We're going on a bear hunt

Take me back to Yosemite.

So I'd always been a bit of a snob about America.. fat people, greasy food, gigantic cars, etc. But when given the opportunity to hike around Yosemite for two weeks, it wasn't something I was going to miss! 15 of us from Northumbrian UOTC spent eight days hiking in Yosemite National Park, California, with a few days either side to spend exploring San Francisco. So. Much. Fun.

Sea Lions at Pier 39, Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco

San Francisco was a pretty cool city. We did the usual touristy thing of visiting Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39, seeing the famous Sea Lions (I could've watched them sleeping and spooning and swimming and fighting for hours.. so cute) and walking along the seafront. I then felt unhealthily full after eating a salad for the first time in my life (I'm so ready for a break from American diners!).

Even after having watched The Princess Diaries and the hill/Mustang/tour bus scene an unhealthy number of times, I hadn't realised how many hills there would be in the city! They did mean we found a lot of awesome viewpoints over the city and the bay whilst exploring the street grid, though. It also turns out San Francisco isn't the best place to play frisbee - something we found out after it had been thrown straight off Pier 41 and into the bay.. 

Pretty successful vegetarian BBQ, I'd say!
Abbie, Me, Esther, Erin

Our hike began at White Wolf campground, pretty much in the middle of the park. We'd planned a massive team barbecue on a fire pit in our camping spot before the hike properly began, but somehow the meat got left on the bus.. so we ended up sharing around the vegetarian food, making do with mushrooms and peppers and even making sweet potato fries on the grill. I also got to practise my new favourite skill of cutting up a watermelon (I practised this a lot in India and feel like I've nailed it now). The food set the tone nicely for the rest of the trip though, with our allocated food adding up to a measly 800kcals per day. The excitement and calorie overload we experienced when the two hiking teams met up for visitor centre burgers on day five made us all feel pretty queasy - I won't be forgetting (or repeating) that experience in a hurry! 

Yosemite's strict park rules meant that our group had to split up into two teams, walking and camping completely separately from each other. Our team's route took us in a big semicircle, averaging about 12 miles per day and often making steep ascents into AMS territory. We started off heading north into the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River, spending one night camped next to a shimmering blue-green lagoon at the edge of the gushing river - a perfect spot for a swim and some waterside yoga. We then pushed on upwards and east out of the canyon, working our way to the col behind Volunteer Peak at 10,481ft and down into Matterhorn Canyon, then Virginia Canyon, along steep trails with switchbacks galore, and not many chances to fill our rapidly emptying water bottles. California has been in a state of drought for the past four years, and a drought State of Emergency has now been declared; many riverbeds are bone dry and wildfires commonly sweep fast through the grassland and forest. We did manage to find quite a few perfect wild swimming lakes though, so I got to continue my new found passion and splash around as often as I wanted.

Hiking team photo!
Ryan, Danny, Chris, Abbie, Tom, Becky
Ellis, Matt, Me

We then hiked south, steeply up out of Virginia Canyon to join the famous 2,663 mile long Pacific Crest Trail (go watch/read Wild, if you haven't already!) for around 10 miles into Tuolumne Meadows - a visitor and wilderness centre filled with the fat Americans we'd happily managed to avoid so far. After sharing stories, stocking up on food and catching up with the other group, we then moved out along the John Muir Trail to camp beside the larger of the two Cathedral Lakes, overlooked by Cathedral Peak. This peak is what is known as a nunatak - a peak that stood proud of the glaciers carving out Yosemite's valleys, leaving its top sharp and pointy whilst its lower parts were smoothed and eroded by the ice of the Tioga glaciation, roughly 20,000 years ago.

As we cooked our dinner of quinoa and clams (I've been known to take tinned octopus on camping trips, so this felt quite normal) on the smooth dome of granite beside Cathedral Lake, we could see wildfires raging in the forest to our north, with smoke billowing up into the sky. It was incredible to see the fires in real life, having read about them and their necessity for preserving the Giant Sequoias - allowing new shoots to thrive without competition in the undergrowth.

