feet of my eyes and less than two feet of my periphery. I was feeling better after eating and a nice walk up the hill to 89 like a herd of mountain zombies not walking too well on the rough road in the inky darkness. There was a rumor of someone taking their pants off to try to absorb some of the radiant heat from the pavement, but I don’t know anything about that.
Since I was planning to stay another night up top in the spot we had visited, I was reluctant to put up the tent just to take it down and move it the next day, so I just laid out my pad and bags in the back of the truck. I have gotten into the routine of putting a sleeping bag that used to be my dad’s underneath the pad, then my thick inflatable pad, then my good bag, and then my old bag that my cousin’s ex-husband made in prison – well he wasn’t “in” prison, he worked with the inmates teaching them skills for the “outside”– and for a while I guess they made sleeping bags. That’s the story anyway. So, I slept in the open in the back of my truck, but I just couldn’t get comfortable – the truck wasn’t level (in any dimension), I wasn’t level, it was windy all night, I couldn’t moderate my temperature – blah blah blah.
As usual, I woke up early and Kenny was already up and about. He had his industrial sized Mayonnaise jug/Poopy bucket half full and was on his way to empty it. We decided to take a walk and headed down the road, through the Aspen’s, and then out across the open sage valley. Being an Altar Boy, I came prepared, so along the way, I stopped for my morning constitution. I am very regular. As soon as I am erect (not “erect” erect – standing up – vertically erect) I am often ready to go. So with shovel in hand and my important papers with me, I veered off the road into the Aspen a bit to fertilize. I tried to keep a bush or something between my position and Ken – who remained on the road, but as he wandered back and forth on the road, he altered the bearing between him and me. I was already in my crouch and I could not alter my position – it was out of my hands. I don’t think anyone heard the squealing, other than Ken, and I know he understood.
My offering made, I rejoined Ken on the road and off we went, across the valley and up the other side, just enough elevation gain to pick out some of the vehicles and tents of camp peeking through the trees. Back at camp about sun-up, the boys were stirring and milling about. I went on another short walk with Kevin and Bob, down the road, just about to the site of my morning constitutional. It is interesting how quickly we adapt to and connect with new places; it seems like we usually want to bond, to have a sense of belonging, and very soon we have new memories and experiences that attach us to places, people, and creatures. I was telling Bob and Kevin about the walk that Ken and I took in this same spot just an hour or so before, but that memory was mixed in, with equal status, with a dozen or more other times I had travelled this exact spot, with many different guys, over a dozen years or more. Yet, all those trips and all those travels down this road were merely seconds of my life, adding up to maybe 30 minutes of being at this exact spot. I am grateful for that time.
What an impact those moments have made. I can’t remember all of them; certainly they do not stay separate or distinct, but are now mostly braided together into a fictional combination that never really happened. But, it is not the recollection of historical events that has left the impact (some would say scars), it is the being, seeing, smelling, feeling. Receiving the joy of being high in the mountains, immersed in nature, away from people and civilization, independent, free, and most importantly (and impactful) being with the boys.
By the time Bob and Kevin and I returned, Vinny was manning the coffee pot. One round had been distributed and I had to wait for the second pot (which infuriated me internally), but soon I was sipping hot coffee, sitting among the boys, trying to piece the evening together and discussing the order that we retired for the night, the deliciousness of all the food, the quality of our night’s sleep, and how some emerged from places they did not recall entering. Another round of coffee was brewed and I fulfilled my waiter fantasy by topping off a few coffee cups and serving the biscuits. Soon there was a measurable amount of effort to pack up – figuring out what stuff belonged to whom, rolling up bedding, taking down tents, packing and repacking supplies.
