Sourdough

-
Early Saturday AM trip up to Sourdough Mountain, in Diablo. I did this one last year--it's good if you want a really steep five mile climb, with rocks in the trail and snow up the way. The views are amazing, and the wildflowers are rich. The good stuff. But it's hard--roughly 6000 feet of climb in 5 miles. Sounded perfect today, with sunny skies and coming off a long one last weekend. I wanted something sort of tough, but not too tough--semi-tough, and also to do a gear check in snow.
-
There's a really cool fire lookout up top, but I didn't make it that far. I came to a big snowfield and I lost the trail. Try and try, but I couldn't find it. The snowfield was like walking in a slurpee, with the sun melting the snow and water flowing underneath. I did a couple crazy spinouts, and after 45 minutes I finally said enough is enough, I won't be a story. I saw a marmot! I tried my new yaktrax out--discounted in the summertime---but hard to say if they helped. I also gave my Spot satellite tracker another go, and it was more or less a failure once I got under the trees, but it showed where I parked. Oh well. My mule camelback worked pretty good. I drank untreated water. I also accidentally came across the black and white feature on my camera, and so I went with it.