Staff

Dave Stuben

Pete Covell

John Livingston

Students

Chris Foster

Chris Cooper

Chris Cantu

Cooper Mount

Kevin Walgenbach

Patrick Woo

Carey Harkness

Troy Steen

Jesse Olson

Eric DeBruin

Andrew Honeyman

Andy Alexanderson

Our Experience

Friday- Drove to Bridgeport, California. We set up camp and welcomed the students to Mountain Classroom. After dinner we went to Travertine hotsprings.

Saturday- We debriefed the group on the days’ activities during breakfast. We broke camp and drove to Bodie State Park. Bodie is a ghost town left in a state of arrested decay. Only 10% of the towns’ original buildings remain. During the gold mining rush, Bodie had over 10,000 residents, 65 saloons and frequent gunfights. We then drove to Black Point on Mono Lake. Black Point is a halocene pyroclastic volcano which is 13,300 years old. After exploring all the fissures, the kids each took the “leap of faith” over a seven foot gap between a fissure. From Black Point we made our way to the southwest part of Mono Lake to set camp in the Jeffries Pine Forest. A delicious pasta dinner was followed by the “carabiner-in-the-nose-game” and “take the hit”. These games set the level of testosterone needed to carry out an all boys camping excursion.

Sunday- After breakfast we packed the vans and hiked across a sage field to Dry Gulch. Dry Gulch is typically the favorite site for the boys. This trip was no exception. The boys spent over 2 hours exploring many caves and climbing on boulders left precariously from glaciation. None of the boys wanted to leave. In the name of education we took the group to the South Tufa Park at Mono Lake for an interpretive lecture by Bartshe Miller of the Mono Lake Committee. During the hour-long lecture, the boys learned how the Mono Lake Basin has been affected by declining water levels as a result of increased water demands in the Los Angeles area. Evaporation and years of below-average snowpack have contributed to the high mineral content and salinity of Mono Lake. We learned how the “tufa” towers were created. We learned that Mono Lake has over four trillion brine shrimp. Birds such as the Wilson’s phalarop eat 2.5 times their body weight in brine shrimp before they fly non-stop, 50 hours at 55-60 MPH to a winter migration spot in South America. Mono Lake is the nesting ground for 80% of the California gull population. The kids were able to eat Alkali fly larvae which was a main food staple of the Paiute Indians inhabiting the Mono Lake Basin. We took our wealth of knowledge to Banner Ridge where we climbed and scrambled on boulders until it was time to feast on chips and salsa and burritos.

Monday- We woke early to do a sunrise hike to the top of Banner Ridge. From the top we had a 360 degree view of the sun cresting the White Mountains and reflecting on the majestic Eastern Sierras. Reaching the summit required some exposed climbing. After a group photo we hiked down to a pancake feed hosted by Pete Covell. Breakfast brought forth a change to our trip itinerary. Troy was not feeling well. We decided it was necessary to get Troy to a doctor and change our plans to hike in to the Champion Spark Plug Mine. After a visit to the emergency room in Bishop, CA, we picked up medication to rid Troy of Strep throat and drove to Pleasant Valley on the Owens River. Although the bouldering around Pleasant Valley is world-class, the raccoons and mosquitos make it a not-so-pleasant place to camp.

Tuesday- The raccoons kept all of us up most of the night. Kids had been stock piling “coon rocks”. I misled the group to what I thought were the Happy Boulders. After searching in vain for something that looked familiar, we ended up being perfectly content climbing at the Chalk Bluff Boulders. Hot and sweaty, we found a great place to swim on the Owens River. We were finally able to throw Honeyman into the river. This became known as the Honeyman toss. We drove to Bishop hoping to eat at Wendy’s but had to settle for Jack in the Box. After getting necessary supplies, we made our way to the gate of White Mountain Peak. Our camp was at 11,600 feet! We would acclimatize overnight.

Wednesday- We departed camp around 6:00 AM. It would be seven miles to the Summit of White Mountain Peak at 14,246 feet. The group made great time and reached the summit in 4 hours, ten minutes. We rested and ate lunch at the summit. After group photos we began the arduous journey back to the vans. Every year I swear I will never do that hike again. A monkey wrench, or not having the proper size lug wrench, temporarily foiled our plans to meet Ken Foster in Bishop for a pizza feed and celebration. We got a flat tire driving on the rotten, wash-board roads back down to Bishop. By 8:00 PM we were at the pizza parlor shoveling down pizza as fast as they could bring it to the table. Darkness forced us to spend another evening in Unpleasant Valley.

Thursday- If the raccoons were not bad enough, a construction crew woke us up first thing in the morning to install state-of-the-art out houses. We didn’t even get the luxury of being the first to christen them! We were able to find the Happy Boulders after group and breakfast. We found great problems to climb and traverse. Climbing was followed by a mandatory swim and practice of the Honeyman toss. We then began our quest to discover new hotsprings. We found Wild Willie’s Hotspring. They were two large pools big enough to accommodate our group of 15 people. The view from these hotsprings was breath-taking. We did not want to leave. Our quest continued and we found two other springs which were dull in comparison to the hotspring near our evening campsite at Antelope Springs. This spot is my favorite campsite on the trip. We had hamburgers for dinner and went to bed.

Friday- A huge breakfast of sausage and bacon McCovell and McLivingston is a prerequisite to visiting Antelope Springs. This pool was hot! After the morning bath we drove to Mammoth Lakes to “detail” the interior and exterior of our two vans. Eight days of quality white trash camping with 15 people takes away that fresh, new car smell. With clean vans we went to Carl’s Jr. for lunch. We drove to Lee Vining, CA to visit the Mono Lake Committee Book Store to pick out post cards, stickers, books, maps and etc.

At the Mono Lake Visitors Center, the kids watched a 20 minute movie and walked through the interactive learning building, taking notes and testing their knowledge about the Mono Lake Basin. Our hotsprings quest continued as we drove to Bridgeport, CA to find Big Springs. Private land ownership kept us from “hot-potting” and camping near the hotsprings as we had planned. Heartbroken, we drove to Chris Flat Campground on the Walker River for our final evening. We recapped the trip in group and had each person share their favorite part of the trip, something new they learned about people in our group and how can the successes they experienced on the trip be applied to their lives back at school. This group was a beautiful and emotional experience. It was the perfect end to our incredible journey.

Saturday- MBA or bust. You know the end of the story.

see next pages for more pictures...