Silver Divide off trail father-daughter trip 7/19-7/23
Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2018 5:42 pm
Everyone has a different mix of aspects of the High Sierra that motivates them hike there. Whereas fishing is a big part of my High Sierra experience, it is not the biggest one. In other words, the fishing can be relatively poor, as it was on this one, and the trip can still rank as one of my favorite all-time trips, as this one surely will. For my son Lee, fishing overwhelms everything else as a priority in the backcountry. In contrast, my daughter Dawn simply loves being in the High Sierra. Last year, for this reason, my daughter Dawn (then 11) took her first "daughter and dad" backpacking trip (she had taken several with the entire family before) to the Meeks Creek area of Desolation Wilderness, a three-day trip that she enjoyed so much she said "next year, we need to do a longer trip" (3 days had been the longest family trip to that date). Not only would the 2018trip be longer, it would have a significant off trail component and do one of my "daydream list" of 9 trips I sketched out in July 2013 (this is the 3rd of 9 done). Perhaps the centerpiece of the plan was a lake that had been on my to-do list for as long as any I hadn't seen yet--Brave Lake (on my to-do list since late 1980s). As per the usual 'premium' game plan, all of the 4 camping spots were planned as off trail (Feather Lake, Brave Lake, Hortense or Red and White Lake, Bighorn Lake).
Because Dawn has not attained the outdoor skill level of my redoubtable death march buddy, Todd, I invited him (alumnus of past signature trips such as Mordor I 2002, Mordor II 2003, Blackchuck 2007, Tunechuck 2008, Yosemite Inside Out 2014, and Gold at the End of the Rainbow 2015) to come on the trip in case someone got hurt or sick or otherwise needed help. Unfortunately, Todd's back started to act up after a warm up hike and he had to cancel for the first time ever--this aging thing is no fun. Accordingly, I dialed back the game plan a bit, removing Brave Lake (furthest off main loop) from the plan as well as the two most potentially dicey off trail segments. I figured I should lower the risk level a bit. Little did I know that Dawn would more or less have me revise the plan back to the most challenging possible options while en route...
Prelude Wednesday 7/18. We drove to Fresno so as to have an early start the next morning, plus I needed to drop by the department and meet with one of my grad students. I then found out that one of my colleagues had accepted a position at U. Alabama, so I wanted to meet with him and his fianceƩ to give him a proper farewell at an appropriate sort of venue (one with high quality beer). So we went to Sequoia Brewing Company (aka. Northern Headquarters to those in our department) and had dinner which I accompanied with the excellent and appropriately west-flank-Sierra named Jackass Meadows Double IPA.
Day 1 Thursday 7/19 (Lake Edison to Feather Lake). We began hiking from Lake Edison up the trail to Graveyard Meadow and veered off to Arrowhead Lake. Dawn, now carrying a 60L pack (up from her 45L pack last year) hiked well but began to slow on the approach to Arrowhead Lake. I began the trip with my 85L pack that I had weighed in at 56lb the evening before. As Dawn took a long break at Arrowhead, partly sheltering from a fierce thunderstorm, I sent many casts into the lake but did not get so much as a trailer, let alone a strike or fish. Nor did I see any visible sign of fish. The weather began to clear a bit and we headed up to our planned camp at Feather Lake. The weather report had predicted a 50 percent change of thundershowers on day 1 (7/19) and 30 percent for each day thereafter. Day 1 would prove to be mellow in comparison to the next two days. The temperature warmed dramatically after the passage of the storm, the winds died and hordes of mosquitoes swarmed us as we made the last approach to Feather Lake. Dawn requested I pitch the tent right away, as she would at each camping spot along the way. She hid from the relentless mosquitoes as I fished Feather for the main dinner course. This proved easy enough to do, even though there was very little visible activity in the lake. I caught 11 fairly skinny brookies running 9 to 11" and kept 4 for dinner which I did with the semi-boil/semi-fri method with cooking oil and teriyaki sauce. Skinny brookies tend to have mushy to rubbery flesh and these were no exception. They weren't bad, but not the best. We had this side dish of Indian-style vegetables from Trader Joes. I had thought this was a "just add boiling water" thing, but I found this was one of those ready-to-heat sort of deals (ie has all the liquid in it). No wonder the package contents weighed 10 oz. Delicious, but not a lot of food for the weight. Sundown did not thin the buzzing hordes so we dove into the tent pretty early. We had a big day 2 ahead...
