TR 11/3/23 Hetch Hetchy 'Low Sierra' hike ends season

[giantbrookie]

TR 11/3/23 Hetch Hetchy hike ends season
In spite of improvisation forced by the heavy winter, and some health issues for me that impeded mobility a bit this fall--the hernia in particular--the 2023 Sierra season was one of my best ones and Friday's dayhike brought the curtain down with a bit of symmetry as well as experiences that will no doubt fuel
'offseason' scheming and daydreaming about 2024 trips. I began the season on June 2 with a very long dayhike to Lake Vernon, so it was appropriate that the season ended with a another dayhike from the Hetch Hetchy day use parking--this time to the Rancheria and Tiltill shoreline.

I overcame a fair amount of mental sluggishness to get the trip done, starting with the usual not wanting to wake up at 4 am. The original Plan A had been a Sunday trip with Judy to a destination north of I80 but weather was supposed to hit the north Sierra then, so I then thought about solo dayhike options and whereas I had planned to do a Hetch Hetchy closer in 2022 as well as this year, I started to think of a Friday north Sierra solo alternative which would mean a much shorter hike. Thursday evening, I carefully checked saltwater alternatives thinking that the Quincy trip with Judy was a more appropriate Sierra closer anyway. When I went to sleep I told Judy I'd decide whether I'd really go when the alarm went off. When the alarm went off I rolled out of bed with less enthusiasm than usual, but I got the coffee made and hit the road. But even as I drove, I considered other alternatives. I thought, for example, of heading further up 120 and hitting some "usual suspect" higher altitude targets for which the drive is longer, but the hike is way shorter, but I turned off on Evergreen Road anyway.

When I started hiking, I initially thought about proceeding no further than my "usual area" on the lakeshore just beyond the tunnel, and after resisting that temptation, seriously considered stopping at Wapama Falls. Past fishing success in those areas suggested that my time would be better spent along the more proximal shoreline, gaining more fishing time by subtracting hiking time. In addition, Dawn was hoping for a fish dinner the evening before her cross country league finals, so by fishing closer to the car, I could finish earlier and get earlier word to Judy by phone (when back in coverage) whether or not she would have to buy fish at a store (would have to buy fish if I skunked). I shrugged off my lazy streak and after passing Wapama Falls, accelerated to the point of alternating slow running and fast walking. I was eager to hike new ground for me because I had never gone beyond Wapama Falls along the shoreline. I had set out on a late October overnighter to my planned destination on the lakeshore in 2004 only to be turned back by a trail closure at Wapama Falls (yellow tape across the trail and a sign)--allegedly because of rockfall hazard, but more likely related to a notorious crime scene (related to suicide of notorious Bay Area murder suspect)--this resulted in a super-cold trip to Laurel Lake. So the roots of this dayhike were actually the detoured fall 2004 trip.

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I had planned to take a hydration/electrolyte break at the high point beyond Wapama Falls but was reluctant to interrupt a good hiking groove. I crossed the gash of Tiltill Creek on the bridge thinking how spectacular the waterfall must look in early season, then ascended before peeling off the trail and heading down to the shoreline by way of an unmaintained trail. The upper part of this path has been overgrown by manzanita, the growth of which will make it unhikeable within a couple of years or so. I missed this going down (found it ascending) and descended the upper slopes on open granitic slabs. I reached the rugged, slabby lakeshore, took off my pack, and checked my watch which showed a hiking time of 1 hour and 55 minutes to cover a distance of about 6 miles. It's amazing how fast one has to move to accomplish a 3 mile-per-hour pace.