Bill had gone on a little jaunt yesterday with some of the fellas up to the Eastern rim of the sage valley, which offers an exceptional view of Slinkard Valley, Highway 89, Topaz Lake, the Sweetwater Mountains, and points East and South. He had taken a “short-cut”, cross-country through the sage on a diagonal bearing instead of following the road. Somewhere along the route, his binoculars came unstrapped and fell to earth without him noticing it until he was back in camp. This morning, I drove him back up to the vantage point, took in a few breaths of the view and then drove on down to the valley road while Bill loosely attempted to retrace his path in hopes of finding his binoculars. Although the effort was not successful, I was happy to have assisted in the recovery attempt.
I did not remember unloading so much of my stuff from the truck yesterday. With camp already established, I didn’t need much of my gear, and moving to another spot for day two, I tried not take out more than was essential for day one. But, all good plans and all that… Bob, Kevin, and Alfred left first, leaving Ken, Tom, Vince and I to reminisce a tad longer. By then I had loosely tossed much of my stuff back into the truck and was getting excited about moving back up top, to the spot we drove to yesterday. Soon the last wave of fellas headed across the pond overflow and on up the road in a little cloud of dust. It is always a little gloomy packing up and leaving a spot, the end of another trip with my friends. We have gone on many trips, over 100 in the 18 or so years we have been getting away, but you just never know. People come and go; times come and go; opportunities come and go. We assume others will appear, present themselves, or be created, but, you just never know.
And it’s gone. In the time it took to turn my head, moving my eyes from the West as I followed their rigs up the hill, to the Southeast up towards the spot I was headed to, one trip had clearly ended and another was set to begin. I was filled with excitement, curiosity, and joy. I changed out of my clothes from yesterday, put on some clean duds, hopped in the truck, and rolled down the road through the Aspen in the opposite direction of my friends. I had sort of imagined someone might stay another night with me, but I was prepared to spend my second night alone. I have only camped by myself a hand full of times, and some of those I had my dog, either Heide or Cubby, depending on the decade. But alone-alone is very different from not alone even if not alone means your companion is not human but your best animal friend.
Besides, this was very familiar country, and I kinda sorta had a job to do. This was the very first trip with my new camera and I was supposed to take pictures for this blog. I had a purpose, other than to camp with my friends. I was tired from not sleeping well the night before, and a tad hung, but I was pretty excited to be on my way up to the other spot.
Across the sage valley and up the other side, retracing our day trip from yesterday, my walk with Ken, and all those other times having passed this same stretch of road. I passed the 40th birthday camp spot. I entered the woods –passing through the White Fir and merging into the Red Fir as higher and higher I climbed. Several times I was sure I was on the wrong road, missed a turn, or otherwise was confused, but even if I was, it didn’t really matter. I had time to alter my course or backtrack if need be, but I probably was alright. Up and up, on and on. The road was way rougher than yesterday. Many large rocks had entered and interred themselves in the road. It was steeper, and the soil looser, and it was way farther to get out of the woods and into the upper sage filled valley than yesterday. And then it is; out of the woods, into the small basin. Soon the pond appeared, and the fork in the road; left heading up to the full harvest moon rising viewpoint; to the right was the camp spot. I was pretty stoked.
This spot may be two miles of air travel South of the Aspen Grove. It is higher in elevation at about 8600’. You are pretty much out of the trees, other than scattered Juniper, some with massive trunks but short in stature – Mother Nature taking care of the pruning if you try to poke your head up above the protection of the Mahogany or surrounding peaks. Most of the vegetation is Mountain Mahogany and sage, although the ground was littered with wildflowers. The camp is nestled in a low point with a hill rising up a few hundred feet on the East side, and brush covered rock formations to the West. The South is a sideslope of thick Mahogany, sage, and flowers. I immediately scrambled over the rocks to take in the expanse of the Sierras further to the West. It hadn’t changed much since yesterday and still held my gaze as tightly as before.