Day 2. Friday 7/20 (Feather Lake to Brave Lake). We rose at 530 am and the screen of our tent was densely covered with mosquitoes already. Dawn declared this her worst mosquito experience ever and I told her it ranked no. 3 on my all time mosquito horror list. Partly because of the miserable nature of Feather Lake, but also because of wanting a campfire, Dawn requested I reinstate Brave Lake as an objective and aim to camp there at the end of day 2. She also requested I try the more rugged-looking (on topo) and northerly (more direct) pass to the ENE of Feather to reach the JMT south of Silver Pass Lake. This proved to be an enjoyable descent, but about 2/3 down I stepped into an unexpected (covered by some vegetation) hole and hyperextended my left knee. I writhed on the ground for a bit in pain, and Dawn, knowing that I wasn't "flopping" asked if this meant we'd have to get to the JMT and limp out. I've had a bunch of knee injuries over the years, including several while hiking, and this one seemed to be a bit worse than the other outdoor ones (in contrast to two much more severe basketball injuries). I figured I'd be able to wobble the rest of the trip at about 60 percent. "We're still doing the trip" was more or less my reply to Dawn. As we began to ascend the JMT to Silver Pass Lake I noticed that things had changed when I found I could not keep up with Dawn on ascent in contrast with having to wait for her the day before. This pattern would persist for most of the rest of the trip. Another change was that we saw the first people of the trip and, as one would expect, quite a few of them. All of them stuck to the trail and we found no one at Silver Pass Lake which is a smidge W of and below the trail. We took a long break at Silver Pass Lake where it was hoped that Dawn would catch her first golden. My first "test cast" was promising as it retrieved a 9" golden, but fishing proved to be spotty on our visit. There were numerous blank casts and then I caught two goldens of 9 and 10" on consecutive casts, then blank casts for the remainder of our stay. In the meantime, Dawn suggested we cool (and clean) our feet by wading in along the pleasant beach along the N side of the lake. After a fairly long time wading, fishing, and relaxing there we moved to some ledges on the cliffs of the NW shore. There another disaster struck. While trying to undo a tangle, I knocked my fine point-and-shoot camera (Powershot SX620HS) into the lake. The case with camera inside floated and it started to drift away from the shore. I leaped down and was able to corral it before it became a genuine swimming rescue. To my distress, the camera would not work anymore. I didn't have the greatest state of mind at that point, having ruined my camera and blown my left knee. Dawn's overall joy, however, helped keep my spirits up. Photos from that point came from my phone.
Leaving Silver Pass lake and ascending to the pass, again I labored, fretting that I could not keep up with Dawn. After we crested out the weather began to darken and we were hit with the first of several squalls. Out came the raingear--at least mine--Dawn insisted on not putting on the rain pants yet. We soon reached the fork between the JMT and the trail that heads to Lake of the Lone Indian. There we met a group of three struggling up to the junction. To the west along the trail to Lake of the Lone Indian, there is a small pond, and beyond, but out of sight, Papoose Lake, and then Lake of the Lone Indian. The leader of the hikers pointed to the little pond and said to me "That's Lake of the Lone Indian, right?" I replied that it was just a pond and that I would show him a map to give him a better idea. "That's OK, you don't need to do that" he said, but I insisted, and showed him where they were and where their destination (apparently Lake of the Lone Indian). After we took off toward Lake of the Lone Indian we saw the group of three milling around the little pond like disoriented ants whose trail has been smudged. It seems they followed the little use path (probably from hikers who would go there to filter water) to the trail and could not figure out that it wasn't the real trail; it apparently did not occur to them to follow us. Dawn got a charge out of the "Lake of the Lone Indian" thing and for the rest of the trip would ask "Is that Lake of the Lone Indian?" whenever we'd pass a tiny pond.
