Chorro Grande Shake Down

Wow!  Its been over a month since my last post and I don't have a good excuse for the lack of reporting.  Its not that things have not been happening, however.  My first piece of good news is we got our permit to climb Mt Whitney!  Although we lost one of our Quest 4 Higher team and are now 3, our excitement is as high as ever!

With a long Easter weekend stretching in front of us, we decided to do a quick shake down trip up Chorro Grande Canyon.  It was the perfect chance to load our packs with 40+ pounds of gear and see just how tough a sample climb would be.  To add to the Whitney flavor, I rented a bear canister to hold our food and, along with a few hidden dive weights, Cheryl had the honor of carrying this precious cargo up to our camp. 

The hike starts at mile marker 36.6 on highway 33, about 10 miles past Rose Valley.  The trail is narrow and quickly climbs over scrabbly rock, opening up a bit in a wide meadow before reaching Oak Camp, the first primitive campground on this route. 

This is a remarkably beautiful camp, with several sites nestled under large oak trees, each with a well developed fire ring and plenty of open space to pitch a tent.  We were very pleased with the set up and had high hopes that our destination camp at Chorro Springs would be as nice.

After a quick snack we left Oak Camp and continued on up the canyon.  The terrain was constantly changing, from low chaparral, to fields of manzanita, to rock strewn moonscapes.  Each switchback opened up to stunning views of the surrounding mountains and as the day wore on the winds came up keeping us cool.

Just before mile 5  and after a few nice patches of snow, we came into Chorro Camp.  A quick tour of the area to check out the sites and we knew where we wanted to spend the night.  Quiet and secluded we pitched our tent inside a ring of very large rocks and just next to the fire pit.  Chorro Spring bubbled up from the ground just below our camp but we elected to melt some pretty clean snow for dinner cooking.  My new Jet Boil Flash was a rock star when it came to boiling snow!  In only a few minutes we were cooking up our respective dinners and looking forward to some adult beverages too!  We were having so much fun that we pretty much missed the sunset as the skies quickly turned dark exposing the amazing star scape. 

The winds howled all night long, but our camp was low in the canyon and shielded by rock so we sailed through the night with only a few gusts sneaking under our fly.  Until the moon came up, shining like a flash light into the tent, the night was remarkably dark with none of the ambient light we are so used to living in the city. 

Come morning we were ready for a quick breakfast after which we broke camp, loaded our packs and started our climb back down the trail.  As is typical on our hikes, we were much faster on the down than we were on the way up!  In no time we were in sight of our car and the end of our first backpacking trip.  We gave ourselves high marks for this journey... happy to know we could successfully hike with 40+ pounds, pitch our tent in minutes flat, and build a rip roaring fire! 

We are definitely ready for Mt Whitney!