Bearpaw Camp. Sequoia National Park, California. August 5, 2008. © Copyright 2008 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Main tent at Bearpaw Camp, Bearpaw Meadow along the High Sierra Trail through Sequoia National Park.
I photographed the main tent (also known as the dining hall) at Bearpaw Camp back in 2008 while hiking the High Sierra Trail across the Sierra from west to east and culminating at Mount Whitney. This was the second time that I hiked this wonderful trail, having previously hiked it several decades earlier with my wife. On this second trip I was traveling with my “back-country friends,” a somewhat informally organized group known as the “talusdancers.” It is a long story…
A photograph of one of these old camps, much like the high sierra camps of Yosemite, always seems to recall images of the “old-time” Sierra for me. One of my first experiences in the high country of the Sierra involved a similar, though less isolated, seasonal tent camp in Yosemite – the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge. My dad had finally summoned up the courage to take his two oldest kids – that would be me and my younger brother, Richard – on what we thought might be a backpacking trip out of Tuolumne. As I recall (though the memory is now a bit hazy) it was September, and we were surprised by snow and cold. Somehow we ended up in one of the tents at the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge, keeping warm by using the little wood stove in the tent, and eating in the dining hall.
As I got older my interests turned to backpacking (and eventually cross-country skiing, some winter camping, and even a bit of rock climbing) and I regarded these camps, even those in the back-country, as being sissy-fied versions of the real thing. But at the same time, I began to develop an appreciation for the back-country history that they connect to in a real and physical way, and also through some of the employees who have worked these places for years or even decades.
In any case, on this August morning my friends and I broke camp a bit to the west of Bearpaw meadow and started hiking. When we got here, even though we are all confirmed back-country types, we couldn’t resist stopping at the main tent and having a look around. The woman inside invited us in. Two of my friends were astonished to find a place like this on the trail that they decided to sit down and order glasses of wine (at the mid-morning hour!) just because they could.
G Dan Mitchell Photography
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