​Laura, Z and myself had been working so hard and recovering from our first COVID infections that we hadn't had a chance to get out and hike during August and most of September. We decided to change that by heading to Chain Lakes via one of the least-visited trailheads into the Emigrant Wilderness: Box Springs.

After leaving HWY 108 at Long Barn, it takes a little over an hour to travel another 28 miles on paved, then gravel, then rutted and rocky dirt roads to reach the trailhead. Most 4WD SUV's and crossovers should have no problem reaching the trailhead. But it pretty much guarantees you'll be the only one on the trail there! It'll even get you away from the hunters!

​The 2.8 mile trail to the group of three chain lakes gently wanders through the remnants of a 2003 fire that we last visited in November of 2006. Many of the snags we saw in 2006 have since toppled and willows and small fir trees are regenerating near the meadows. Trail fining was a bit sus at times since this are is not highly trafficked and the many downed trees have fallen since the last trail crew came through to cut a path. The lakes are small and lovely, but fishless. Thunderstorms chased us out a bit earlier than we anticipated and didn't get to explore the lens of Disaster Peak Formation nor hike to surrounding domes for a great view. But a little hail and thunder made for some great excitement!

Ellen, our longtime friend from Germany, had a dream of hiking the John Muir Trail upon her retirement from teaching English and PE in Germany for 35 years. I flippantly stated several years ago that I'd do the trail with her when she was ready. Well, it turned out the summer of 2025 was going to be The Year for her, but I had been battling through severe ankle problems, the collapse of the United States AND and a new puppy that made the JMT untenable for me. But Ellen was determined to do the JMT solo if she had to, so I planned a 5-day tune-up trip for us in the High Sierra as a litmus test for my ankle health and to pass along my Sierra backpacking knowledge. 

The available trailhead permits were not ideal (all had massive elevation gains and were fairly exposed to sun) but we settled on leaving from Pine Creek Mine and exploring French Canyon, Piute Canyon and the associated high-elevation lakes teeming with golden trout. We saw lots of amazing scenery ranging from double rainbows to electric sunsets and caught so many trout I actually got bored quite quickly. We cut the trip short by one day because the mosquitos and biting flies were so terrible in Piute Canyon. There was absolutely no place we could stop for more than 20 seconds without being swarmed and bitten. So we made a 5 mile day into a 10 mile day to find relief at the high-elevation Lower Golden Trout Lake. 

Perhaps the misery from the previous day's mosquito-fest made us more appreciative, but our last day's hike through Humphreys Basin was just absolutely spectacular! We had planned on exploring Desolation Lake, but we were both ready to just get home, so we made a bee-line over Piute Pass and marveled at the amazing rocks in the canyon of the North Fork of Bishop Creek. I'm certain that many of these photos will make their way to BlueSky (@phaneritic) for proper earth science discussions. Please open the complete photo album to see all of our sights!

A very high reward to low effort ratio, this hike is just a bit over 3 miles one way but offers tremendous views of Clouds Rest, Mt Hoffman, and Half Dome from atop the gentle dome of Mt Watkins. The views are massively expansive an there's a ton of noteworthy glaciation evidence.  Z and I found a rattlesnake in between several large glacial erratics that I was scanning with my phone to make 3D models. I had quite the startled jump, since it was the first time I've ever seen a rattlesnake above 8000'. Enjoy the photo album and 3d models for now. 

Laura, Zephyr and myself all had a great time tagging along with Garry Hayes' MJC Geology field trip as backup drivers and support for the fifteen awesome students on his annual trip to Death Valley. Normally starting on a Thursday evening, this trip instead started on Friday morning due to a terribly wet storm that drenched the valley on Thursday. Garry didn't want the students' trip to start off wet and miserable so we he cut out Shark Tooth Hill and was able to make it through the rest of our normal Friday stops and get into camp a mere four minutes later than the previous year. Friday was a bit blustery, but the winds calmed to a breeze by the evening and the rest of the trip saw partly overcast skies with high temps in the 60's to low 70's and great star viewing most nights. Enjoy the un annotated photo albums and look for previous years to find teh annotated geology.

Needing to clear our heads and prepare ourselves for what is likely to come in the next 4 years, Laura, Z, Julie, Jill, Fritz and I headed over to the Preston Falls Trail along the middle run of the Tuolumne River. We hiked just a tad over 3 miles into the 6 mile trail. The trail starts where the glaciers ended during the last glacial maximum 20,000yrs ago so there is a lot of great geology to see along the way. The water and rocks are amazing, but we didn't have much time to properly fish on this day. I really enjoyed looking at the laminar flow of the river going over the granite. I hope these memories sustain us while we fight through the impending shitshow. 

Hoping not to repeat the fogged-out disaster of 2022, my dad Jim, his friend Charlie, my brother-in-law Colin decided to return to Whalers Cove this year. The main draw is our awesome and trusty guide, Kevin. He was born and raised in Angoon and his family has lived in the area since time immemorial. He know the intricacies of the land and sea and is just a really nice person to be around for a week.
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July of 2024 was the wettest July on record for the Juneau area. The storm parade didn't want to abate upon our arrival (nor our departure) and our float plane trip to Angoon from Juneau was delayed by fog for three hours. We were very much wondering if this trip was going to be a repeat of 2022 that saw us only be able to fish for two out the scheduled four fishing days.  Luckily I kept watching the webcams in the area and did some meteorologizing that was able to give me hope. Sure enough, the ceiling lifted enough to get us to the lodge by noon and we were out fishing from 1:30pm to 6pm the day of our arrival.

If we based this year's fishing on the poundage we took home, the 50lb/person places us near the bottom of the eight trips in which we've gone to WCL. But this year was very abnormal. Usually the king salmon have exited the area by the end of June. This year we all caught our limit of one "keeper" king (larger than 28") in less than one hour of trying. To put that in perspective we've only caught three total keeper kings in the seven previous years combined! We also caught and released well over 70 "short" kings and several 30"+ kings while targeting silvers. We'd never caught so many kings of any size, ever. The fight was great and made lovely memories, but by the end of the week when our fish boxes were still relatively light I said to everyone "This is fun, but we can't eat memories". 

Our main target, silver/coho salmon usually show up in large numbers at the end of July. Many years we visit WCL and get limits of silvers (6/ea/day) and the pink salmon are usually caught in huge numbers along with the silvers. But this year the silvers hadn't shown up in big numbers anywhere along Chattham Strait or the outside waters near Pelican and Sitka. We worked very hard to get 16 total silvers for the entire trip!

The halibut slot was very restrictive this year (less than 36" or greater than 80") and no-halibut Fridays meant we only fished for halibut on one day. But our friend Charlie had the catch of the week when he caught a 120lb halibut while we were trolling for king salmon! Landing a huge fish like that on light salmon gear was an epic feat! We though we wer snagged on the bottom for a brief second before the line on the reel started peeling-off at a rapid pace.

While the fishing was a bit sub-optimal, the whale watching was amazing. We were graces with several pods of humpbacks repeatedly bubble net feeding, and I may have gotten a few photos you can check out in the full photo album :-). 

Please view the full photo album to see ALL of the amazing things we witnessed on this trip.