The trail climbs a few hundred feet above Lake of the Lone Indian. Once again, I struggled to keep up with Dawn who prefers to lead when on a trail. At that top of the grade I left the trail for a ridge that first heads north then WNW-NW. From that I planned to take north-trending spur to about 10000' and then head E to Brave Lake. The weather become progressively more threatening. We looked east and saw this dark gray curtain and it kept getting closer. Lightning lit up the ridges on the skyline and thunder boomed. I did not want to stay on top of the ridge any longer than needed now. I took a peek at one slot--nope way too steep. Then another---too steep. The deluge began and the time delay between the flash and boom became much shorter. Finally, I saw a chute I felt we could descend and keep the difficulty to class 2. We ducked into it and put on our full rain gear (I had taken mine off during a break in the squalls). Heavy rain and hail poured down. The thunder and hail scared Dawn. She did not find getting dumped on this chute anywhere near as fun as waiting out a hailstorm under a robust rock roof at Stony Ridge Lake last year. The downpour did not stop as we reached Brave Lake. We initially figured on hiding under the densest trees, but this did not totally keep the rain off of us. We switched trees several times trying to find a better one, while I pondered where to lay out the tent as well as HOW to do it. The Quarter Dome 3 has a mesh roof and a ton of water would get through before I could get the rainfly up given the intensity of rain. I figured the best way to do it was to set up the tent in the maximum tree protection with the rainfly, then move it out onto a viable camp spot. I looked very carefully at the runoff routes because I did not want to pitch in something that would become a temporary creek. I finally got the tent in a good place, inflated the mattresses and threw in our sleeping bags, gear and snack food. The campsite was a bit lower and closer to the lake than I prefer for optimal mosquito avoidance but I figured I could move the tent after the storm passed, whenever that might be. It was now something like 5 pm and it had been dumping hard for at least an hour.
Inside our spacious tent we munched on a lot of food, looked at maps, and Dawn asked me to tell me stories of past trips. At about 715 pm the rain seemed to have abated to a bare sprinkle, so I decided to step out to try some fishing. Dawn remained inside. I told her I'd be out about a half hour, but the fish in this lake were quite active so they kept me occupied for a bit short of an hour. Dawn in the meantime became concerned and she scampered out to meet me along the shore. By then I had caught 9 rainbows running from 11-13.5" and had strikes on something like 2/3 of my casts. The somewhat skinny fish and their numbers suggested to me that this lake is receiving a few too many fingerlings (it is air dropped with rainbows). Four of the fish were kept for a massive main course. Because it's under 10000' (9920+) Brave L. is "campfire eligible" so we built a campfire that I could coal down and barbecue the lightly salted fish over, using my portable grill. Before I built the fire, I moved the tent further away from the lake to near the crest of the low rise bounding the lake on its WNW side. This dropped the mosquito level from moderate to pleasantly low. We accompanied the grilled rainbows with another one of those Trader Joes Indian food veggie dishes and finished with Pepperidge Farms Mint Milanos for desert. In spite of the big storm that began our stay here, this was a vastly more pleasant place than Feather Lake. On Dawn's request, we stayed up late (to 11 pm) enjoying a small crackling fire. The only fly in the ointment for me, other than the gimpy knee and the apparently fried camera, was the onset of my first full bout of back spasms in 10 years. Back in those days before I really ramped up my core training it would usually take several days to shake the back spasms and I could not do it without the aid of muscle relaxants (which I no longer carry with me). In any case I could not stand up straight the entire evening.
Because Dawn has not attained the outdoor skill level of my redoubtable death march buddy, Todd, I invited him (alumnus of past signature trips such as Mordor I 2002, Mordor II 2003, Blackchuck 2007, Tunechuck 2008, Yosemite Inside Out 2014, and Gold at the End of the Rainbow 2015) to come on the trip in case someone got hurt or sick or otherwise needed help. Unfortunately, Todd's back started to act up after a warm up hike and he had to cancel for the first time ever--this aging thing is no fun. Accordingly, I dialed back the game plan a bit, removing Brave Lake (furthest off main loop) from the plan as well as the two most potentially dicey off trail segments. I figured I should lower the risk level a bit. Little did I know that Dawn would more or less have me revise the plan back to the most challenging possible options while en route...
Prelude Wednesday 7/18. We drove to Fresno so as to have an early start the next morning, plus I needed to drop by the department and meet with one of my grad students. I then found out that one of my colleagues had accepted a position at U. Alabama, so I wanted to meet with him and his fianceƩ to give him a proper farewell at an appropriate sort of venue (one with high quality beer). So we went to Sequoia Brewing Company (aka. Northern Headquarters to those in our department) and had dinner which I accompanied with the excellent and appropriately west-flank-Sierra named Jackass Meadows Double IPA.
