6/24/2005, Thursday - Today was another easy day. I got up at around 8 A.M. to filter water and pleasantly discovered how calm the lake water was in the early morning. As I pumped the water, I saw a salamander crawling on the lake bed near the pump inlet. After disappearing for a few minutes, the salamander would resurface - this time floating on the water surface a few feet in front of me - as if he were enjoying it. I'd see a salamander in the same spot the next day pumping water...
Around 10 A.M., we left camp for a day hike. We cross countried across some granite slopes, bushwacked down a small vegetated canyon, and walked up more granites to a rushing stream. The stream was flowing like crazy. We lunched by a section of the river and took several pictures. Afterwards, we hiked up the mountain a little more until we found a good resting place at around 1 A.M. I would scramble up the slope for a few minutes and find a chair-shaped rock to sit. A rescue helicopter zoomed up the canyon - which caused some excitement in all of us. Little did we know a huge missings person search was just being formed....
We cross countried a bit on the way back. We did not cross country all the way back because we came upon a trail that probably went aroud the lake. The trail took us across a clam section of the river and a cabin built for winter snow monitoring personnel. We arrived back at camp at around 3 P.M. and spent about three hours of "solo time" before assembling to cook dinner. During solo time, Devin figured out why one of the two water filters we carried were not working. Apparently, it had an incorrected sized o-ring! For the next couple of days, Devin would try fix and re-fix the filter. Grace and I spent more time at the shaded outcropping we discovered yesterday. It was a little windier and cooler today - which was perfect for me but a little too chilly for Grace.
For dinner, we had bogar rice (some sort of Armenian rice mixed with tomato and pesto sauce). It turned out we brought way too little rice - a supposed first for UCLA OA. Fortunately, we had camp cheesecake to fill our stomaches afterwards. We saw a swarm of wasp rise from a nearby bush - in an almost clocklike fashion since they seemed to have done the same at the same time yesterday. We chit chatted a little, debriefed the highs and lows othe trip thus far, and stars gazed a little before turning in early for tomorrow's long hike to Rancheria Falls.
