Gary-Summer: October 7, 2018

Sunday, October 7, 2018

October 7, 2018 - Delilah Lookout

Title: October 7, 2018 - Delilah Lookout
Hike Info : Description : Extra Photo's

Trail head: Delilah Lookout

Hike Info:

Type: Lookout

Description:

Morning moisture on the Kings

While we were hiking the John Muir Trail, a lot of witticisms came to my mind. But today, the thoughts which perfectly describe it are from Sherri:

The beauty you see,

words do not describe its fullness,

pictures only show shadow.

Woke up this morning about 0630. The sun not peeping over the crest yet, but there being a bit of light around. Looks so clear and beautiful. Looks like a clear day today. But we will need to see how the day progresses. In a back and forth text with Kathy, she notes that This flawless day is your reward for your patience during the not so great ones. Where she is wrong is that almost all days in a lookout are great-well maybe those where we are engulfed in smoke are not :-).

Coastal Range in the distance

We get cleaned up and ready to vacate the lookout this afternoon. So down goes our stuff like sleeping bags and pads, extra clothing and the used water bottles. Then time for our oatmeal breakfast. I have to say that maybe the accommodations are spartan, but the ambience is literally mountain top. Today, before we go in-service, we are seeing all the way over to the coastal range and up to Merced Peak in Yosemite. What a view. Too bad, as Sherri’s statement above says, that the pictures do not tell this story-I need more of a touch in my pictures. As you see in this blog posting, too few pictures.

Firefinder with lighting strike markings

We go in-service at 0928. We are told that Buck Rock had a rough time yesterday. When the lookout left, it was so cold, icy and hail had fallen that he had to walk backwards down the 237 steps there. And then this morning the road was snowy. I guess we feel fortunate with the .2” of water which fell on us last night. For a while, we are the only lookout in-service on the south side of the Kings, in our area. So I spend some time plotting lighting strikes on our firefinder. One looks like it may have gotten a direct hit, or at least pretty close, on Buck Ruck. I talked to Buck Rock a couple of times about the lighting strikes yesterday.

When Buck Rock goes in-service, the first thing he does is reports a smoke about a mile south of his place. Several resources head towards the source of a smoke. This is now called the Rock Fire-not because of Buck Rock, but because it is close to a rock called Wedding(?) Rock. It is confirmed that it is one of the strikes I put down. By the time 1530 rolls around, this fire gets put into Patrol Status-meaning that once every day or two, somebody would be by to check to make sure the fire is not growing or does not have the potential for growth.

Wonder Valley

Usually Delilah does not get any visitors. Today we have three groups which come up for a total of eight people. This is really unusual in our experience. Like some community starved people, we latch on to them. The first group is staying at Sequoia Highlands camp. Some of their party are paragliding off of Sontag Point. We had just seen them a few minutes before so Sherri points out the gliders to them. Then we go around and show a few peaks of Yosemite: Merced and Gale Peaks. After a couple of hours, three Southeast Asians come up. They are out hunting, but they felt as long as they are out this way, they might as well climb the stairs to the top. They count 86 of them. We show the sights to them as well. Finally about an hour before closing, a doctor from Fresno comes up. It turns out we have friends in common. We are able to point to some of the places he has been backpacking at. For Buck Rock, this would be a light day. For us, this is a lot.

Split Mountain and Cardinal Peak

After doing our lookout check-in with Sierra, we start the business of packing up. It is more than just packing up after our three days in the tower; this is probably the last time in a fire lookout this season. This next hour is bitter-sweet. The bitter because we will not be up here until May at the earliest. The sweet is that we are going out on a glorious day and because Delilah is helping us recover from the Summer and all which has happened in it.

So we clean up: clean the windows, scrub the floor, make sure everything is put away. Then at 1700, we go out of service. By 1720, we are on the road out of Delilah and ready to eat. We get to Fresno and have Italian food at Dicicco’s before going home. A good day and weekend. Also good to get a shower as well.