Sierra Nevada

It's way wilder than that, correct?

So Ron Moorhead, who produced what's called the Sierra Sounds, he had a hunting camp up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, kind of north of Yosemite.

And over the years, they had strange encounters with Bigfoot.

One time, Ron, in the 1960s, brings a reel-to-reel recorder up there and something to, it's an electric generator, and he records these sounds.

In the darkness of Camp Nelson, one horror has unfolded, and another one is just beginning.

Bonnie Hood had long dreamed of a life in the Sierra Nevada woods...

In 1987, when a historic mountain resort in Camp Nelson went up for sale, she and her husband Jim seized the chance and bought it.

Bonnie left the suburbs behind and moved to Tulare County to run the Camp Nelson Lodge, a rustic 43-acre property ringed by giant sequoia trees.

By the time the Donner Party straggled out of the desert and rejoined the main California trail near the Humboldt River on September 26th, they had lost at least a month of time.

Winter was closing in.

and they still faced 300-plus miles and the Sierra Nevada ahead.

Quote, Never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can, young Virginia Reed would later implore to others.

And he would say something and then he would think in his mind, do I really even believe that? Is that even something that I grasp in my mind? And he realized that he thought the way he was thinking, his ministry might be over.

And so he took his Bible and he went up to the high Sierra Nevada mountains in California.

He got on his knees and this is what he said to God.

He said, Father, I cannot understand many things in this book.

Fremont found many American emigrants at Fort Vancouver on his visit to that post, and also learned that others already occupied the adjacent lowlands of the Willamette Valley.

Moreover, these pioneers were not confining their efforts to Oregon, for while small parties were pushing southward through that valley to settlements in northern California, still others, making detours near Fort Hall, reached by a more direct route through passes in the Sierra Nevada the banks of the Sacramento.

On November 10, 1843, Fremont left Vancouver to return to the United States, having in view an entirely new route whereby he might be able to complete the exploration of the great interior basin between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada.

His party then consisted of twenty-five.

Leaving the Columbia at a point above the Dalles, Fremont followed Deschutes River to its source, and passing over to Lake Klamath, contemplated a journey to and a winter camp on either Mary's Lake or the mythical Buenaventura River.

The existence of these maps was generally known, and their absence from Fremont's topographic outfit is remarkable.

A most unfortunate omission, as Benton in his Thirty Years' View describes Fremont's charts and geographic information as disastrously erroneous.

Struggling along in the snow through a forest of unknown extent, Fremont halted on December 16th on the verge of a rocky precipice, from which the party looked down more than 1,000 feet upon a broad lake, the most westerly waters of the great interior basin, which, from its pleasing contrast to the wintry weather of the Sierra Nevada, they called Summer Lake.

Are we all getting triples or just parts of the valley?

Well, if you're in the High Sierra, you're in luck, right?

Okay.

The weather's a little bit nicer there.

In those mid-90s, 96 degrees in Coarsegold and, uh, Mariposa and Oakhurst, as well as Yokuts Valley.

And then Auberry, a little bit on the chillier side for that area with a high of 93 today.

High Sierra also weather's pretty nice for you guys.

89 degrees if you're up in Yosemite.

You know, I got a kid that was, he was turning 18, he was graduating, he was getting Life Scout and Boy Scouts.

Like, everything was kind of happening all at once, getting his driver's license, so I can't leave until, like, later on in the year, right? So that kind of inspired when I go out, thinking, hey, I can go through the Sierras really quick, you know, no snow, whatnot.

not thinking about the fact that I've already done parts of the Oregon trail as well.

So that kind of landed me to to hatch me.

This particular one I feel was more of timing.

Okay.

So I ended up, like I said, you know, I wasn't able to start until later thinking that, Hey, I can go through the PCT, uh, through the Sierras, you know, no snow, that kind of thing.

So I'm like, Hey, I'll just go back to where I stopped and to hatch me and I'll continue not thinking about when I was going, uh, the location of where I was on the bubble.

Something made them so terrified that starving to death in a freezing metal box seemed like a better option than whatever was outside.

So, the Sierra Nevadas are beautiful, sure.

But standing in those woods when the sun goes down, listening to the wind rattle the dead branches, you get the feeling the trees know exactly what happened that night.

And they ain't telling, my friend.

All right.

What, your Sierra Nevadas?

No, my Spaten Polaner.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Have you ever seen a spring come up in the wilderness? Like just bubbling out of the ground.

They've got some up in the High Sierra Mountains I've seen before.

And it's just coming out.

There's a spring of living water.