Trail buddies 4 lyf.
Photo by Becky Mason

I'm loving bivvying at the moment, sleeping out in the open under the moonlit sky and being able to watch shooting stars until I fall asleep. Abbie became my bivvy buddy in Yosemite, with the pair of us brought together by our laziness towards putting a tent up and our love for the outdoors. We were quite blasé about the threats of bear and mountain lion attacks mentioned by everyone else in the team who felt safe behind a thin layer of tent fabric, until I woke one morning to Abbie's shouts of "oh my god oh my god oh my god!!" mixed with other profanities. I fully expected an angry bear to be standing right in front of us as I struggled to sit up and see out of my cozy cocoon, only to find out a coyote had been sniffing Abbie's face and was now wandering casually around our camp, ignoring us! Uncontrollable laughter from both of us obviously followed.

From Cathedral Lakes we'd headed to Sunrise Lakes, home to the curious coyote, and next we headed south west towards Little Yosemite Valley, via Clouds Rest, a peak promising '360-degree panoramic views, stretching from Hawaii in the west to Nebraska in the east'. We actually discovered 10m visibility through thick cloud and fog.. but it was a magnificent climb nonetheless, with precipitous drops either side reminiscent of Helvellyn's 'Striding Edge' in the Lake District.

Abbie on top of the world!

Our descent to the valley led us past the famous Half Dome, a Yosemite icon and hike-able for a fee, but we settled on continuing downhill and buying postcards of it later instead. We then spent our final few miles walking (and running, when we got fed up of downhill plodding) down steep step after steep step of rocky staircase into Yosemite Valley, saying "happy trails!" and "happy hiking!" to anyone we passed, annoying them with our happiness and enthusiasm as they worked their way up the daunting day of uphill ahead of them.

Yosemite Valley was fun to explore on our final day, with a free shuttle bus to the bottom of El Capitan - we spotted big wall climbers on their way up the steep face, marvelling at their skill but also wondering if they were people we could see or just shadows on the rock.. and I also lived up to my reputation as a postcard whore and tried to make people at home feel jealous of my American adventure, drawing them awful cartoon mountains and bears and telling them all about where we'd been!

With Abbie and Erin at the ball game, having stocked up on Giants stash!

Back in San Francisco, we tried to cram in as much as we could before most people went back to the UK. At Alcatraz, the famously inescapable high security prison on an island in the bay, we learnt the shocking fact that 1 in 32 Americans is either on parole, on probation or locked up in prison (and felt slightly uneasy..). That evening we went to a baseball game at the AT&T stadium between the San Francisco Giants and the Arizona Diamondbacks, where I realised that rounders is a far better sport and is much more interesting to watch! The pitchers couldn't pitch in the right place, the batter missed the ball most of the time, and the fielders were so good at catching (using their giant gloves to make it easier) that it was basically impossible for anyone to score any points. But the atmostphere was awesome, with the chants, kiss cam and corn dog sellers making the Giants' 2-0 loss much easier to bear (YES Tom I managed to fit a bear pun in here somewhere!!).

Slacklining in Golden Gate Park
Photo by Becky Mason

Our final day was spent in Golden Gate Park playing with my slackline (bought in the UK on a whim and carried around California, providing awesome fun and some funny looks from passers-by) before heading to Ghiradelli's chocolate factory ice cream parlour. My diary entry from that days reads: "Wen't to Ghiradelli's and had a salted caramel sundae. SO BIG. SO GOOD. SO CARAMELLY. > FOOD COMA (again..)". That definitely sums up the experience.

Basically, the whole trip was absolutely brilliant. Take me back!

Keep a look out for my second blog post about the trip - our 1,000 mile Pacific Coast Highway road trip! 

Journey to Base Camp

When you start to refer to a base camp as 'home', you know that you're in an awesome place, and that mountains are where you belong.

Our base camp home lay just off the Pensi La, up the valley from the Drang Drung glacier, in amongst the glacial lakes and surrounded by peaks reaching 6000m. It took the whole expedition team about three trips each from the buses and trucks to base camp, heavily laden with bags, boxes and barrels, whilst suffering from AMS, to get all of our equipment and supplies to our camp spot and ready to be sorted out. That made us pretty knackered as the walk was over hills, streams and rocks, but it was totally worth it.

A colourfully decorated Indian truck on the Pensi La

We split the camp into different areas for each fire, with a spot for base camp HQ in the middle, surrounded by Dras, Zanskar, Chenubra, Markha, Indus and Shyok fires. Each fire had a big blue mess tent, to cook, eat and socialise in, plus their own big stove, kettle and pressure cooker. Dras (the fire I was a TL in) ended up with crazy paving in their tent to stop the dust and sand from getting everywhere, and everyone had a rock to sit on - so homely!