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The water drawdown was far less than usual for an early November visit, but it still made it easier to get around, compared to scrambling along the high water line. Deciduous trees glowed with fall color although the sun angles combined with wildfire smoke (I think this is the STF Quarry fire burning north of Cherry Lake) spolied the photo opportunities. Weather was rather warm for November, hitting the 70s, but a good breeze blew. Maybe this made me too complacent and I did not hydrate as much as I should have and did not adequately replenish my electrolytes. I had to stop three times on the hike back to the car because of cramps (left hammie, right hammie, groin) and I cramped again (groin) trying to get into the driver's seat and had to hydrate and munch on some stuff before driving home. This trip showed how Hetch Hetchy can actually serve as a destination in its own right instead of how we usually think of it as a starting point. Because it is low elevation--at about 3800' it's at about the same elevation as Yosemite Valley--one can hike there when areas of the genuine High Sierra are covered with snow. In fact, owing to the low elevation, Hetch Hetchy is most accommodating in the "shoulder" or "off" seasons owing to the fact that it can get uncomfortably hot during the summer as witnessed by the 105+ it hit when Dawn and I hiked from it during July.

Not surprisingly I saw far fewer folks on the trail than I did in June or July. One oddball was that I saw a higher proportion of hikers with bug nets than I'd ever seen in the Sierra, even when Dawn and I are getting harassed by clouds of mosquitoes (and wearing our bug nets). I'm guessing it was because there were these swarms of annoying flies. They didn't seem to bite but they swarmed around the face so densely as to make one worry about inhaling them. I had been harassed by similar swarms in Bull Canyon back in August, after which I've carried a face mask (useful for far more things than COVID protection) with my hiking gear. I put mine on when I ran into the first swarm of flies.

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We all know I wouldn't hike merely for hiking or scenery's sake alone. A fall trip to a lake with brown trout in it is done because browns are supposed to be more aggressive during spawning season. I can't say the fishing was any different than my last two fishing stints here in 2004 and 2006 and in fact it may have been the slowest session I've had in terms of strikes or other activity per number of casts. In 2004 I lost one rainbow and caught one 16" brown in 40 some-odd casts from the Wapama Falls area (after returning from frigid Laurel Lake) and in 2006 I caught a 15.5" brown and had trailers on at least two other casts fishing just beyond the tunnel at the close of a geology field trip.

My 2023 "season closer" fishing session opened with at least 40 casts without a result (no strikes, no trailers) with a variety of lures and retrieve depths. I saw some fish but they had little interest in attacking my lures. As these things usually go, I was considering an early departure (and probably a stop at Around the Horn Brewing) when I had a vicious strike near the end of the retrieve that woke me up. Sometimes a fish hits hard but isn't that big, but I could tell from the strength of this fish, including the taking out of line, that this was a good one. I had my net in hand but fretted over the fact that the shoreline there was configured awkwardly for netting. Given that the fish didn't look so big to require a net--I guessed about 18"--I did a little hoist out of the water. Although the fish had hit hard, it was in fact barely hooked and fell off onto the rocks and slithered toward the water. I did not dive this time (my first "fish dive" of 2023 was during the season opener at Lake Vernon) but rather instinctively reached out with my left hand which grabbed the fish in an osprey-like hold (w/o talons). Normally a slimy fish squirts out of your grasp but this brown was going nowhere. All that strength training I do has multiple benefits it would seem. I walked the fish to high ground where I could comfortably put it on a stringer; a fish dinner for Dawn and the family was now assured. Although I didn't bruise knees or anything with a dive, bending over and grabbing this fish was awkward and I abs cramped painfully. No cramp, however, would make me drop that fish. This fish looked lot bigger than it reality---I was a bit surprised it measured only 17".

