Trailblazer: Notes from Yosemite

Hey there. Greetings from Yosemite. The weather lately has been cloudy with thunder in the distance. It seems like there is going to be a thunderstorm every afternoon, but it just does not come to fruition.

I bet one question people out there might want to know is what the food is like here in the back country. This past week, I was designated to be on Kitchen Prep (KP). In its most basic sense, KP is the person who works in the kitchen with the cook. We have a fabulous cook on our crew, who can make the best pies.

The day of KP begins before the sun rises over the mountains at 4:30 a.m. My first duty was to start a fire under the “jungle can.” The jungle can is basically a large aluminum garbage can filled with water and placed over the fire pit. The fire boils the water and is used for the morning dishes.

The KP then heads into the kitchen to help with breakfast preparation. The morning I was KP, I made biscuits and orange juice, while the cook made scrambled eggs and bacon. Holly makes the most fabulous scrambled eggs — not sure what she puts into them, but they are like a little piece of heaven.

Breakfast is served each morning at 6:30 a.m., and once everyone has eaten, the dishes are done. Dishes are different here because the water is not potable. The process begins with scraping all the uneaten food into the fire. For dishes, there are three tubs. The first tub is full of boiling water and dish soap; the second tub is cold water and bleach; and the third tub is for rinsing, which is just boiling water.

After the morning dishes and other chores are completed, we all meet up at 7:30 a.m. for stretching. This is led by the KP. Stretching is a lot of fun because is wakes you up, and there are just a lot of laughs. Before everyone heads off to work, as the KP, I had to give a quote of the day: “The tragedy in people’s life is not what they suffer, but in what they miss.”

As everyone else heads off to work, I fill the jungle can back up with water from Lake Eleanore. I then start another fire and wait for the water to boil. This time I boil the water for the laundry, both personal and dirty dish towels. This process is much the same as the dishes. The laundry, though, is done in a cooler with a plunger like device. The first load is done in boiling water with detergent soap. Then all the laundry is wrung out. You do the same plunging with the second load but in hot water with no detergent, and then you wring it out again. The third load is done in cold water and bleach. This time, after they are wrung out, they will be hung out to dry.

Since I was the KP at the beginning of a week, the next order of business was to sit and wait for the food order truck to arrive. Once the truck came in, Holly and I unloaded all the food that would be for the next week. We carried each box into the kitchen and then did an inventory check and put it all away. There was so much food that it took several hours. To be a back country cook, you must plan a week’s worth of meals ahead of time, which I feel would be a hard thing to do. There is no grocery store nearby if something is forgotten. At this point, I had been working for several hours, and it was lunch time, so I was able to have a break from noon to 3 p.m. During this break, I ate some lunch and read a bit of a book by Tom Brown, “Tom Brown’s Guide to Nature Observation and Tracking.” I also took a bit of a nap.

Once 3 p.m. came back around, it was time to head back into the kitchen and begin to prepare for dinner. Upon entering the kitchen, there was the most pleasant of smells. Holly had already begun making the scalloped potatoes with her own homemade white sauce. She told me I could begin work on a dessert. Now, I must say my baking skills are not all that great, but I was able to make this dessert. It was basically peanut butter and butter melted together, and then once melted, powdered sugar and crushed graham crackers were mixed and put into a pan. Then I melted chocolate chips and poured it over the top of the pan. Holly continued to make some hamburgers., while I chopped up onions, tomatoes and cheese for the hamburgers. At 4 p.m., I headed back outside to get yet another fire going underneath the jungle can for evening dishes.

The rest of the week, we worked two trails. The first we did on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. This particular trail begins at 4,500 feet and ended at 7,000, the final destination being Kibby Lake. We actually did not get a chance to finish the trail this week because with about one-half mile remaining, a large thunderhead made its way on top of us. It got really windy and did begin to thunder. Our boss decided that the top of a mountain was not a good place to be during a thunderstorm. So we all headed back to camp, which was a bummer because we were so close to finishing.

On Friday, we started a new trail. This trail head toward Frog Creek. There was a lot of loping and scaling work to be done on this trail, which is an 80-year-old trail that has not been maintained in a long time. At certain points, the trail is lost in the woods. I am excited about this upcoming trail for two reasons. First, it is not too often a trail crew is able to maintain a trail after not being maintained for so long. Second, because we are maintaining it, we will get to see a significant amount of progress in our work each day, even if we only maintain a small amount.

• This weekend, I also got to see a bald eagle in flight and resting in a tree.

• On Friday, at the of the week, we saw a very large rattlesnake.

• This week brought three thunderstorms — very short but loud thunder.

• The sunsets over Lake Eleanore are just beautiful.

Editor’s note: Princeton resident Brian Taylor, 25, is spending several months working and living in Yosemite National Park. He has agreed to send letters to the BCR, telling readers of his experiences. Taylor does not have access to any electronic equipment — cell phone, lap top, etc. All correspondence from him is via handwritten letters.