We camped last week at the
Lair of the Golden Bear U.C. Berkeley alumni family camp. Most years, we
hang out in the art grove, at the pool, and in the creek. This year, we tried
something new: day hikes.
My brother Pete, my husband John, our two teens, Jessi and Paul, plus J.R. (borrowed teen),
and I joined ten other hikers at 7:30 a.m. in the Camp Blue dining hall to make sandwiches
and get directions. We drove out of camp to Pinecrest Lake
to start. We walked half way around the lake and then started to climb. There has
been a great deal of water in the Sierras this year so the mosquitos were out in
large numbers. From the lake at 5,600 feet above sealevel, we climbed at least another
thousand feet over granite and through bay laurels to Cleo’s Baths.
The water at Cleo’s Baths is very cold and very deep this year so there many people
jumped from the
cliffs into the pools. They came up gasping and delighted and ready to climb up
again. There are great basins and holes wallowed out of the granite from the rush
of snowmelt causing the boulders inside to spin and grind. Some are full of water and
others are empty. J.R. crawled into a deep hole and lay down on a warm boulder to take
lots of pictures. Paul kept looking for higher cliffs to jump from. Jessie and I sat
on the warm granite and talked then played a game of Set with the little kids. We hiked down after lunch
very happy and covered with bug bites.
After a day of rest, we were ready to hike to Natural Bridges. Again starting at
7:30 a.m., this hike required an
hour’s drive down through Twain Harte, MiWuk, Sonora, and Columbia. The Camp Blue hike
leaders took the steep fast trail down with breakfast in their packs while the rest
of us walked down the switchback trail through poison oak, blackberries, scrub oak,
manzanita, and grass to the creek.
After breakfast, we got ready to swim. The highlight of Natural Bridges is a long
high cave with the creek running through it. We brought black inner tubes to float on.
The first part of the cave is flat about ten feet over the water, at least forty feet wide
in all directions with water dripping, showering, or cascading down from the ceiling.
From there,
we floated into two high chambers with amazing yellow and brown and white
stalactites and limestone formations. The final area opens onto a hillside where the
creek enters the cave and there are warm granite hillocks to dry off on. We saw
banana slugs and a large yellow brown crawdad and lots of minnows. I was barefoot. I
wish I had worn my Tevas so that I could have done more climbing.
Jessi and I outlasted everyone because we took so long watching the crawdad creep from
one granite basin to another. We got to float alone back through the caves.
It grew very quiet and Jessi started singing opera. Hearing her lovely voice and enjoying
her playing with the resonance was a profound delight.
We drove back to the Lair after stopping to visit and have lunch at the Columbia Historic Park. What a great day!
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