Basecamp sunset - beats watching TV

The journey to base camp took us three days, bouncing and bumping along National Highway 1 (I'd love to see National Highway 2 or any of the others..) through tiny villages in stunning glaciated valleys and across rickety bridges over raging rivers. It was truly awesome, with breathtaking views around every corner and the excitement of reaching the Zanskar valley building every second. Our route took us northwest out of Leh along NH1, before turning south at Kargil onto road 301, which (after a long drive) turns into the Pensi La. Lunch on our first day was at the small hillside town of Lamayuru, where a medieval monastery towers over a tumbletown of mud brick houses built around and within the strangely eroded caves in the cliff face. We tried our first taste of what would be our lunch for the next 35 days - Amul tinned cheese; crackers (only slightly broken at this point, but after a day in a rucksack they quickly became fine cracker dust); apricots so dry they could break teeth; boondi and bhujia and other ridiculously spicy bombay mix type nibbles; 425kcal giant heavy flapjacks; we weren't impressed..  

Calum, Tim and Becky loving life at the glamping place

The first night's stay was nicknamed 'the glamping place' by us, as it was so idyllic. Small marquee type tents surrounded a vegetable patch / flowerbed, with bright red poppies growing right next to runner beans, and butterflies fluttering around. We knew the next few weeks wouldn't be as easy as this, but it was certainly a nice way to ease ourselves into it, sleeping on the carpeted floors and being made chai and given hot food. The next night was spent on a flattish patch of grass by the roadside, so it was everyone's first night in the expedition tents, eating a memorable (both for the location and for what they do to your digestive system..) ration pack dinner of chicken tikka masala.

Witness the cuteness! Awesome photo by Abel McLinden

Yaks and cows were one of our biggest problems at base camp, which says something about how care free life was and how little anything else mattered without communication with the world back home. The giant, fluffy, earringed, cute but ugly beasts would wander into our camp every morning at about 8am, then leave again before it got dark, directed by the local herders. They were unstoppable in their quest to drink every bowl of soapy water, apparently because as calves they'd been raised drinking washing up water, making the most of the leftover scraps of food. They would find their way into the stores tents and rummage around in the boxes before weeing on the floor, they'd walk straight through guy ropes and make tents fall down, and they'd pick our washing off the line and chew it up, before spitting it out again a short walk away. They did however sit nicely whilst we sketched and photographed them, and the young ones would even let us give their heads a scratch, so eventually they became an accepted part of base camp - part of the team.

Karl enjoying a freezing dip in one of the lakes

I have a new found love for wild swimming - we'd wash in the surrounding glacial lakes, spending ages standing knee deep in silty sediment, trying to psych ourselves up to throw ourselves in deeper, before reaching the drop off and plunging into the deep icy waters, instantly feeling clean and refreshed. Every time I went in my fingers and toes would go numb, leading to hours spend sitting next to a stove in my big down jacket, trying to warm back up again. Every afternoon the winds would pick up, blowing away the calm of the morning and placing sand in every nook and cranny of our kit. It left us no opportunity to lounge around in the sun to let ourselves dry and try to fix our t-shirt and sandal tan lines, so I just embraced them.

Great photo from Calum Matthews
Me, Cameron, Rachel, Monty and Becca, on a short walk out of base camp
Base camp lay amongst the glacial lakes in the background

Leaving base camp at the end of the expedition was tough - we'd worked really hard to make it a home, but we had to take it completely apart and leave without a trace. I was part of the Phase 5 trek team, who left a few days early to trek over the Kanji La and through villages for five days to meet the buses as they drove past, so I cheekily got out of the slog of carrying equipment back to the buses, but I still helped to dismantle Dras' camp. We threw the crazy paving back onto the scree, filled in the toilet and slops pit, took down our stove protection wall and outdoor dry stone kitchen, took down the mess tent.. so much emotion.

One day I'll go back, I'm sure of it.

Canoeing across Scotland

As an après-exam 'break', I decided to sign up to a five day Canoe Across Scotland challenge with my friend Ed, in aid of the Teesdale and Weardale Search and Mountain Rescue Team (TWSMRT). A team of 14 of us crossed the country via the lochs, travelling a total of 95km, wild camping each night. I'd also just run the Edinburgh Half Marathon the day before we started (in 1hr 57!), which made things a bit more interesting!

