This was the second weekend outing of the 10 week Sierra Club Wilderness Travel Course (aka WTC).  Previously the group had joined us for a long dayhike designed to give everyone an idea of the fitness level required to complete course and now we would be spending the weekend scrambling around on rocks in Joshua Tree and practicing navigation using compasses and topo maps.

And since we're Kaweah Group (one of the three groups in the Orange County area of WTC) we like to throw a theme into the mix for our summit shot and potluck.  Themes are suggested and voted on by the class and previous years have run the gamut from simple to elaborate and we carry the costumes with us to the summit of the peak.  This year the winner was a combined theme of enchanted forest / animals the result of which you can see above.

For more information on what WTC is and how to take the course see the official site here. More posts on WTC by me can be found here.

February 11th & 12th, 2017

Peak 4377 (4,377')

[Pics] [Map]

February 4th, 2017

Mount Wilson (5,713')

[Pics] [Map]

This was a free weekend for me WTC-wise falling between the conditioning hike and Joshua Tree for Orange County.  Normally I'd run out to the desert and climb something however those plans were killed at the last minute due to the need to stay local and reserve WTC campsites for next year.

Jack Kieffer was nice enough to invite me along to do the conditioning hike with his group so I decided to take the opportunity to see a new trail.