Posted on 05/17/2024 4:51:31 PM PDT by nickcarraway
You ought to know :^)
Can’t believe arches and Zion national parks are not listed
Thanksgiving dinner at the Ahwahnee used to be great. Haven’t been there in many years.
If you canoe fish or stay in the Banff Springs Hotel you’ll be fine. The moose can be a bit dangerous.
If you are from the east, I would highly recommend some altitude training before going too deep into Yosemite. I was surprised at how it affected me. I usually walk hilly terrain of about 5-7 miles a day. I was burned out after an hour or so.
Mules to Phantom Ranch; Grand Canyon.
I forgot. We went to Waterton too and stayed at the chateau. The whole park burned about seven years ago. They don’t show the pictures of that on the internet. It is quite sad. Instead of a green park, it is brown and gray.
We have encountered three grizzlies while hiking - all at Glacier. They were all quite friendly. All males.
“There are parts of Yosemite that are crowded, and then there’s most the rest of it.”
That was certainly the case in the 70s.
While we were hiking up to the tea house on Lake Louise, a bear was stalking a woman leading a hiking group in a nearby canyon. She kept her cool and scared him away.
That’s really sad. I’ll tell my wife. Do you think we should reconsider?
We took a tour of Lake McDonald — it was the very last day before they put the tour boats away for winter. The fire there came over the ridge, burned a lot of buildings, and torched a lot of the forest overlooking the lake.
The only time I hiked to the top of Half Dome was in around 1978. No reservations required — just hike up. There were quite a few people going up the cables, but nothing like it turned into in later years.
I remember fumbling my camera lens cap and watching it roll down the granite. I started to reach for it when I dropped it, but caught myself.
I’m not particularly well traveled, nor am I an avid hiker. My wife took me to Yosemite for my 60th birthday, and it was great. We stuck to easier trails, but still saw a lot. It was not particularly crowded. Some portable bear traps (thankfully unoccupied) were evident, and there were warning signs about mountain lions. The elevation took some getting used to, but I would not have missed it. It was fascinating and heartbreakingly beautiful.
lens caps tended to wander about, back in the day.
In the Yosemite, near back country, bears were very adept in hauling down backbacks and very expertly, diagonally slashing external pockets in the dark to liberate tuna fish cans and other sources of nutrients.
Totally fun nights.
In the mid 70s, I was hiking in the Cascades near the old mining town of Holden where my dad mined copper in the late 40s to pay for college. I met a fellow hiker and we decided to head over to an alpine lake. He had a big backpack since he was going to be out for a week or so, but I only had a small daypack. He left his backpack with all his grub near the mine and we headed out to the lake.
When we got back a couple hours later, his backpack was FULL of chipmunks chowing down on all of his food. It was like a Disney cartoon with all those silly chipmunks popping up out of his pack and looking around like “Huh? Oh, geez, he’s back! Scatter, guys!” There were chipmunks evacuating that pack like crazy and running all around. I never did find out how he managed the rest of his trip.
Funniest wildlife thing I ever saw!
Well, it is still a great park. Just no trees and I didn’t see any wildlife.
It is quite the rush seeing them in the wild. At least I have seen fully-armed park rangers in Canada that hang around the areas with high activity. We saw several patrolling above Lake Moraine.
Missing 411.
Seeing bears close up when we were trying to eat dinner made me re-evaluate my opinion of Yogi Bear.
One National Park in California I enjoyed hiking in was Lassen. It wasn't crowded once you got on the trails--but it has been more than 40 years since the last time I was there.
I took my older daughter one year to "Cinder Cone," a small mountain of volcanic cinders with a crate at the top. It was the most unusual geological feature I've seen. You had to walk by the front edge of an enormous lava field to get to the cone. Half way up this bone-dry, desolate cinder cone, my daughter found this frog! It was the weirdest thing ever. How did he get there?
Here's the huge lava field. You can see my daughter at the base of it for scale.
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