The 95km route across the lochs from Fort William to Inverness

The TWSMRT consists of 50 highly trained volunteers, who all have full time jobs, covering distress calls from the entirety of County Durham. Not only do these volunteers rescue lost and/or injured people from the hills but they also search for missing people within urban settings. They've done a lot for the students of Durham, searching for missing people along the river. The team is funded purely by charitable donations, grants, trusts and sponsorship.

For the last two summers I've participated in the Three Peaks 24 Hour Challenge for this charity, but this year I wanted to try something new and challenge myself in a different way. I also wanted some time to completely relax and de-stress after my final university exams - it worked a treat!

Ed and I ran a pancake and waffle fundraising afternoon at his house, asking for donations in return for yummy food. We managed to raise a very respectable £101.10 on the day from our donation jug, so we were pretty pleased with ourselves!

The Great Glen Canoe Trail runs along the Caledonian Canal, which runs 97km from the west coast at Corpach near Fort William, across to the east coast at Inverness. Only 1/3 of its length is man-made - the rest is made up of Loch Dochfour, Loch Ness, Loch Oich and Loch Lochy. They (rather conveniently) run in a straight line along the Great Glen, a massive geological fault. (Having studied Geology for three years I found that part pretty cool!). We were to be portaging the canoes (half carrying, half wheeling the canoes along the ground - definitely not as fun as being on the water!) around the 29 locks, but the rest of the time would be spent paddling on the water, cooking on a fire or sleeping in our tents. Don't you just love it when life is that simple?



Day 1

We started in Corpach at 7pm on Monday 1st June. It was pouring with rain and freezing cold - the sort of weather that makes being inside by a log fire feel like heaven on Earth. Sadly though we were outside, about to start canoeing for five days, and for most of us it was our first time ever being in a canoe..

We followed the Caledonian Canal about 10km across to Gairlochy, through the pouring rain, slowly realising that 'waterproof' doesn't mean 'able to cope with Scottish rain' and getting more and more damp. However, it was actually still really enjoyable and great fun learning how to steer and use the paddles properly. We then reached our first portage - where you have to lift every boat out of the water, put them on wheels, then roll them around the long wiggly path by the lock. After breaking one set of wheels and moving every single canoe to our camping spot, we'd cracked the technique and it was plain sailing from then on!



Day 2

The next day involved crossing Loch Lochy (what an inventive name) and most of Loch Oich. The larger lochs are quite demoralising, as the other side looks really close but then doesn't seem to get any closer, even after hours of paddling. It was absolutely beautiful though, so it completely made up for the slow pace.

We set up camp at Leiterfearn, near the end of Loch Oich. We made friends with Marselle, a guy from Holland who'd just quit his job and was walking around Scotland by himself for seven weeks. He was camping nearby and wandered over to say hello after we'd set up our tents, bringing tidings of an axe and some dry firewood for us to use. He was walking the Great Glen route, so we saw him again the next day whilst portaging the canoes, in a very good mood considering the amount of Scotch Whiskey he'd drunk the night before!



Day 3

Day three was probably the hardest day, with three portages and tiredness beginning to set in. At the end of the last, 650m, portage through Fort Augustus (marking the halfway point of the challenge) we found a plaque that read 'Loch Ness, Fort Augustus' and took a cute team photo to document our achievement.

The team at Fort Augustus, about to set off across Loch Ness

We had winds up to gale force 6 on Loch Ness, which left us almost surfing on some of the waves - pretty helpful for pushing us along, but also quite tough to steer the boat on. We camped high up in a field on the northern shore of the loch, feeling happy in the glorious sunshine and stringing up our damp clothes to dry.

By now we'd all spent too long on top of the water and fancied getting into it, so we went for a dip! It was absolutely freezing and not pleasant at all.. but I'm happy to be able to say I've now been swimming with Nessie!



Day 4

We cooked dinner each night on an open fire, and had porridge every morning, but having to use damp firewood was making it quite tricky. We stopped for an early dinner at the end of Loch Ness, where we found a load of dry driftwood and made a brilliant final fire!

It was then a short, chilled, paddle along Loch Dochfour to our next camping stop at Dochgarroch. A few of us were feeling weird having tired arms but not tired legs, so we set off on a run (which then turned into a walk, when we realised how tired we were..) to make ourselves feel better and get a different view to what we'd been seeing at loch level.

