About Us: Backpacking in the Sierra Nevada

We are M and P, married for 35 years, and with a ton of experience in camping, hiking and backpacking in the Sierra Nevada. That's us on the Hetch-hetchy Dam in Yosemite in the photo at right.

(Wapama Falls is just to the left of M's head, and the trail to Rancheria Falls follows that strip of green running right through P's head...)

We both grew up camping and hiking as kids, and we’ve continued that interest through raising two wonderful kids who have also grown up to love the mountains, too.

(In fact, we joined one of our daughters and her boyfriend to hike the Inka Trail to Machu Picchu, through the Andes. We loved that so much that we went back to Peru to hike the Santa Cruz trail further north, and then went to Patagonia to hike to Fitzroy and Cerro Torre. All of those were such great adventures that we've included them in our destination section.)

P’s father worked as a state park ranger in the Sierra for a couple of summers when P was growing up, at Donner Lake and D.L Bliss State Parks. Says P: “I don’t know if it felt like a vacation for him—but for us kids, it was heaven!”

(One of P's first hikes in the Sierra was on his mother's hip when he was about ten months old...a ten mile hike to Velma Lakes! There may have been others before that, but he doesn't remember... in the photo below, that's him in the blue overalls, standing in front of his older sister.)

Over the past few years we’ve spent more and more time backpacking in the Sierra, and thought it was time to share some of that experience with people who might be a little intimidated by the idea of backpacking. And we also hope to encourage others with experience to share their knowledge and expertise.

After more than 2,000 miles of hiking in the Sierra, both as day hikes and backpacking trips, we don’t know it all—but we are learning!

In the pages below, we've answered a few questions and explained our philosophy about backpacking, the Sierra Nevada, and issues of interest to hikers.

Please take the time to look around and see what we put together here. We hope it's fun, and we'll know we've achieved our goal if we get a note from you after a backpacking trip into the Sierra.

So go ahead! Explore!

Isn't Backpacking Hard?

Our Philosophy

Trail Etiquette: Leave No Trace (LNT)

Our packs resting by Laurel Creek

above Lake Thomas Edison.

P at Donner State Park, 1954