24 Hours in the Mountains - Camping in the Sierra Nevada

Oh my goodness. In like something four to five miles, maybe six. Oh, are you looking to camp overnight? Yeah. All right, this is perfect. This is exactly what I wanted to do coming here. I'm going to hike in about six miles on the Ray Lakes backpacking loop. We can't do the full thing. You saw the water coming down, so there's river crossings and stuff. It's just inaccessible, she was telling us. So we're going to go up to the first campsite about six miles up, hang out there, call somebody, there's a fly rod, maybe there's a little pool you can fish in. But yeah, we're just gonna divvy up the gear all right now Get to hike and I am pumped man. You should see right in front of me. Look what's right in front of me here Oh all around me actually Yeah, I'm hungry too. Look at this man. Ready to do this Joe. I'm ready Kyle. You filming me? I'm filming you, hidden camera ----. I got my gigantic full-frame DSLR here We're gonna haul up this mountain Let's do it, do it. One of the most popular loops in the Sierra Nevada begins here, the Ray Lake Loop for 41 miles 66.3 clicks through rugged canyons and alpine wilderness. Alpine. Alpine or alpine? Alpine. Alpenglow. So we're going to Paradise Valley 6.8 miles 6,600 feet. John Muir named this valley calling it the most extravagantly beautiful of all the alpine gardens I have ever beheld. Well John Muir. He says that. Oh, those are your trees that you're talking about? No. The baobab almost? No, those are not the baobabs. You going camping? Oh, I did not clean your shoes Got mud on your boots? Yep Get it off. We're surrounded by mountains here. With some burnt stuff, they're pine trees. Then you look up and it's just like, holy crap. Holy crap! Gonna be hiking next to this river basically the whole time, so we really didn't have to pack in too much water. I've got a liter, and I've got my Sawyer filter, and that's awesome because Kyle said the last time he was here, this is like a trickle, and up in the mountains more, there wasn't any water, so we'll have to lug it in. it in but not is the case right now I'm happy with that it's a pretty light pack on I ended up putting Kyle's like seven pound tent in my backpack and he's got probably the equivalent weight in a bear canister for our food in his bag so we divvied it up that way I don't know what it weighs maybe the whole backpack maybe weighs 20 pounds or something not bad at all should be great be great going up into the hills okay this is so cool I've always wanted to do the John Muir trail We're not doing it obviously we can't do it, but the John Muir trail is 13 miles that way we're going to Paradise Valley Which is four point five same way as John Muir the power right there be crossing those things Oh the Sun as soon as you come into the Sun you can smell the the cedar a Mountain air second bear that one was really brown a blondie almost You guys see that do you understand the magnitude of this? I can barely grasp it this is just so cool so foreign to me so foreign to me Kyle yeah person anything like this man it's all good same thing wonder they named the Kings Canyon oh I'm feeling dropped right now we're gonna get rained on boys little dumping this whole hike is right in this little two-mile stretch We were next to the river not too long ago and the rivers bugs are loud doing this waterfall thing What do you think? What do you think? See switchbacks again? Look at the snow snow on the 5th of July on the trail up here too quite a bit legit snow Crazy, what are you doing there Kyle? Snow craft up in this piece. The river has finally slowed down a bit still moving good Look at this log jam. This is a massive massive log jam we stopped next to the river here it slowed down like quite a bit like I was saying looked in there for 30 seconds Kyle's like there's a trout I'm like no way come up and look in there too I saw two more it's a matter of less than a minute saw three little trout small but they're in there so Kyle's got his little fly rod love to watch him catch a fish on it I've never fly fish I don't have my license here or anything so I can't do it here but I'd like to film him doing it that's for sure sweet even if it's just a little catch and release catching and release that's really cool fly fishing is something I've always thought was very cool Looks like we've made it to the camping area I think we can basically camp anywhere around here and just not on the vegetation She's the park ranger said so I'm just gonna look around for a non slopey site right Kyle non slopey This is looking pretty glorious right about now. This is about perfect dude. So no vegetation on the ground, which is a go There's pre-existing fire rings. We're allowed to pick up like some squaw wood off the ground and burn that kind of stuff so there's some there yeah buddy yes yeah that's about as flat as you're gonna get eh i'm so happy with this right now oh he's mounting and i'm gonna take a little at least put my feet in there he's a bit cold on the feet that was refreshing kyle's over here working setting up his tent i'm eating and drinking my water and taking my feet in a little dippy poo but he doesn't want me touching his tent anyways he already made that perfectly clear perfectly clear just shaking his head over here oh man so we decided to put the tent back a little bit because we were just a little bit too close to the water there we're still in the shade for the most part levelly levelly ground pretty good he says better than last night it's hard for me to believe anything he says i would have brought my own tent but you know how it is taking a plane and stuff thanks so much for your help joe anytime bud well no i didn't just it's done now right Will you? Are you going to cook it for me too? The wind is blowing this way, and there's trees all here. So I'm just going to let it kind of float some line out here. And I feel like the fish are over there. They might just do kind of a karate chop. Nice one. Yeah, wasn't that cool? I wrapped it around. Yep, welcome to fly fishing. Stick with us, kids. Why does it keep getting wrapped around this fly fishing, dude? Every time I go to do this, I end up in a giant knot. How are you? Last time I saw you, Kyle was just thinking you to work, but it's not in good conditions and he's not trying to be nice about it. But yeah, I actually took a nap, so I was in there for a good hour. What are these? And that felt amazing. I feel a little tired now. It's nice that I put the tent up for you and you just