High Sierra Topix

Yes, my daughter has decided that if they dismiss her over this, so be it. She has two VERY active boys, ages 10 and 12, who have a much greater chance of getting and giving COVID in the crowded Marin County environment (small house) than up at their house in Soda Springs, where they do not socialize with others and can step out their door, cross the street, and be on NFS x-country ski trials. The kids have had all their sports cancelled and too much on-line screen time for schooling- not healthy for anyone and they are all going crazy.

I think in this coming backpack season it would also be a good idea to not tent with someone who is not in your immediate family. A night inside a tent next to someone snoring is miserable enough, in addition to being a petri dish for COVID! Same with driving to the trailheads. This year I am going to drive solo too.

I wonder when they will be enough data to determine if you can still spread COVID even if you are vaccinated.

Please stay on subject, the thread is about masking up on federal lands, if it drifts any more it will be locked.

I live right next to Rancho Corral de Tierra, a section of federal land in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area that's relatively unknown. It's the kind of place where you more or less just run into the same people on the trails. Unlike the rest of Bay Area trails I've been on where people are hyper-vigilant about hiking with masks at all times, and believe in the safety of masks at the expense of just giving a person their space, people tend to take what I'll call the "horse approach". Meaning, they just step off the trail a good distance and let the approaching person pass. Although I'll never forget early in the pandemic when a man freaked out as I approached, and decided his best course of action was to throw on a mask and jump into a massive patch of poison oak.

But if I'm in the Sierra and I've wound up in a situation where a mask is necessary, something's gone horribly wrong with my route planning.