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! 

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..

Training update - parkrun

Our parkrun selfie snapchat!

This morning I ran 5km in Durham with parkrun - if you haven't heard of parkrun take a look at their website here:  http://www.parkrun.org.uk/

Essentially they're free, 5km timed runs, run by volunteers, at loads of locations around the world. They're great fun and I always try to go along at 9am on a Saturday morning when I don't have an OTC training weekend.

My time wasn't great today as I ended up doing two exercise classes (Extreme Core and Insanity) back to back last night, and now everything hurts! But it was a fab way to start the day and I'm feeling good now.

I always try to keep fit, both for my health, my happiness, and for OTC, but my upcoming expedition to the Himalayas is giving me even more motivation - a lack of fitness would massively impact my ability to enjoy the beautiful scenery of Ladakh, and I might as well make myself as fit as I can.

I've been doing lots of running (both intervals and long scenic runs), spinning, and exercise classes, like Extreme Core, Box Fitt and Insanity, as well as a few trips to CrossFit (find out more here: http://www.crossfit.com/cf-info/what-is-crossfit.html) on the outskirts of Durham. I always try to drag other people along, but this morning it was my housemate Sophie who woke me up and got me on my bike!

More training updates to come..