Bear Mountain #13, in Fresno County, is the highest Bear Mountain in California, topping out at around 9500 feet.  I climbed it last Sunday with my friend John Wiley.  It's a hefty hike:  18 miles round trip, much of it cross country.  John was game even though he never knew Joe.  (He took a course in labor law from Joe's father, David Feller, though.)

We camped Saturday night at Courtright Reservoir, a couple of hours east of Madera, and were on the trail by 6:00 Sunday morning.  From the Cliff Lake trailhead to Nelson Lakes was about five miles.  Nice trail, but the cross country traveling after Nelson Lakes was even nicer. 

We climbed the ridge west of Nelson Lakes, and then followed the ridge as it curved southwest past Sportsman Lake and then back north again.  That brought us about a mile and a half from Bear Mountain.

Hiking west, we crossed a jeep road, traveled along another ridge, climbed steeply for a quarter-mile or so, and finally reached the summit.  (If you have a high-clearance 4WD, you could shorten this hike considerably, but you'd miss some of the nicest parts.)  Fabulous views from the top, especially to the east.  There was a weird register box that instead of a register had little knickknacks and toiletries and a couple of business cards left by other hikers.  We left a note about our climb and mentioned Joe and the Bear Mountain Project.

We had originally thought we’d try to climb Nelson Mountain and Eagle Peak, too, but by the time we got to the top of Bear Mountain it was approaching noon, and we needed to get back to the Bay Area that evening.  So we left the other peaks for another day.

On the return trip, John figured out we could save some effort by taking the jeep road north a little bit and then contouring around at 9200 rather than along the top of the ridge, which was a hundred or so feet higher.  So we did that.  We got back to the trailhead around 4:30 and stopped for dinner at La Esperanza in Madera, which I think Joe would have enjoyed.

David Sklansky

Yesterday Alan Davis, Tessa Davis, and Susan Steele climbed Bear Peak, just west of Boulder, Colorado, in honor of Joe Feller.  Alan writes:  

It was an 11-mile round-trip hike on a 90 degree day, and we underestimated the amount of water we’d need, so it was more challenging than we anticipated.  But satisfying.

Fred Feller passes along a message from Bill Guilford:

"I started out trying to write a brief account of my failed mission to Bear Mountain.  It was late at night and my mind, maybe a bit lubricated, wandered a bit and I never actually got around to the details of my failed trip. . . .  Anyway, here's what I did write:

"Dear Joe,

"Sorry to say, I failed you, but I will keep on trying to bag us a bear, bear mountain, that is.

"I only knew you for maybe three days or so, back when we ran that relay from Calistoga to Monterrey a few years back, must have been around 2006 or so.

"Anyway, you made such a strong impression on me that, when I heard of your passing over to the other side and recalled the wonderful experience of that race --which included your spouting off effusively on a wide range of subjects, as well as  your bantering quite entertainingly with the other Fellers in the van (including one – Michael (guess he was there to stand in for Dan) -- who didn’t even come into the world via Gilda and David (yeah, I know that embedded parentheses are bad form)), the first words that came to mind were from Zhuangzi.

"There’s a story in the so-called Miscellaneous Chapters of Zhuangzi about a bad-ass fellow name Robber Zhi.  Zhi and his men have been rambling and rampaging about the countryside in what is now Shandong province in China, generally disrupting the social order, such as it was in those days – 300 BC or so.  As the story goes, Confucius, who was trying to foist his principles on how a society ought to be run onto the populace in general and in particular onto any royalty that might tolerate his prissiness, was quite annoyed by Zhi’s behavior.  He happened to know Zhi’s brother and asked him to make an introduction for him to Zhi.  Zhi’s brother shuddered and told Confucius that his meeting with Zhi would be a very bad idea, because, as he said, Zhi has a mind like a gushing fountain (心如涌泉) and his will is like a cyclone (意如飄風).  He said a few other things too to try to dissuade Confucius from his mission, but those words really stuck with me and through me they kinda stuck to you.   It’s not that I really want to suggest that you were like Zhi in all ways.  After all, when Confucius went to meet him, Zhi and his men were resting on the slope of Taishan (the most sacred mountain in China) snacking on human livers, which one has to assume they had not acquired in a very friendly or sociable way.  Rather it was the image of the gushing fountain and the cyclone that reminded me of you.  I would not be surprised if those who know you well would agree that those words capture something vital about you.

"その忍者は誰です"