It was quite an adventure! I arrived in San Francisco with nothing but the clothes I was wearing! Air Canada managed to lose my backpack containing everything I needed for the climb (had spent close to $1000 on my gear) and I did not see it again until the climb was over! Donna Crane-Bailey, Monterey Bay Chapter, drove 77 miles to San Francisco to meet me at the airport, put me up for the night, then we drove to Yosemite the next day.

The group of 99s I was with were absolutely fantastic, so helpful and supportive. They were quite adamant that I would do the climb despite the lack of equipment and proceeded to lend me stuff. Just back from a flying/camping trip to Alaska with her husband, Donna Crane-Bailey lent me all her camping gear. I got socks and T-shirts, and a sweater from other 99s and probably ended up better off than if had my own gear!

We had visits from bears every night and lost quite a bit of food despite hanging it high and far out on tree branches, but they didn’t bother us in our tents! We had rain, thunder and lightning and hail every evening about suppertime. We had 6 hours of rain on the 23rd and everyone and everything got very wet. However we were great survivors, and the day of the actual climb to the peak was perfect, sunny, but not too hot.

We left early in tile morning and climbed steadily, first through forest, then meadows full of little mountain flowers and streams, and finally rocks and boulders. I did my bit for Canada by arriving first at the top at 10:55 and the first aerial salute flew over at 11:00. We had two planes doing aerial salutes, a Cardinal and a Baron, we were very excited to see them fly over so close to us.

We left a spike containing a poem by Amelia Earhart entitled ‘Courage’ and signed by all of us plus a page of "messages". There was also a metal box on the summit containing various notes from other climbers over the years, and we found some left by the 99s in 1987! I left a small Canadian Flag in this box with greetings from the Canadian Eastern Ontario Chapter! We all sang happy birthday to Amelia, took lots of photographs and ate our lunch, before the descent back to base camp.

The following day we hiked all the way back to Tuolomne Meadows -13 miles. Were we ever so glad to see the smiling faces of the Monterey Bay 99s greeting us on our arrival! We were then transported to another campsite where the Livermore Chapter 99s had prepared a celebratory feast for us. After filling ourselves with food and wine, we were all presented with a certificate of our achievement, and a souvenir sweatshirt, and then a cake was cut and we ate even more!! I thought I would lose weight on a backpacking trip!

The next day Robbie Gray (Monterey Bay) drove me back to San Francisco, and I spent the day with her and her boyfriend Bill. He took me to a thrilling ride on one of his 2 motorbikes, before taking the Red Eye Flight back to Ottawa.

As a rookie pilot and new 99, I felt pretty intimidated traveling to SFO to meet up with a large group of experienced pilots, and maybe even experienced backpackers. I needn’t have worried -I now have a whole bunch of wonderful friends in California I feel I have known for years! I wouldn’t have missed that week in July for anything!!

The Lake Tahoe group asked me to say 'Hi' to Dee Brasseur, they were very impressed with the presentation she gave them.