mountain – Fleeting Muse

A Valentine’s Day Hike – Mount Umunhum beckons

Mount Umunhum, the highest peak in the Santa Cruz mountains at 3488 feet is an ubiquitous presence in our life. The cube, an abandoned air force radar station and a relic of the cold war, on top of Mount Umunhum is clearly visible from our backyard. Our family had attended the grand opening of the designer trail, a 3.7 miles trail, from Bald Mountain to the summit in September of 2017. I was fortunate to get a guided trip down from the summit to Bald Mountain parking lot on that day. After that day, I had done the 7.4 mile round trip hike several times in different seasons.

However, the sixteen mile or so round trip hike from the Hicks Road parking lot up to the summit is a different matter altogether. I think the hike is moderately challenging, the nearly twenty two hundred feet elevation from the Hicks Road parking lot to the summit in about eight miles is OK except in few patches where the grade is steep and taxing. The hike, I should say, is more a test of endurance than being really challenging. Constantly changing microclimate of the mountain can be a challenge for unprepared hikers. For us, the day started cool but sunny at 40F. As we went up, we faced drizzle, light rain, warm sun forcing us to take off our jackets and howling winds at the summit. After about twenty five hundred feet, it was misty all through.

Sometimes in 2018, I along with my wife tried to hike up from Hicks Road but after about three and half miles and after hiking up a steep grade, she did not feel well and we returned back. Then sometime during the summer of 2019, I did that hike alone. But such a long hike in summer, unless, done really early in the morning, is not pleasant.

I was planning do this hike up to the summit from Hicks Road this winter. However my wife won’t allow me to do this alone and she planned to join. Something or other came up during few of the previous days we planned and ultimately everything fell in place on Valentine’s Day.
Thus we ended up on the trail on this Valentine’s Day and we did it our way, slow and steady. Started our hike up at about 8:45AM and at 6:30 PM, when we returned to the parking lot, ours was the only car there and the gates on Mount Umunhum Road were closed. Thank God that the exit gate opened automatically.

What secret she holds down at the bottom of the gorge

At the summit. Cube was not tilted, my camera was.

City lights seen from the trail during return trio

Valentine’s Day ended on a high note.
The body was sore but the spirits were high. To be on the trails with your valentine on Valentine’s Day is a reward itself.

Featured image is of Mount Umunhum from Hicks Road parking lot. Taken by author on February 14, 2021.

Marching Song of the Sloths

This poem started as a tongue in cheek comment to a post Turning by Ritu Bhathal(butismileanyway) yesterday. She was kind enough to respond back with two smiling emojis (two of them, not one, just think of it), so I thought why not post the comment as a poem in my blog. I decided to sleep on it and before I knew Thursday turned to Friday. Before we go to the weekend, here it is.

A mountain far away,
Distant fire on a
Cold winter’s night,
Pursue at your own peril,
They recede as you approach,
So heed the wise,
Turn.
Why leave the comfort
Of a warm bed?
Nike is not going to pay you
To just do it😊

Summer of 2017 – Part 3- To the Mountain

Continued from previous post : http://wp.me/p73yZZ-3n2

During our last hike on June 25, there was a discussion regarding the imminent opening of Tioga Pass on Hway 120 for 2017. Tioga Pass, at an elevation of 9943 ft, remains closed to public during winter. Due to heavy snow during winter of 2016 – 2017, we were not sure when the pass would open for vehicular traffic. We decided to keep in touch and visit at the earliest opportunity. Fellow hiker, Rajiv , emailed on Tuesday night that the pass would open on June 28 and we should plan to go either on Thursday or Friday. It was a short notice. I did not see the e-mail till Wednesday morning. Quick phone calls and e-mails followed and we decided to go on Friday morning.

PART 3: June 30, 2017 : Friday: To the Mountain

As luck would have it, I had to remove one of my wisdom teeth,my first, on Thursday morning (narrated here : http://wp.me/p73yZZ-3lD ). My wife was reluctant to let me go as I was in much pain the whole of Thursday. Luckily the bleeding stopped late at night though I was having difficulty eating anything except liquid food. Boy, am I glad I decided to go.

Three of us were driving separately to our friend Amit’s house and from there taking his car for the journey starting at 5:00 AM. I decided to wake up early enough to take care of my tooth (or the open cavity ) and have some breakfast as I was famished from my liquid diet of the day before. Though I started from home early enough for the 15 minutes drive to Amit’s house, in the dark and most probably due to lack of sleep, I took a wrong turn on the exit from the freeway. Luckily the wrong turn led to a dead end to a small shopping complex and I realized my mistake before going on a wild goose chase. No harm done except for a few minutes of anxiety and frantic calls from my wife and Amit trying to figure out my whereabouts. To make a long story short, we started about 20 minutes lates from our planned starting time of 5:00 AM.

Journey was uneventful. There was not much traffic on the road to Yosemite National Park so early in the morning. We reached our planned breakfast point near Oakdale and then realized that we were so early that very few establishments were open. Thank God for the fast food restaurants. We had a quick breakfast at a Burger King and proceeded towards Yosemite. As I had to show some TLC to my lost wisdom teeth, I stuck to soft food only and had to forgo the temptations of Indian snacks. We arrived the gates of Yosemite national Park quite early and took the left turn to HWay 120 towards Tioga Pass and arrived at Olmsted Point (8300 ft) around 9:30 Am.

Olmsted Point is visited by so many visitors every year and there are so much information available that it is an wastage of time blogging about it. As the crowd at Olmsted Point was already sizeable and there were tour buses and tour guides busy explaining about the vistas, we decided to cross HWay 120 and hike up the mountain on the opposite side of HWay 120.

I am always amazed at the natural stone tile formation at Olmsted point. Did humans learn about tile work from nature?

As we started hiking up the mountain, people were thinning out. Soon we four were the only ones left out there to enjoy the vista. And what a vista was that. We were rewarded with views of Half Dome, Clouds Rest, Lake Tenaya and snow capped mountains of eastern Sierra.

A few marmots were playing hide and seek and keeping company.

Here and there were nature clinging to the bare stone faces of the mountain. Flowers blooming at such high elevation and such barren place sang the resilience of nature.

After climbing up about 600 ft and hiking for an hour and half, we decided to call it a day as the fresh mountain air was making all of us hungry. Lunch was calling and we still had to drive about 30 miles past Tioga Pass to Lee Vinings for our lunch. Before the sun bore down on us with its full strength on a clear day at the mountain top, with a heavy heart we started our descent. As we were descending, stone formations chiseled by millions of years of erosion,cold, heat, wind and water were visible all around us.

Thankful for nature’s bounty and realizing that a day trip did not do justice to our effort of a nine hours round trip drive, we started driving towards Lee Vining for lunch. Myriads of water falls cascading down the hill side fed by molten snow filled our heart with joy but our empty stomachs were growling for food. One last stop near half frozen Tioga lake and off to Lee Vining we drove.

To be continued.

©All photographs in this post were taken by the author. Readers are free to use with proper acknowledgement to the author.

Life a Fellow Traveler

God, in his wisdom, does not tell us when our journey will end. Otherwise there will be no charm in living. Uncertainties are the sparks of life.

Life took my hand
At journey’s start
Many a roads we
Traveled together
Climbed many mountains
Traversed the deepest valleys
Ebbs and flows
Low and high tides
She stayed by my side
From time to time
I did ask
When is journey’s end
She kept on moving
Still holding my hand
Fellow travelers
Joined together by
Inseparable bond
Keep moving
Moving forward together
Journey’s end, unknown
Destination does not matter
When the time comes
Will still be together
Journey new, uncharted