Five Scouts and an adult participated in the new Sierra Cycling Expedition this year during Summer Camp. The six were lead by a Massachusetts-raised guide Justice "Jesus" S, who was very accomodating to the activity-goals and personalities of the small group. We had use of a bear-proof horse trailer to hold our tents, sleeping bags and supplies. A truck would move the trailer to the next night's camp, so we only had to carry our water, lunch and small essentials during the day. We had a campfire and card game (Egyptian War) pretty much every night.

We took fire-roads and "regular" roads up from camp Monday morning to see the "100 giants" sequoia grove, and camped a few miles from there. Between the uphill riding and the hiking it was an exhausting day, but I didn't hear any comments about that. The chicken fajitas were about the best I can recall. Most of the scouts were too tired to hear the bear at knock over a trash can down the road around 3:00am.

Tuesday, we rode & hiked to dome rock, put on hardhats and harnesses and did traditional rock climbing. Mail Call found us at the parking lot, and we were able to spend some money and time at the General Store in the nearest town. We happily traded some of our hard-earned altitude for a fast ride downhill towards our camp for the evening. After about 10-12 minutes of 30mph fun, it dawned on us that maybe the mile between town and camp had passed. We pedalled back uphill about 5 miles to the unmarked road that lead to the evening's camp.

We mostly traversed the ridge line over to the Needles Lookout area, where we hiked several miles to the Forest Service Lookout there. I think we could see 100+ miles in any direction from there. We ate lunch while admiring Mt. Whitney and looking beyond Dome Rock and Sentinal Rock. After hiking back to our bikes, we took the "Freemen Creek Trail" a downhill single-path dirt route through the forest, between giant sequoias and along a river to the George Bush sequoia.

Thursday we biked about 20 miles to the Carver Ranch Overnight Camp, where the camp had set up an area for blackpowder shooting for us. We were able to setup metal targets and go though 100 rounds of lead balls, have some barbeque tri-tip and chicken, and participate in Scouting events after the Scouts arrived from Whitsett.

Given the choice of rafting down a slow rocky river or fishing & swimming, the group chose fishing & swimming. Hiking was not even mentioned but must have been assumed, because we had some substantial trailblazing across rocks, meadows, a bog, some streams and more rocks (some might call them "cliffs") to one of the prettiest series of natural pools and waterfalls I've seen. The fishing was poor but rinsing off several pounds of dirt and the exploring/relaxing were priceless. Somehow we made it back to Camp Whitsett a couple of minutes before the Aquacade -but too late to actually participate.

See the Camp Whitsett page for the rest of the trip.

Here are a few pictures: