- Expedition: Apr 16-21, 2001
- Brian
- Sanger and Turlock High Schools
- Hetch Hetchy
I see ...
I see a considerable amount of wood, which make[s] up the trees and all the millions of twigs that I can see even though I can't recognize each one. I see the dirty snow, but far away I see the undisturbed soft white snow. As I look up I see the sun beams venturing through whatever it can. And when it's finished it hit the snow with different shapes and sizes. Behind, pokes me with its dead miniature branches. And even though it[']s dead it seems like it[']s trying to tell me something. And you can spend the rest of your life looking at the many trees and find out what each one has to say.
The trees are comforted by the soothing sound of constancy melted snow. But the more you listen the better it gets You just don't here only the flow of the melted snow. But the drips too. And that wonderful sound that you can't here or barely feel. It sound[s] like the wind but there isn't any!
The first full day
Now I am in my "dorm". I wish I had more time to write about what I see and stuff. Now I'm not all poetic. It was supposedly 25 minutes that she gave us to write but it seemed like 5! Maybe I am actually enjoying nature. I wish we had more time to write. I'm going to finally tell you what we did so far.
Well we woke up at 7! I didn't sleep great. After the fire went out it got very cold. I woke up 5 or 6 times during the night. Breakfast was okay. Cereal muffins and an orange. Wasn't as good as dinner last night. They had cheese broccoli! It was so good. I'm going to start making it. Well now off the food for a while.
Yes Mr. Boggeri just came in and gave me my other boot! My foot is already starting to feel warm!! I['m] pretty happy now. I was worried for a while.
A few games we played today were pretty fun. Well our group has about 9 people in it and we all had to get on a like 3 by 3 foot platform. It took us like 15 minutes to figure it out. Then after that we did the thing where you jump into the jump rope and all of us had to get through it without anyone messing up. Everyone got through because everyone was positive and jumped through after a couple of times.. It was fun though.
Okay after that we went to walk on a mini hike type thing. There was snow and I was wearing converse!! I was pretty careful so my feet didn't get to soaked. The tourist chick [Kim] busted out with some blind folds and made us get into a line (caterpillar is what she calls it) and she led us down for about 10 minutes. Then as we
were all blind folded she put each of our hands on a mysterious object., She told us to look up and take them off (blindfolds). There awaited a "giant sequoia." Well I guess it was like 300 feet tall. It was really wide! I don't know how wide but it was big. Then we ate and played some more fun games. Then we came to another giant sequoia. But this one was dead. It was laying horizontally. We climbed all the way through it. Some chick was claustrophobic so she had to get out 1/2 way through. Well I got through it but I got out dirty/muddy. Which was expected. Oh well she said we were going to get a lot more dirty during. (I'm typing fast so i don't have a lot of time which means I have a lot of misspelled words ... thats okay though.)
Well I think I wrote enough for right now. So I'll talk to "you" later. Bye.
Backpacking and camping in Hetch Hetchy
Yeah and stuff, it's the second day out camping and I'm not the happiest camper. (I'll say the bad then the good because I can't hold it in) I'm Freezing!!!! It rained about 1/2 an hour after we got here and ... pretty much everything I brought is damp so its pretty cold. The tents are all hot and musty though. The one thing I'm glad about is my moms sunglasses aren't ruined yet. I am also happy I didn't bring my cd player. I don't know I'm pretty situated now though. We got this tarp thing finally over our heads. I want to put my backpack under it tonight but i think we have to keep it in our tents. Our food is uhm ... well let's just say not a fancy restaurant type food. I was hungry hiking all the way up here but when we got here I was delighted with dehydrated fried beans and shredded cheese in a tortilla. Not that bad. Maybe it was cuz I was so hungry. This morning!!! We had oatmeal soup. Those little oatmeal packets we ate. I poured the oatmeal in my bowl and asked for a little hot water to mix with it and she mixes like a gallon of water in it!!! There all stir it and it will get thicker. I just put another packet of oatmeal in and it turned okay...well not as bad.
Got to answer questions: Wilderness is somewhere where you are not with other people (that aren't in the same group) and a place where there hasn't been a campsite here before. This doesn't feel like wilderness because there are signs and there is already made campfire type thingys. There are bridges here and you only know there are a lot of tourists here everyday. Yes this is legally but to me it's only the feeling that you get that can tell you if it's wilderness. What are challenges? Challenges are something that you are going to have a hard time doing but do it anyway for the personal achievement feeling of it. My challenge is to hike that up hill hike.