This is by far my favorite spot at Monitor. It is the toughest to get to and the farthest away, but it is always worth it. The view is among the best of any site from any trip; the elevation may be the highest; and the times spent here among the best. Ken has been coming to Monitor for many years and has been here many more times than any other. In the times I have been here, we have camped in the Aspen Grove, a little beyond the Aspen Grove along the same road, at the 40th birthday camp, and up top. An access road a little further down 89, past the actual Pass, are two other spots we have camped; in an Aspen forest where we were on my first trip to Monitor when it snowed, the truck battery was dead in the morning, Ken and I froze all night long in the truck because I forgot the sleeping bags, and our predawn stroll led us to the Saddle.
Now the Saddle is a spectacular place we have camped a few times with spectacular results. This was the site of some of our largest gatherings, way back in the days we would bring a keg, and most everyone would sleep out, Jeff fell over backwards off the rocky promontory after cocktail hour; Gabe left a late night fire to ride his motorcycle into South Shore for bone-age and was back at camp for breakfast; the fires were bigger, the music louder, the wastage immense. But the Saddle, nothing more than a sage covered flat spot at the end of the road, looks down on Slinkard Valley as if you were in an airplane. Slinkard stretches out to the South almost immediately below the Saddle and has an intense prehistoric geology, uplifted and tilted smoky green valley floor, surrounded on three sides by the needle sharp ancient rim of a volcano. It is an awesome spot, but so is this upper site.
I was tired and wanted to just sit in the sun and stare at the mountains, but it was still windy and just not quite warm enough to be out in the open. Also, a comfortable spot sitting/laying down on the rocks was hard to come by, so I went back to the truck and laid down on the tailgate. Tailgates are one of the greatest inventions ever. They expand the size of your truck bed by a couple feet when it is down. It keeps all your stuff in the bed when it is up. It is often a seat, a bench, a table, a work surface, a stage, an animal pen, and now it was going to be a nappy time bed. I was in the sun and mostly out of the wind and it felt great to just relax and let go. I was sawing logs in no time.
I wasn’t out for long, but I felt quite a bit better. What else to do but have a beverage and go back to the view. Still windy and cool, I couldn’t sit still so I went back to the truck to begin to unload, and again, I was struck down by fatigue. I just didn’t have it. I wandered around the site and thought back to previous trips here. When Bob had his tent way in the back of the site on the side slope, kind of tucked in a little burrow at the base of a tree trunk; when we had our cooking fire going late one afternoon and nice, warm, calm weather changed dramatically and instantly to freezing wind, hail and rain and then back to calm sunny and dry in about four minutes; when we first found this spot after the 40th birthday party; when Vince was too hammered to leave the camp and Steve, Ken, and I walked out around the East side of the Eastern most ridge to watch one of the biggest, brightest, yellowiest harvest moon rises ever (apparently only Steve and I saw it as Ken fell asleep some time during the three minutes between arriving at the spot and the moon cresting the horizon).
All these great memories filled my head and I got a little melancholy not having anyone there to share them with. I figured I would get my new camera out and take some pictures of the wildflowers, views, and such. It was mid-day so the lighting was not ideal, so I would be judicious, but I needed to get used to the camera and learn about it, so image quality wasn’t really a prime concern. I got the camera and the directions and flipped through a few pages, looked over a few diagrams and charts (these things are now as complicated and powerful as the first laptops), and got ready to take the first camping photos with my new camera for my new blog. Ready; ready for it; hear it comes. Not so much as a click! No battery – well I had the battery but it had no juice. WTF!
That was it. I was officially pissed off now. Not that I was staying over this second night just to take pictures, but now I couldn’t even take pictures. It was windy, it was cold, I was tired, I didn’t want to unload all my crap again, I didn’t want to get home Sunday and have to go to work on Monday; I was cranky! WAAAHHHH! I reached way back, deep into the recesses and did what any self-respecting male would do in this moment of reckoning – this time of coming to grips with one’s fallibility/weakness/weeniness/patheticness – I had a beverage.
