In my last blog entry, my son and I were touring Lehman Caves at Great Basin National Park. But that was in the morning.
So in the afternoon we went out hiking.
This is a very pretty area with lots of pine trees.
Along the Trail
In fact, it even has a grove of bristlecone pines.
The Grove of Bristlecone Pines
These trees are thousands of years old.
Of course I had to give one of the trees the old four-point connectivity grasp.
Not Grounded, But Barked
The trail we took led us to the glacier in the shadow of Wheeler Peak.
Here’s the map of the area.
Around Wheeler Peak
We were camped at the Wheeler Peak campground. As you can see, a bunch of trails around Wheeler Peak leave from there. South of the campground you can see the bristlecone pine grove we were at.
Continuing along we headed to the Rock Glacier.
Here’s my son at one of the “overlook” locations along the trail. That circular area in the background is the rock glacier.
On the Way Up
And here I am on the rock glacier itself.
On the Rock Glacier
And how about a close-up of that?
Coldfooting It
That snow field was pockmarked by a bunch of little holes. As we looked into them, they all had a small rock inside.
Rock Pock
I’m not sure how the rocks got there, but they did explain the pockmarks. The rocks absorbed the sun better than the snow, so they were slightly warmer and then slightly melted the snow around them.
There was a nice little sign at the rock glacier.
Rock Glacier, Elevation 10,800 Feet
Since our campground was at around 9,900 feet, you can see that getting to the rock glacier was a fairly easy 900 foot climb. Well, it was fairly easy if your lungs are used to breathing at around 10,000 feet. But by this time, we’d been out west and at higher elevations for a couple of weeks. I found I didn’t have any problems.
I should also mention that the snow field I am standing on really isn’t the “rock glacier”. A rock glacier is actually a glacier overlain by a bunch of rocks/talus. So the footprint of the glacier is much bigger than is obvious.
All that rock around me has glacier underneath it.
From that point we turned around and headed back. Here’s a panoramic (stitched) shot looking back out the bowl.
Looking Out the Bowl
[Click for the larger, good version.]
Did I mention the talus?
This is what the trail looked like.
Talus Trail
I have to admit that my soles were still rather footsore, so I spent time putting on and taking off my moccasins. (You might recall that I switched to moccasins because my sandals had rubbed raw a few spots on my feet.)
So, here I am on the trail.
Compromise
One nice thing about the moccasins is that they were at least flexible, while providing just a bit more cushioning. These are my moccasins from which I’ve removed the inner liner, so there is nothing but leather. That allowed my foot muscles to continue to get at least some sort of workout.
Actually, much of the talus wasn’t too bad even for bare feet. It was only when I hit stretches of trail where it was small and chippy that I had problems.
After the hike (about 5 miles round trip), my son and I decided we’d try to eat out in the town of Baker, Nevada. This is a small town below Great Basin National Park and is way down there at an elevation of 5,300 feet.
This place barely exists. It has a gas station . . . well, kind of. It has a gas pump. No building, just a gas pump that takes credit cards. The total population of the place is around 70 people. I’d call it a one-horse town, except I’m not sure there’s even a horse there.
Anyways, we went into a grocery store attached to a restaurant. And I was immediately told I had to have shoes on, and the reason was a familiar one: the health code. I pulled out my Nevada letter. The girl behind the counter thought it was cool, but felt she needed to talk to the owner. And the owner went ballistic; she was bristlier than the pines.
She claimed it really was a health code; she claimed that the health inspector would shut her down; she claimed he had specifically told her that. My guess is that somebody there was lying. She was about as rude as people get. (By the way, afterwards I checked. Nevada is like most states: there is a statewide food safety code, and each county has its own health department that enforces it. So it was not as if the county had some separate and different health code that prohibited bare feet in establishments.)
We’d already picked out our grocery items, so I left and my son (who had on his Vibrams) stayed and paid for the items. Yes, we maybe should have just left them on the counter. But in some ways I felt sorry for the owner. She was working very hard (cooking for the restaurant side of the place). She looked tired. Baker is clearly a hard place to make a living. So I just let it go.
However, we did not stay to eat at the restaurant. We headed back up (4,500 feet) to our campground and just cooked something.
It was interesting, though, that the health code myth is so strong and so ingrained that even somebody barely making a living is willing to throw out good money to enforce a non-existent rule.
Ahcuah 
Do you think it’s possible that the owner might have been telling the truth after all? It’s easy to assume that business professionals actually know the regulations surrounding their operations but how many times have we witnessed otherwise? A health inspector that may not actually know the code? I could see that as a possibility.
Well, I did say “somebody” was lying, not necessarily the owner. The health inspector could have been lying. (However, in the course of the “conversation”, I did get the impression that the owner was making up crap to justify what she already believed.)
But of course you are right. The health inspector may also not have had a clue as to what the code said.
But here’s the thing: The number of people that go into establishments barefoot is so few that I really, really doubt that any health inspector would make a point about them out of the clear blue.
Maybe there was some event in the past we don’t know about. It’s hardly worth it, but it should be possible to find out who this health inspector is and ask her or him about it.
I find attacking the ‘logic’ underlying these things is often the best way. The most difficult question you can possibly ask them is ‘in what way are my feet going to contaminate your food?’
Often times they will start nitpicking language “I didn’t ‘say’ contaminate! You’re putting words in my mouth!”. Of course, this means you have won, so be firm and politely demand to know exactly what they do mean by ‘heath’. They will probably then either leave or stone-cold refuse to even tell you what they mean by it and say stuff like “this is not a debate!” (Yes it is, you started it,).
What does worry me is that what they say has such a spookily repetitive formality to it, regardless of where they work, that I think there must be some kind of training program out there that is spreading this. Think about it – all of them repeat the exact same arguments, usually word for word. That, to me, suggests that there is a specific source to this misinformation, such as a training video or popular management course.
It may well be that there is such a training course, in a sense. As far as I know, you need some sort of licence to open a restaurant. To get this, you have to take a course dealing with safety, hygiene issues etc. In many jurisdictions there is a requirement for (protective) footwear *for the kitchen staff*. Imagine having been told over and over, some may be inclined to think that this extends also to customers. It would be interesting to hear from a beach town’s health inspector if the topic of barefoot customers was ever mentioned by the restaurant owners – seeking an exception from the (non-existant) shoe rules.
Don’t forget that the Licking County Health Department thought that having a barefoot employee (even after hours) violated the health code. See
Barefoot McDonalds Redux. It took a long, involved process before they could confirm the right answer: no, it does not violate the health code.
As far as I am concerned, the real issue there was that the employee stood on the counter. That presents health issues whether the employee is shod or barefoot. (Of course, there is nothing wrong with standing there while changing the prices—what’s important is that that piece of counter be properly sterilized afterwards.)
Going back to whether the health inspector in Baker made a special point to the owner about bare feet, I really do doubt it. Bare feet are not common enough. It’s as if the health inspector had made a comment about standing on the counter: it just doesn’t happen enough to make a special point about it.