Well. We wanted to go on a backpacking trip. It was going to be two nights out, with a short-ish second hiking day, so we could have some time to explore Dusy Basin. However, when we finally got up there, the weather was definitely turning south on us. Oh well, I guess them’s the breaks when you head up into the Sierras. Instead of a day to explore Dusy Basin, we ended up hotfooting it all the way back to where we started.
Joe didn’t want to get his feet wet, I guess!
Joe and I drove up to South Lake, just southwest of Bishop, on July 15, and got on the trail a little after 3 PM, according to the photo I have on my GPS, and whooee! That trailhead is at 9800′, which is quite something. We headed south on the trail by South Lake (with one of the first people we passed being a family pushing an outdoors worthy stroller – awesome!)
Driving up to the trailhead. Still pretty brushy, but we’ll get getting higher.
According to the map, the mountain range lurking off to our left is called the “Inconsolable Range”, which I find fabulous. Not too far in, we passed the sign stating we were actually entering the John Muir Wilderness. The first part of this trail wends through the woods, climbing gently, and then starts cutting next to some rockier terrain, including some large rock formations that we clambered on a bit, partly to get a view of the lake from the other side. The guidebook says there are about 450’of gain in the first mile. A couple trails cut off from the main trail we were taking, and we finally started getting up to the point where we could see some meadowy areas.
We’re approaching the “wilderness”. I did get Joe to show his enjoyment of the area.
Checking out some rock wall action
After seeing a couple of tarns, we approached Long Lake, which is, as the name implies, quite long. (It’s only about half a mile long, but it is quite narrow). The trail stays pretty close to the lakeshore for the entire length of this lake. In fact, since there had been some late storms that year, there was quite a lot of water in the lake, and there was actually a portion of the trail that was submerged. We had to do some rock hopping, since man, the water around was *cold*. We had to cross a creek at the head of Long Lake, which had a small footbridge with some nice water tumbling beneath it.
Standing tarnside. That’s my formal dweeb pose, but it’s a nice area.
The trail running right next to the lake. In fact…the lake started to attack the trail later!
The trail meandered along after that point, with a few more stream crossings coming in rapid succession. Some were rock hoppy. There were also occasional banks of snow left around, at least with trails clearly demarcated through them. We started getting up to an area called the Timberline Tarns, and (very descriptively named, I must say), and I knew we were getting near our destination for the evening, Saddlerock Lake. We got to a footbridge over the outlet from that lake (many of these lakes are just in one continuous string), and we cut off to the right, looking for a campsite.
Walking along the shore of the lake.
We very shortly found a nice site overlooking the lake, and just did all the normal setting up for the evening things – tent, dinner, etc. It was a bit windy, and definitely still a bit gray, but the sky cleared up just enough for some really really spectacular views of the sunset. We also took a bit of a walk towards the north end of the lake, just exploring, checking out some rocks, and looking at things. We find a pile of food that might have been a cache, or just something abandoned – who knows. We did run into a few other people, who seemed to be the edges of a much larger group of people (all men?) camping a bit around the lake from us. They seemed to have a fairly substantial setup – tarps in trees over tents, etc, and they didn’t seem particularly inclined to talk much with us, so after sitting on some rocks for a bit, we headed back to our own site. I did later see one of those gentleman sitting on the edge of a large rock overlooking the lake and playing some sort of flute / wind recorder instrument. While sometimes that would have been annoying, in this case I ended up finding it pleasant. Anyway, after a long day of driving and walking, we happily collapsed into a night of sleep.
I’d been hoping for a bit of Sierra sunset, but it had been mostly grey doing into sundown. We did get this bit of glow, however.
The sky finally decided to clear just as the sun actually went down
When we got up the next morning, the weather wasn’t looking all that much better, but we headed out on our way anyway. This was, of course, after I got up and had some trouble opening my left eye. Apparently a mosquito had bitten it, and it had swelled to such an extent that I could only open it a sliver. A very auspicious start to the day, of course.
Seriously – don’t let mosquitoes get your eyelid! (It went down soon)
Very shortly after leaving our campsite, we had to ford a stream. The stream clearly had some rocks that you were supposed to be able to cross on, but they were actually underwater as well. It was drizzling a bit as we headed this way. We followed the trail onward, eventually coming to a big open area just before we would start the climb up to Bishop Pass. We vaguely lost the trail for a little bit, between the amount of water that was around, and certain pathways being marked with some tape that we didn’t always find on the first pass through, but eventually we muddled across this zone to get to our trail across the rocky slope. There was a minor trail diversion at this point due to some previous rockfall, but eventually we made our way to the switchbacks that would lead up to the pass.
Yup. Trail, cutting right through there, on the rocks.
Well, don’t go that way, I guess?
The switchbacks were nicely maintained, and heading up them we got some of our best views of the whole trip, looking out over the various lakes in the basin we had just come up. Eventually, as we got up towards the pass, there were some larger banks of snow that we had to cross, but they had largely already had trails walked over them, so while the surface was a bit icy, we were able to walk across in pre-existing footprints. When we finally made it to the pass (11,972′) we were pretty happy, and the weather was kind of close to looking ok, and it was awesome to be able to look down into Dusy Basin beyond, as we entered into Kings Canyon National Park. As we started our descent into the basin, there were some pleasant views, but it started to get more and more gray, and also started to drizzle. As we finished heading down the switchbacks into the basin proper, the clouds started largely ringing us in. We took a break, sitting on a couple of rocks and using the rain fly to cover most of us, and just sat and half napped for an hour or so. We saw a marmot during this time. Oh man.
Ok. The view back the way we came. Just wonderful.
Anyway, after sitting and watching for a while, we thought about our plans. We were about where we had been planning to camp (would have gone a bit farther into the valley, but we were basically there), but the entire sky was grey, and black in some places, and there was lots of ominous thunder and lightning. Now, while the storm was impressive to watch, and we could feel the thunder rolling through our bones, out in the middle of a granitic valley surrounded by storms didn’t really seem like a fun way to spend our time. Especially when we had been planning to have a nice beautiful afternoon to explore the valley. So, we decided to turn back, and laboriously headed back up the slope to the pass, chasing the small bit of blue sky that we could see. for a while, we managed to stay in the clear zone , almost up until we got back to the pass, but it was definitely drizzling by the time we approached the high point.
It was just…unpleasant out. Blah.
At that point, we just sort of had an annoying walk, all the way back to the trailhead. It was definitely more cold, more damp, and more wet. The river crossing stones that had already been submerged on our way up were even more submerged on our way back … and the water was even notably colder. Our shoes were wet, and our feet were wetter, and of course there was a cold drizzle. Of course I needed , regardless, to take a break, just to shovel some food in my mouth, since that hike out was pretty long and cold. Of course, just as we made it out, it got warm and pleasant…at least at the trailhead. We had started at 9.30 or so in the morning, however, so even with having gone all the way up, since we went pretty continuously and miserably for most of the way down, we still made it out by later in the afternoon. We took the chance of the sun and nice weather to change, sit, and thaw for a few minutes before heading out. We stopped in Bishop on the way home (I think) and got some tasty foods, and then just headed back to LA a day early.
Strollering for a hike!
Prepping dinner
Crossing liquid water
Crossing frozen water