Day 1 Thursday 7/19 (Lake Edison to Feather Lake). We began hiking from Lake Edison up the trail to Graveyard Meadow and veered off to Arrowhead Lake. Dawn, now carrying a 60L pack (up from her 45L pack last year) hiked well but began to slow on the approach to Arrowhead Lake. I began the trip with my 85L pack that I had weighed in at 56lb the evening before. As Dawn took a long break at Arrowhead, partly sheltering from a fierce thunderstorm, I sent many casts into the lake but did not get so much as a trailer, let alone a strike or fish. Nor did I see any visible sign of fish. The weather began to clear a bit and we headed up to our planned camp at Feather Lake. The weather report had predicted a 50 percent change of thundershowers on day 1 (7/19) and 30 percent for each day thereafter. Day 1 would prove to be mellow in comparison to the next two days. The temperature warmed dramatically after the passage of the storm, the winds died and hordes of mosquitoes swarmed us as we made the last approach to Feather Lake. Dawn requested I pitch the tent right away, as she would at each camping spot along the way. She hid from the relentless mosquitoes as I fished Feather for the main dinner course. This proved easy enough to do, even though there was very little visible activity in the lake. I caught 11 fairly skinny brookies running 9 to 11" and kept 4 for dinner which I did with the semi-boil/semi-fri method with cooking oil and teriyaki sauce. Skinny brookies tend to have mushy to rubbery flesh and these were no exception. They weren't bad, but not the best. We had this side dish of Indian-style vegetables from Trader Joes. I had thought this was a "just add boiling water" thing, but I found this was one of those ready-to-heat sort of deals (ie has all the liquid in it). No wonder the package contents weighed 10 oz. Delicious, but not a lot of food for the weight. Sundown did not thin the buzzing hordes so we dove into the tent pretty early. We had a big day 2 ahead...
Day 2. Friday 7/20 (Feather Lake to Brave Lake). We rose at 530 am and the screen of our tent was densely covered with mosquitoes already. Dawn declared this her worst mosquito experience ever and I told her it ranked no. 3 on my all time mosquito horror list. Partly because of the miserable nature of Feather Lake, but also because of wanting a campfire, Dawn requested I reinstate Brave Lake as an objective and aim to camp there at the end of day 2. She also requested I try the more rugged-looking (on topo) and northerly (more direct) pass to the ENE of Feather to reach the JMT south of Silver Pass Lake. This proved to be an enjoyable descent, but about 2/3 down I stepped into an unexpected (covered by some vegetation) hole and hyperextended my left knee. I writhed on the ground for a bit in pain, and Dawn, knowing that I wasn't "flopping" asked if this meant we'd have to get to the JMT and limp out. I've had a bunch of knee injuries over the years, including several while hiking, and this one seemed to be a bit worse than the other outdoor ones (in contrast to two much more severe basketball injuries). I figured I'd be able to wobble the rest of the trip at about 60 percent. "We're still doing the trip" was more or less my reply to Dawn. As we began to ascend the JMT to Silver Pass Lake I noticed that things had changed when I found I could not keep up with Dawn on ascent in contrast with having to wait for her the day before. This pattern would persist for most of the rest of the trip. Another change was that we saw the first people of the trip and, as one would expect, quite a few of them. All of them stuck to the trail and we found no one at Silver Pass Lake which is a smidge W of and below the trail. We took a long break at Silver Pass Lake where it was hoped that Dawn would catch her first golden. My first "test cast" was promising as it retrieved a 9" golden, but fishing proved to be spotty on our visit. There were numerous blank casts and then I caught two goldens of 9 and 10" on consecutive casts, then blank casts for the remainder of our stay. In the meantime, Dawn suggested we cool (and clean) our feet by wading in along the pleasant beach along the N side of the lake. After a fairly long time wading, fishing, and relaxing there we moved to some ledges on the cliffs of the NW shore. There another disaster struck. While trying to undo a tangle, I knocked my fine point-and-shoot camera (Powershot SX620HS) into the lake. The case with camera inside floated and it started to drift away from the shore. I leaped down and was able to corral it before it became a genuine swimming rescue. To my distress, the camera would not work anymore. I didn't have the greatest state of mind at that point, having ruined my camera and blown my left knee. Dawn's overall joy, however, helped keep my spirits up. Photos from that point came from my phone.
