Backpacking in Big Sur's Silverpeak Wilderness

Sanny, myself, and our friends Theo and Sushmita decided to brave the wet 3 day forecast this past weekend and carry out our plans to backpack. We got a late start Friday night and did the two mile hike from the car to our first campsite, Spruce Camp, in the dark with fog and rain (see first 3 photos where we are waiting for our food to finish stewing).

Waking up the next day we found blue skies.

And with a little shady maneuvering I convinced the group that making it ten miles to either Cruikshank Camp (or thereabouts) was totally doable. We agreed to make a decision once we reached Lion Den (something we guessed was about 4-5 miles uphill with a little over 2k feet of elevation gain -- the map was proving to be a very unreliable friend when judging distances). But the trail was severely overgrown and upon reaching Lion Den none of us had any desire to work our way back down and through the jungle we just escaped. We ended up at Cruikshank Camp. There we fixed up a great meal of curry and quinoa as we sat around the fire and had some brownies we packed in to celebrate Sushmita's birthday. A steady rain wouldn't start until midnight or so by which time we were all cozy in our tents.

The adventure of the 3rd day eclipsed everything of the first two; I think I'll save it for a future post. For now, it's enough to know that it took a turn for the crazy.