I threw the few things I had taken out of the truck back in and drove up to the far Eastern ridge, the harvest full moon rising vantage point to take in that view – excellent decision. Slinkard right below, Risue just beyond, the Sweetwater Mountains seemingly just out of touch, and some of the basin/range country further East, the Northwest corner of Yosemite to the South, and Topaz Lake to the Northeast. This was the spot where Ken, Steve, and I (well Steve and I anyway) watched the moonrise in the freezing cold some years back. This was the point we started a hike out around this ridge where we found the rock grave and the rock tower that may have also been a grave or was some other type of monument. I poked around the hillside checking out rocks and flowers, gathered a few stones, and headed back to the truck.
About half the way down the road, I stopped to play in one of the last remaining patches of snow. It had nearly given up its hold – the air and soil too warm – its edges receding, its surface soft and mushy. It was as near liquid as possible – too wet to mold into a snowball almost melting instantly in my hands. It tasted sweet and clean and I got a kick out of being with it in its last days – perhaps hours. A few other patches were larger, better protected, deeper and colder and would hold on for longer. But this guy’s time was definitely limited. I figured I should attempt to honor it in some silly human way, but all I could think of was to cool a beverage in it for a moment.
At the bottom of this hill, in the middle of this small bowl, is a pretty good sized pond, maybe 40’ x 20’ now, but half again as large at its peak. It too was receding. There was already much grass and herbs growing in the wet soil around its edges, in the space between the current water’s edge and the perimeter of its grandest form. Many rocks were exposed and flowers were attracting swarms of insects; the buzz of activity that may have been loud enough to fill the bowl with sound if the wind were not carrying it off into space. I gathered a few more small rocks from the pond edges and was finally comfortable with the decision that I was not going to stay overnight, and instead return home this evening.
It had already been a full day; lots of in and out; up and down; and back and forth. I found my way back down the road, over the bumps, through the woods, across the valley and back to the original camp spot in the Aspen Grove. I changed into the last of my clean clothes, shorts and sandals, preparing for my return to the stinking hot valley. I had a beverage while saying goodbye and giving thanks, then headed across the pond overflow, up the hill, back onto the pavement of Highway 89. It is always interesting to me, even in the short course of two days of slowness, of dirt roads, and relaxed pace, the return to highway speeds is sometime frightening. I definitely feel more comfortable on slow.
Down Monitor to Highway 4/89, following 89 through Markleeville, on to Highway 88/89. Up to Hope Valley where 89 splits off to Lake Tahoe, staying on 88 up and over Carson Pass. Back down the Western slope to Mormon Emigrant Road. Just onto Mormon Emigrant, across from the old ski resort, I had to pull off and sleep. I really was thrashed. After just a few winks, I was back on the road. A short ways down, the Forest Service had done a major thinning operation along the North side of the road. Brush and trees were piled three stories high and 60 feet across. I have often cut firewood from these piles throughout the forest, but these were mainly Red and White fir trees.
Fir is a good tree for its purpose in the woods (I don’t want to hurt its feelings but I do not know what that purpose is), but it is called “Piss Fir” for a reason – several actually. The sap/pitch/juices do smell like pee; it definitely smells like wet diaper when it is burned. It is not a commercial species – you can’t make a board, lumber, paper, or anything else with it that one could sell. It is the source of one of the nicknames for Forest Service employees (Piss Fir Willy – alas – perhaps its purpose), but that is about it. Further down the hill though, at lower elevations, there was a lot more Cedar in the piles. Now Cedar is one of the best trees/types of wood around. It isn’t buggy, smells great, it is lightweight, easy to split and work with, is easy to light, burns fast, clean, and hot. I only burn Cedar and Oak – a combination that is hard to beat. Both are very clean and burn hot. The Cedar lights easy and fast and gets the oak going. Then you are set up with a great fire – hot, long lasting, clean, odiferous, and satisfies like no other.
I scouted some other piles lower down the hill that had plenty of potential for Cedar, but the open, rocky ridges are thick with standing dead or recently fallen Cedar and Oak, so even if it is not by foraging through these piles, I know I will be back soon to harvest some firewood. Amen.
Monitor Pass Photo Gallery