Leaving Silver Pass lake and ascending to the pass, again I labored, fretting that I could not keep up with Dawn. After we crested out the weather began to darken and we were hit with the first of several squalls. Out came the raingear--at least mine--Dawn insisted on not putting on the rain pants yet. We soon reached the fork between the JMT and the trail that heads to Lake of the Lone Indian. There we met a group of three struggling up to the junction. To the west along the trail to Lake of the Lone Indian, there is a small pond, and beyond, but out of sight, Papoose Lake, and then Lake of the Lone Indian. The leader of the hikers pointed to the little pond and said to me "That's Lake of the Lone Indian, right?" I replied that it was just a pond and that I would show him a map to give him a better idea. "That's OK, you don't need to do that" he said, but I insisted, and showed him where they were and where their destination (apparently Lake of the Lone Indian). After we took off toward Lake of the Lone Indian we saw the group of three milling around the little pond like disoriented ants whose trail has been smudged. It seems they followed the little use path (probably from hikers who would go there to filter water) to the trail and could not figure out that it wasn't the real trail; it apparently did not occur to them to follow us. Dawn got a charge out of the "Lake of the Lone Indian" thing and for the rest of the trip would ask "Is that Lake of the Lone Indian?" whenever we'd pass a tiny pond.
The trail climbs a few hundred feet above Lake of the Lone Indian. Once again, I struggled to keep up with Dawn who prefers to lead when on a trail. At that top of the grade I left the trail for a ridge that first heads north then WNW-NW. From that I planned to take north-trending spur to about 10000' and then head E to Brave Lake. The weather become progressively more threatening. We looked east and saw this dark gray curtain and it kept getting closer. Lightning lit up the ridges on the skyline and thunder boomed. I did not want to stay on top of the ridge any longer than needed now. I took a peek at one slot--nope way too steep. Then another---too steep. The deluge began and the time delay between the flash and boom became much shorter. Finally, I saw a chute I felt we could descend and keep the difficulty to class 2. We ducked into it and put on our full rain gear (I had taken mine off during a break in the squalls). Heavy rain and hail poured down. The thunder and hail scared Dawn. She did not find getting dumped on this chute anywhere near as fun as waiting out a hailstorm under a robust rock roof at Stony Ridge Lake last year. The downpour did not stop as we reached Brave Lake. We initially figured on hiding under the densest trees, but this did not totally keep the rain off of us. We switched trees several times trying to find a better one, while I pondered where to lay out the tent as well as HOW to do it. The Quarter Dome 3 has a mesh roof and a ton of water would get through before I could get the rainfly up given the intensity of rain. I figured the best way to do it was to set up the tent in the maximum tree protection with the rainfly, then move it out onto a viable camp spot. I looked very carefully at the runoff routes because I did not want to pitch in something that would become a temporary creek. I finally got the tent in a good place, inflated the mattresses and threw in our sleeping bags, gear and snack food. The campsite was a bit lower and closer to the lake than I prefer for optimal mosquito avoidance but I figured I could move the tent after the storm passed, whenever that might be. It was now something like 5 pm and it had been dumping hard for at least an hour.
Inside our spacious tent we munched on a lot of food, looked at maps, and Dawn asked me to tell me stories of past trips. At about 715 pm the rain seemed to have abated to a bare sprinkle, so I decided to step out to try some fishing. Dawn remained inside. I told her I'd be out about a half hour, but the fish in this lake were quite active so they kept me occupied for a bit short of an hour. Dawn in the meantime became concerned and she scampered out to meet me along the shore. By then I had caught 9 rainbows running from 11-13.5" and had strikes on something like 2/3 of my casts. The somewhat skinny fish and their numbers suggested to me that this lake is receiving a few too many fingerlings (it is air dropped with rainbows). Four of the fish were kept for a massive main course. Because it's under 10000' (9920+) Brave L. is "campfire eligible" so we built a campfire that I could coal down and barbecue the lightly salted fish over, using my portable grill. Before I built the fire, I moved the tent further away from the lake to near the crest of the low rise bounding the lake on its WNW side. This dropped the mosquito level from moderate to pleasantly low. We accompanied the grilled rainbows with another one of those Trader Joes Indian food veggie dishes and finished with Pepperidge Farms Mint Milanos for desert. In spite of the big storm that began our stay here, this was a vastly more pleasant place than Feather Lake. On Dawn's request, we stayed up late (to 11 pm) enjoying a small crackling fire. The only fly in the ointment for me, other than the gimpy knee and the apparently fried camera, was the onset of my first full bout of back spasms in 10 years. Back in those days before I really ramped up my core training it would usually take several days to shake the back spasms and I could not do it without the aid of muscle relaxants (which I no longer carry with me). In any case I could not stand up straight the entire evening.