Tom Stienstra's best (and worst) of ...

Tom Stienstra's outdoor vacation awards
San Francisco Chronicle July 29, 2010 04:00 AM

The worst mosquitoes in California are at a wretched sump called Wilma Lake in Yosemite National Park. The least-known great trail camp in the Bay Area is tucked high beneath a ridge at Butano Redwoods State Park. The best day hike to a view anywhere in the West is the 3-mile hike to Mitchell Peak.

These are among the best and worst of vacations in the outdoors this summer. So in that spirit, the best and the worst, here are my outdoor vacation awards for 2010:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/29/SP0H1EK90R.DTL

Small world? In 1984, four of us were backpacking up on Falls Creek and the mosquitoes at Wilma Lake were indeed the worst I've encountered. The ridiculous reality for us is that none of us poor guys had a tent. Instead had military mosquito head nets and small squares of netting for added use like above our sleeping bags. The squeeters there were also very aggressive. It was miserable. To get there we had to make a waist deep ford across Falls Creek that was running rather high. But that didn't stop us from fishing and we all caught and ate some rainbows though were hounded at every step of the process from fishing, to cleaning, to cooking, to eating. Next morning at sunrise we couldn't wait to escape making our way down to Vernon Lake that was infinitely more pleasant.

Actually I'd bet the worst place in bad years in the Sierra may be about Cow Meadow and Lertora Lakes in Emigrant Wilderness. Huge number of small ponds about the glaciated granite landscape. One year it was bad I did get to Cow Meadow but Cherry Creek was too high to cross. The squeeters were ridiculous with a numbers of whirling plumes into the sky higher than the pines like little whining tornadoes.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/29/2010 09:19PM by DavidSenesac.