Silver King Creek

Wow. Lots of cool stuff!  I have to think back to remember where the "weekend" started.  

Okay:  I left Davis Thursday night packed for a long week.  I had just found out that I would be able to join the Wild Trout Program Crew in Silver King Creek to sample the Paiute cutthroat trout.  We would be using pack mules to go into Upper Fish Valley where we would camp and electro-fish.  Using pack mules means that you can pack in BEER!  and COOKIES!  YAY!

Loading all the gear at the pack station.

But first I had to meet up with Drew to climb a new route on Fairview Dome called What Would Jeff Do.  It's a 10 pitch "well-protected" face climb, foll0wed by about 50o feet of mostly fourth class to the summit.  The original plan was to switch leads, but after backing off of a not-well-protected 5.10 slab pitch, I let Drew lead most of it until the .11b overly-protected roof pitch.  Overall, it was a good route, Drew crushed, and we got a lot of climbing in.  I enjoyed the 3 roof sections the most, followed by the final 500 feet of "hiking with my hands".

Saturday I knew that I didn't want to climb in the morning.  My feet hurt and I was fairly tired.  Drew and I decided to go on a hike in the morning and maybe meet up with John, Shannon and Townsend to crag in the afternoon.  I wasn't sure if I really wanted to hike...hanging out around the lake sounded pretty ideal, but I always feel like I'm going to miss out on something if I don't participate in what is going on.  The hike ended up being what I like to refer to as: the Tuolumne Death March.  21 miles (Drew has a GPS) of mostly hiking through the Yosemite equivalent of Kansas.  You know you're walking forward, but the surroundings are exactly the same as they were 2 hours ago so it's hard to know if you've actually gone anywhere.  We went up Lyell Canyon, turned right to get over to Vogelsang, and headed back to the Meadows for a big loop.  I do have to say that the middle section, crossing over higher elevation area and seeing Vogelsang and the High Sierra Camp was pretty cool:

The rest of it just made my feet hurt.  For about the first 18 miles Drew kept saying "so do you think you want to go try Electric Africa after this?"  Mile 19-21 heard him saying "I think I'm just going to go home.  My feet hurt."  I responded: "we should have gone rock climbing."  Oh well, at least I worked off the Mobil chocolate cake we'd shared the night before.  I never met up with Shannon's crew, and ended up getting dinner at the Mobil all by my onesie, heading up to the bivy site in Lee Vining Canyon and running into Platinum Rob.  We shot the shit about life and relationships for a few hours before going to bed.  That's when I pounded a tube of oreos.  Fuck was I hungry!  I even bought milk, because eating oreos without milk is just not as satisfying.

Sunday morning I went back up to the store and hung out waiting around to see if I could get in touch with Shannon et al.  They rolled in around 10am and by the time 1pm came, we finally ended up at Electric Africa, where Shannon crushed and the rest of us got kind of schooled.  Actually, Townsend finished his day pretty strong after John said "ten bucks says you make it five moves before you fall."  Naturally, Townsend's testosterone kicked in and he went all the way to the top from before the crux.  Damn.  All you have to do is tell someone they can't do it and they'll try really hard.  

I did this weird thing to my finger that looked like a linear blood blister on Electric Africa too:

After my second go and a round of nausea from trying so hard on Electric Africa, I drove up to Coleville and got a room at the Meadowcliff Lodge.  I met up with the DFG crew in the morning and we drove for a long time on a really steep road to get to the Little Antelope pack station to drop off our heavy stuff and start hiking into Fish Valley.  I was delighted that the crew mostly consisted of fit 20-something guys, and was grateful to Sunshine for pointing out "maybe you'll meet some super hot fish guy" when I mentioned to her that I wasn't sure if I wanted to go.  I guess that's a good way to get me out of the house.   

Here are a few photos of the hike in and some cool things I saw on the trip:

pack mules carrying live cars and more stuff.

Paiute cutthroat habitat: Upper Fish Valley

This is why I never want to pack using llamas

The trip was really fun!  Electro-fishing required teams of people.  There is at least one shocker, someone who wears a backpack with a battery, an anode and a cathode and sweeps the anode ring around the water and under holes where fish might be hiding.  A netter walks alongside or behind the shocker waiting for fish to get shocked so that they can scoop up the fish and hand them to the person carrying the live car.  The live car is a Rubbermade trash can with holes punched in it.  The idea is that fresh cold water circulating through the live car will reduce stress on the fish.  At the end of the section, the person with the live car hands over the fish to the people processing the fish.  Those people measure and weigh the fish after they've been sedated with alka seltzer.  Photos, fin clips or scale samples might be taken at this time.  The the fish are released, hopefully to swim away to happily resume their existence before their very bad day.  We caught fish up to 13 inches.  They are so beautiful.  The first day the section was pretty turbulent and there were 3 shockers, 3 netters, and myself and another volunteer dragged the live car up 500 feet of rock stream 3 times.  Most of the time 3 passes are necessary to get an accurate estimate of the population.  

The next day we had a flatter, more mellow section first.  The three passes went pretty smoothly, and we had a lunch break before hitting the next section, which was right next to the first.  For some reason, in this section it was very difficult to catch the fish.  We ended up doing 5 passes, which the crew said was a first.  Sweet.  I'll say this:  walking through over a mile of stream with what is about equivalent to 5 pound weights on your legs (given the waders and the heavy wading boots) makes you tired and hungry.  Fortunately we were near camp and the one beer I'd brought and stuck in the stream (why the hell did I only bring one beer?  I'll never know what I was thinking).  By this third night, the crew and I were feeling pretty comfortable and naturally the conversation took a turn into the gutter.  I don't know if I'll ever grow out of poop jokes.  Seriously.

Here are some more photos of the fish and the crew:

A gorgeous example of a Paiute cutthroat trout.

Wild Trout Crew taking a break by the creek.  We got to see the llamas resisting crossing the stream from here.  The owner says that they like to poop in the water for some reason.

This morning I packed up my tent, cooler and waders and left them out for the mules to pack out.  I packed up everything else into my backpack and headed out of the valley.  I got back to my car at the pack station after about 3 hours and drove down to Lee Vining, checked myself into a hotel, showered, and now here I am.  I'm not sure the bathtub in room 25 will ever recover from the pounds of dirt that washed off of my body.  I'll replaced it in the next few days in Tuolumne before I head back to Davis to sleep in a bed and have a shower nearby.  That'll be nice.

I'll leave you with more photos of cool stuff:

lots of mushrooms!  This one is a porcini (Boletus edulis), otherwise known as a cep or King Bolete.

Pine drops: a cool plant with no chlorophyll.  It gets nutrients from a relationship with a fungus.

A female sheep moth.  I saw this little lady on the hike into Silver King Creek.  The females use pheromones to attract males.  All they have to do is sit still and smell pretty.  The adults do not feed at all.