After making camp and running my water temp experiments, Andra warms up in the sun. The wind is the biggest problem on our mountain perch. Andra covers her legs with her jacket. My orange rope dries in the sun after being cast into the lake sporting my thermometer.

Tired Andra gives up on the chair and relaxes face first in the grass. It felt quite warm once you got out of the wind.

Let this picture stand as a warning to all you women out there looking for an outdoorsy boyfriend that likes to spend time with you. This could happen to you! Trust me. Stick with the sports loving beer drinkers. Their love of the couch will prevent just this kind of tragedy.

With the temps rapidly dropping as the sun went down, I pulled our garbage up into a tree. There are many marmots and chipmunks in the area and those pesky buggers will bore right through things to get to any kind of food.

As usual the ranger went on and on and on about bears when we picked up the permit, and as usual we have yet to actually see a bear on any of our Yosemite backpacking trips lo these many years. The only times we managed to see a bear in Yosemite is when camping in the valley. Now I'm sure it is not uncommon for a bear to travel through this area from time to time, but I'd like just once for one of those rangers to explain to me what exactly a bear eats at 10300+ft. I sure know what they eat at 4000ft, idiot tourist food! On the contrary, if I were a bear I'd limit my visits to these altitudes unless I was on the latest fad pine needle and granite diet.

I know what you're thinking. The bear's hulking body is uniquely designed to run down the tiny chipmunks with minimum caloric output, thus maximizing the benefit of devouring the whopping 50 calories these fury bone sacks provide. Perhaps you're on to something. I'll have to give that "theory" some more thought.

In case someone is actually curious about what black bears eat, I'll give you the run down. Black bears are omnivores that will eat almost anything. Depending on the season and environment, vegetable matter makes up between 80 and 90% of its diet. During the spring, (April-May) black bears feed mainly on grasses. In June, they add insects, grubs and ants to their diet, and in the fall, their main source of food is berries, mushrooms, and acorns with supplemental carrion when available. Only a small portion of the diet of bears consists of animal matter, and then primarily in the form of colonial insects and beetles. Most vertebrates are consumed in the form of carrion. Black bears are not active predators and feed on vertebrates only if the opportunity exists.

So let's review. 1) In April-May, you'd need a steam shovel to dig deep enough in the snow here to even see the ground, and I wouldn’t dare speculate on the abundance of "grasses" at that time. 2) Andra was lying on the ground because no ant in his right mind would make a colony here. And 3) I start to chuckle a bit when I even think of berries, mushrooms, and acorns at 10000+ft. Did I mention we never saw any bears?

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