Happy paddlers on Loch Ness

Day 5

The final stretch of the challenge was a fairly chilled paddle along the Caledonian Canal, with no portages and great weather. We played around tying the canoes together, which worked surprisingly well, and enjoyed the final couple of hours of relaxation. I haven't felt so calm, relaxed, happy and free for such a long time - I now love canoeing!

We finished at 11am on the 5th of June, feeling very pleased and proud of ourselves, and very ready for sleeping through the six hour journey back home to Durham.

Nearing the finish, experimenting with two boats lashed together

The challenge was also awesome fitness training for my upcoming expedition to India, so I'm feeling even more prepared now. I've also managed to raise a very respectable £205 so far for TWSMRT, with money still coming in! If you'd like to donate money to this amazing charity by sponsoring me for this challenge, please click here. Our pancake afternoon was a great success, but we'd like to raise even more if we can, and every single pound helps. Please help us to raise as much money as possible for this great charity!

P.S. check out my new map at the bottom of the page, showing where I've been in the world!

13 Weeks To Go!

I've just got back from a week of training up in Lichfield with the other TLs, the expedition Leaders, and the Young Explorers (YEs). It's been awesome meeting the YEs and seeing the Leaders again, and the excitement seems to be building up in everyone.

The TL team spent the first half of the week on an Expedition First Aid course, run by Lifesigns Group. The course has been developed by Royal Army Medical Corps Trauma Medics and outdoor instructors, so it's highly relevant to the Himalayan expedition and has prepared us well for any incidents that may occur. The skills we've learnt might mean the difference between life and death in the mountains - talk about pressure. Having said this, we'll have six medics with us in Ladakh who will take great care of us and be able to deal with whatever the mountains throw at us!

We learnt about what to do in case of suspected spinal injury, sucking chest wounds and catastrophic bleeding, among other things, and were tested in acted out scenarios. I spent one afternoon as a casualty lying on the floor outside with a fake arm wound and amputated hand, next to a fake snake whilst pretending to be unresponsive. I learnt a lot whilst seeing how the three different teams treated me and dealt with the situation.

We all passed the course, which will last us for three years before we'll need to retrain. Luckily the course also counts towards my Mountain Leader qualification, which I'm working towards at the moment.

Feeling cozy in the party tent!

Friday was spent on a team walk around Cannock Chase, a beautiful area around our campsite. We planned our routes on Thursday evening and set off the next morning, taking a well earned detour to get ice creams on the way back!

The YEs all arrived on Friday evening, so a few of us took on the mammoth task of cooking for 170 people - no mean feat! It was great getting to know them all over the course of the weekend, particularly my 'fire', Dras. A fire is a traditional term for a small group of around 10-12 people, originating from a group sat around a camp fire. All of the fires on the expedition have been named after the main rivers in the Zanskar region of the Himalayas, which is where we'll be going. So there's Dras, Nubra, Zanskar, Chenab, Indus, Markha and Shyok-Suru fires.

The Zanskar Himalaya expedition team!

The YEs all received training on the technical equipment we'll be using in India, the different options for shelter, health and hygeine, and other useful and interesting topics. I helped out with teaching about shelter, prompting conversations about shelter options in different scenarios and giving useful tips on putting up tents. We spent a lot of time sitting under the bright orange emergency survival shelters getting far too warm in the sunshine! During the expedition we'll have an extra communal tent for each fire, similar to a tipi, for us to sit in together and have dinner etc. when the weather's not great.

The TLs ran fitness sessions on Saturday and Sunday morning, running around a nearby hill fort and doing some yoga, as well as some 'wide games' on Saturday evening. We all had great fun playing Wizards, Dwarves and Giants (essentially a giant team game of rock paper scissors combined with tag) and Sardines in the dark, where we almost lost one of the sardines as they were so well hidden!

We also ran through the kit everyone will need to take, in a session that lasted over two hours, whilst wondering how on earth we're going to fit it all into our rucksacks! So much kit-envy, so many opinions, and so much down.

Some of the TL team at the end of the week - spot the odd one out with no down jacket..
From the left: Callum, Monty, Anna (me), Becca, Karl, Rob and Steph

There are now only 13 weeks to go until the expedition! The advance party flies from London to Leh on the 17th of July - it's getting closer..