Troop 14 in Yosemite!

These pages attempt to document the adventures of 26 scouts, adults, and friends over the course of 13 days in Yosemite National Park, Reno, and San Francisco. It was months in the planning, with untold hours of preparation and fund raising. The end result was that it cost each scout roughly the same as a week at Cedarlands.

Realizing that there were different skill levels and interests, and wanting to include as many people as possible in the trip, we organized ourselves into two teams, as shown below. This gave us the greatest flexibility, making sure that everyone had a chance for adventure and challenge. In the listing, names in bold are the adults.

There were nearly 2,500 photos taken by the group, and these pages only show a subset of the stories we have to tell. The table below offers a rough breakdown of what happened when, with links to the different pages when possible. For ease of navigation, the list in the left frame offers hot-links to the same pages. As a bonus, many of the scouts and adults offered their own personal essay about some aspect of the trip. ... Enjoy!

August, 2006

The Red Team
John Bob Nick Jim Patrick Mike Brian John Matt Cliff Jeremy Chris Matt	Koslosky Decker Decker Derrane Derrane Fitzsimmons Fitzsimmons Ivory Ivory Rose Rose Sleys Sleys

The Blue Team
Arjun Mike Marshall Angela Ben Sarah John Patrick Kevin Brian Bryce John Dustin	Amernath Cominsky Cominsky Derrane Derrane Derrane Dooley Dooley Fee Fee Hobin Klimacek Tropp

Thu
Aug 3

	Flight from Syracuse Airport (departing 6:30 in the morning)
	Drive to Yosemite, with scenes & stops along the way
	Check into Curry Village, & evening meal with raccoons

Fri
Aug 4

	Bottom of Yosemite Falls, & climbing over huge boulders
	Giant sequoias at Tuolumne Grove
	Olmstead Point: view of Yosemite Valley and upcoming storm
	SNOW!?!?!? In August?!
	Arrival at Log Cabin Wilderness Camp (LCWC)

Sat
Aug 5

	Hanging around camp, acclimating to the 9,600 foot altitude
	The near-by abandoned gold mine
	Views of Mono Lake and GeoCaching (Derranes arrive)

Sun
Aug 6

	Classes on Leave no Trace
	C.O.P.E.
	Hot tubs (at a scout camp?!?)

Mon
Aug 7

RED TEAM

9+ mile hike to the top of Yosemite Falls

BLUE TEAM

Climbed Lee Vining, followed by assorted classes

Tue
Aug 8

Hike to top of Snow Creek Falls (with mountain lion sighting!)

Practice for rappelling, and knot tying

Wed
Aug 9

Tortuous hike to May Lake

Rappelling and rock climbing!

Thu
Aug 10

	Hanging around the lake :-)
	Dinner at the Mobile station (!)

Climbed Mt. Warren (12,600 feet)

Fri
Aug 11

	Odd notes on Kevin Fee's van
	Fishing at Saddlebag Lake and Tufas at Mono Lake (Mr. Fee has to leave early for home)

Sat
Aug 12

Said goodbye to LCWC, and drove to Reno for swimming, major buffet, and to visit a casino (Derranes head off on their journey)

Sun
Aug 13

	Drive to San Francisco by way of Donner Pass
	Golden Gate Bridge, & surrounding area
	Another major meal - this time in China Town!

Mon
Aug 14

The full day was spent in San Francisco, covering all sorts of things...

Pier 39	Battleships & Subs
An aquarium	Alcatraz!

Red-eye home from SFO to SYR

Tue
Aug 15

Job well done. Everybody got home safely (albeit somewhat pooped)

We've also got...

Some lessons learned	A list of (reported) injuries
Critters we saw	Panorama pictures
Thanks (again) to our sponsors	Leftover stuff

And if all of the above isn't enough... we've saved what I believe is the best for the last... Personal accounts of the trip from many of the scouts and adults that were able to write in.

Google Earth! Throughout many of these pages, I've opted to (try and) supplement the photos and narrative with links to KML files. If you happen to have Google Earth already installed on your system, then these magical links will bring you right down to nearly the exact spot spoken of in the text. You'll see the links as being these little blue marbles (like the one above). Click here to get Google Earth.

It turns out that there are also some pretty fine simulated 3D images up on Virtual Guidebooks. Whenever possible and appropriate, I've made direct links to relevant and similar scenes. You'll find these as these funky V3D graphics every once in a while. Just click on them, and wait for the main image to load. Once it's ready, click and hold down the mouse button over the image to pan your view around. If you tap on the SHIFT and CTRL buttons, you can also zoom in and out.