Yosemite Aug 2010

The Mission: Survive three days in bear country, 6 miles from any sign of civilization. This means no toilets, no drinkable water, and no complaints.

The Players: Me, Collin, Ellie, Mary, Rebecca, Jen, and Micah.


Collin and I chose to hike to an area known as "Ten Lakes", named for obvious reasons. The Yosemite website wasn't much help in figuring how long of a hike it would be so we guessed it would be about 4 miles from the satellite images. As we prepared for the hike we kept hearing different distances from different people, some as many as ten miles. So we started the hike not knowing exactly how long it would be. But what we really underestimated was the vertical climb that was involved. So at an elevation of 7300 feet, we happily start packing our things into portable bear canisters and set off on the hike.



5 miles later and at an elevation of 9400 feet, we finally hit the summit and can see four of the ten lakes down in a valley. This was a tiring hike since we were carrying about 30 pounds each on our backs.


From the summit, we descended 600 feet or so to the first of the lakes and due to exhaustion, promptly set up camp in the first acceptable spot. We were not completely isolated as there were a few other campers in the area, but it was isolated enough.

The weather was much colder than we anticipated and all I had on me were a pair of shorts, 2 t-shirts, and some long johns. Everyone else had pants, sweaters, and jackets. So the name of the game was survival. We kept a constant fire going whenever we weren't exploring. If we had to do our "business", it had to be done in a hole in the ground with toilet paper packed out. Three of us
managed to hold out the entire time.


In order to pull off this type of camping, you absolutely need a water filter, which Ellie provided for us. The water was nice and cold and tasted great.


The other challenge was wildlife, bears in particular. By the way, don't ever type in "bear attacks" when doing a Google image search. In Yosemite you are required to keep all food and toiletries in portable bear canisters which are kept at a safe distance from camp at night. We had air horns and Mary kept a whistle constantly around her neck. Unfortunately, only one bear was sighted, a juvenile on the hike in. And only 4 of us saw it, myself excluded. A weak picture was taken of it. Can you spot the bear in the picture below? However, we did see plenty of squirrels, deer, and marmots.

At one point we thought we found bear tracks but I think it was a pair of side by side deer tracks. What do you think?


When we weren't eating or staying by the warm fire, we were exploring. We hiked to and explored all four lakes that we could see from the summit and that involved plenty of rock climbing, tree climbing, and very scenic shots.