closed in and slept. It was nice of you. So now, I'm going to take a little hike down and see if there's a good spot so we can try and try and do some night photography tonight. There's a really epic sky that way with the mountains and stuff. We're just a little bit closed in here with trees. But yeah, I wouldn't be opposed to going to check that out. So that's probably what we're gonna do. Why don't you go walk down there and report back? Then I can take a nap. Then you can try to scare me. Try? Why don't you tell the folks at home what just happened? You tried to sneak up on me. Were you startled? No, not really. I knew you were coming. You were just like, oh, for no reason? I never heard the tent runs up there, so I'm just very stealthy. Nope, that was loud. I did that part loud. We found one decent spot, one decent open spot for pictures tonight, which isn't too far, maybe a five-minute walk from the camp. But Kyle's got his fly rod with him here, too, and we're walking away from the river. So just turned back around and going back towards camp. I noticed a spot right beside our camp earlier that was a little bit free of trees, So I think Kyle's gonna try there. He got so pissed off last time. That's why I went and laid in the tent I was just giving him some room. It's funny. It looks frustrating. It looks like a very finicky thing Currents too strong It's so strong looking check out there's an aspen tree just tons of bear mark bear claw marks all the way up this one, too We're allowed to have fires here, but we're not allowed to cut anything which is fine because there is plenty plenty of dead wood on the ground it's all small sticks and stuff like that well that's totally fine no need to be having a rip roar I am gonna cook my hot dogs on the fire tonight as opposed to boiling them because grilling them is really not my favorite at all but if you look and see what I mean sticks laying around here or so I'm gonna grab some of those right now to get about a hundred more armfuls I'm I'm really hungry, I want to cook up my hot dogs. Start this twig fire with a lighter and wood off the ground. You can see why it's very fiery around here. Look at that, literally two seconds later and wood I got off the ground. old school, roasting a wiener on a stick over flames, not even cold, it's bad boy up, I think. Okay, so I got my flatbread, I got two of them, one underneath each other, I got some jalapeno Monterey Jack cheese, My hot dog is looking pretty good. Sweat dog, nice and sweaty. Gotta love the sweat dogs. I'm looking forward to this. I wish I had some mustard though. Not having mustard is the bane of my existence. Kyle's gonna try it. He's getting the casting down. He actually is, he looks a lot better doing it. Green is green. He saw a couple trout right in that spot too. Hope he gets one. Hope he gets one. What is it called? That's a new trout species. They're a terrestrial trout. Bonus. is really good melted the cheese on there everything i'm gonna eat three okay now i'm really thinking this is how you do it right kyle oh my goodness good job buddy you want me to get your camera for you i let him go i got him he got him catch and release kind of guy my first fish on a fly high five and i basically just tin car rotted him you gotta do what you gotta do Yeah. It's almost 9 o'clock now. The cloud cover came in pretty good, so no night photography tonight. Heard a bunch of thunder, but no rain either, surprisingly. I'm okay with that. I'm out ready for bed. I'm pretty exhausted. So, yeah, probably going to be an early night, but epic day. Something completely out of the ordinary for me, so really, really cool. Good morning. A great night's sleep. The best sleep I've had since I've been here. Got a little bit chillier, which helped. I was able to actually use my sleeping bag. Up and out of this morning nice and early. We're going to go back, head back down the same way we came yesterday and get on out of here. We'll head up Yosemite for a little bit. It'll be pretty cool. Excited for that. and back to Kyle's tonight so that we can go whitewater kayaking tomorrow very very excited for that Kyle has a had a nice plan for this trip for us to just do a bunch of stuff so pretty cool the pack up get on that trail oh say do it do it I can't say oh say can you see what's so proud is that it twilight something gleaming you know the funny thing is they are all written the holes like drinking songs yeah just a bunch of Elkies a what was your your favorite part of our last trip we just did yesterday and today I guess at the the Ray Lake Saloon same as every trip I I like eating at the end. No, I'm kidding. I did like that. Catching the trout was an excitement. That was my first trout ever caught with a fly rod that I mainly kind of just use as a Tikka rod. But anyways. We don't have to tell them that. Well, I'm getting better. I was able to cast. I only lost like five flies to the trees. So that's not that bad. Yeah, it was good. It was fine. Phenomenal picture taking. I wish we wanted to cloud it up if we got some more starlight stuff. But other than that, it was phenomenal. I'll definitely go back to it someday. Yeah. What about your thoughts? When we first rounded that bend and we looked, we were like, I don't know, maybe 6,000 feet up or something. We had climbed 1,000 and we turned around and we were just, there was like these three peaks, like almost on the left, dead center, and then a little bit on the right. Yeah, we've been climbing in the woods like for the last like three hours, just looking at trees and then it like opened up and you could see everything. It was my first real glimpse of what I always thought camping in the mountains would be. It was just unbelievable. I've never, honestly, ever been out and done anything like this, as I've said, like, probably 100,000 times. But, yeah, man, very, very cool. Something that should be on people's bucket lists if they're into the outdoors. Yes. And we didn't even do much. You know what I mean? We hiked in six miles. Back hiking six miles with our gear, set up, camped there, and back out six today. But, like, there we saw a guy that he has, What did he say he was walking for two months? Like, we saw a ton of people out there just doing real backpacking stuff. but like even if you if you can't dedicate the time to go and to go for two months we were up for one night and we saw all that so anyways that's just the beginner uh next year will probably be the full loop but uh yeah very cool on to Yosemite here we go buddy to see Sam