Yosemite Blog

By now everyone’s heard the old standby “Why did you climb the mountain? Because it was there.” But if you’re like me (I never leave home without a fishing rod on my pack) and someone asked you “Why did you hike the John Muir Trail?” you could say “Because there were trout.”

If you could have a sherpa lug your pack down the John Muir Trail then“Trout Fishing the John Muir Trail” by Charles and Steve Beck would be in that bag. A complete compendium of fishing in the High Sierra this book takes-the-cake in my book. But you don’t need to take my word for it. Just take a look at what some of the people have been saying about it on Amazon.

The John Muir Trail runs 210 miles through the spectacular Sierra Nevada mountain range and serves as a connection to numerous trout-fishing waters. The trail passes by forty sparkling trout-filled lakes, crosses another forty fish-inhabited creeks, and follows six of California’s biggest, untamed freestone rivers. Steve Beck’s Trout-Fishing The John Muir Trail is a complete guide to this magnificent wilderness route, , illustrated throughout with color photos, and includes detailed information on planning and preparing for a trip to the John Muir Trail, fishing along the trail, fishing tackle, hiking gear, hiking tips, the top twenty trout streams, fly recommendations, and a great deal more. Whether novice angler or experienced fly-fisher, Trout-Fishing The John Muir Trail will prove an invaluable, indispensable reference guide.

Technorati Tags: adventuretravel, backpacking, books, flyfishing, hiking, howto, Sierra Nevada, wilderness, yosemite

That’s it! Summer is over. Everyone can go home now folks. Time to start Christmas shopping.

KESQ News: “A woman who has climbed several of the world’s best-known peaks since surviving a heart transplant ten years ago, began her toughest ascent yet today — the sheer, nearly three-thousand-foot-high face of El Capitan.

43-year-old Kelly Perkins started what’s expected to be five days of vertical climbing and camping on the massive granite monolith that towers over Yosemite Valley.

The Laguna Niguel woman already has topped Half Dome in Yosemite, Mount Whitney in California, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and the Matterhorn in Switzerland — each time to raise awareness for organ donation”

Technorati Tags: climbing, news, outdoor, Sierra Nevada, yosemite

I have a question. How many of you that backpack or hike use GPS units and which one do you use?

Please answer in the comments (click comments) below. Thanks

Rochester Eccentric: “Janine Dauzy saw a lot of black bears this summer.

She saw so many, in fact, that she knew the tag numbers on about 15 of them by heart. She recognized their individual behaviors - which one stole a granola bar from a campground and which was roaming with her cubs among tents, looking for food.

She even chased them from campsites, sounding noisemakers and yelling, “Get out of here, bear.”

“The bears in Yosemite are quite smart. They know when a ranger is there,” she said, adding that some are brazen enough to leave a campsite and then return as soon as the park staff has left the area.

Chasing bears away and educating campers about proper food storage was all in a day’s work for Dauzy, 22, a 2001 Rochester High School graduate. The Western Michigan University senior has been back at school for almost a week after spending nearly three months in the park working as a transportation interpreter intern at Yosemite National Park in California.

Ford Motor Co., the Student Conservation Association, National Park Foundation and National Park Service support the internship program that involved 40 students at 25 different sites this summer.”

Technorati Tags: bears, California, environment, education, yosemite