Having adjusted my retrieve and lure selection to what I figured was the winning formula, I cast out again with eager anticipation, but didn't get hit on the next cast. However, I think it was the fourth cast after the first fish when my retrieve got hammered again, also when reasonably close. This fish was clearly even stronger than the first. Another brown followed it, but not with intention of piggy backing (swallowing it) because it was in the same size range. As the big fish got closer to the surface, I could see it was in fact substantially larger than the first one. Similar to the first one where I could see it was barely lip hooked, I realized I'd have to be careful with the end game. This one was too large to chance a hoist with and I optimized my netting angle by wading into calf deep water. There were the usual moments of anxiety as I carefully set my one-handed rod position to guide the fish head-first into the net. I've had so many bad finishes in the last three years. One clean swipe of the net safely secured the big fish. The hook immediately popped out in the net. Whew. This brown looked positively enormous as well as beautiful, as it had this intense golden shimmer which sadly doesn't show up in the photo. I'm not sure why fish looked bigger than reality that day but I thought I might have a shot at a new brown PB (PB is 20.5" from well-known lake in Desolation). My measuring tape caught it at only 19" but it is the top fish of my 2023 season by a good 1.5". When Lee viewed the fish when I brought them home, he too overestimated the size and he historically estimates fish lengths with amazing accuracy; Lee thought the big one was north of 20" too.

It took awhile to get casts in the water after catching the second brown because the hooks in my reel were really difficult to remove from the net; this is a chronic issue with this "soft" webbing of Judy's net which I was using because my ill-fated regular net was forgotten (for the third time in two years) along the swampy shore of Mud Lake in Lakes Basin two weeks ago. By the time I started firing casts I had become fairly dehydrated and hungry but the excitement of large fish kept me going. I threw 10 more casts with no result; it seemed the chosen retrieve had outlived its welcome, so I took a hydration and lunch break. After lunch I fired a good 20 more blank casts before deciding to throw in the towel earlier than planned.

I arrived back at our East Bay area home a bit before 7 pm, after phoning Judy from about Lake Don Pedro saying that she need not buy fish at the store. I brought the fish towel with the two fish into the house and laid it on the kitchen counter. "Lee should see this." Lee comes into the room and I unroll the towel. "Holy s---. What the ---- are those?" He hadn't seen browns before, or he had in fact forgotten what they looked like (last time was 2006). As noted above he was enormously impressed with the fish's size and was shocked that the big one was less than 20". It takes a really exceptional fish to impress him; only twice before has he reacted like that upon seeing fish I've brought home (PB cabezon this summer, and PB brookie last summer).
Why don't we fish for browns more often? The reason is that we like to eat fish and many browns cook up mushy. They are like the striped surf perch of trout and Judy and I had so bad experiences eating them we began to avoid fishing for them. Some lakes, however, yield tasty browns, and the 2004 and 2006 browns for Hetch Hetchy were tasty indeed. The 2023 fish were even better with deep orange meat that cooked up beautifully firm and flaky. It would be hard to imagine a better season ending.

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[Fly Guy Dave]

That is an impressive brown and a great way to end the fishing and hiking season. Congratulations!

[balzaccom]

Really nice report, and lovely fish. But you need to be careful. All those cramps are sure signs of dehydration, and that's nothing to play around with! Jusdt drink some dang water and take some electrolytes, They won't kill you, but dehydration could!

[texan]

Nice brown GB. My biggest fish the year was a brown caught from Grant Lake right under 20 inches too. Thanks for sharing as you always do. I hope 2024 is a great year for everyone. Take care.

Mike(Texan)

[giantbrookie]

Really nice report, and lovely fish. But you need to be careful. All those cramps are sure signs of dehydration, and that's nothing to play around with! Jusdt drink some dang water and take some electrolytes, They won't kill you, but dehydration could!

I think I underestimated how warm it was and how much I perspired. When I think of it I put down more water than I ever had on a fall dayhike but that was still short, perhaps attested to by lack of urge to urinate more frequently (although urine was not particularly dark when I did). I actually drank a lot of water and, realizing that refilling opportunities might be limited, carried two full liters reconstituted with Gatorade, plus my water filter for refills. Before all hikes I put down close to a liter at the car before hiking (separate water I carry in my car) and I did the same at the day use parking before taking off. I hiked the entire distance to the shoreline without stopping, so no hydration en route (I don't use a hydration pack for in-hike drinking), then blew down 2/3 of liter of Gatorade on arrival. For my lunch break I put down the remaining 1/3 liter of Gatorade, then filtered and put down >1L in two different settings (ie filtered, drank, filtered more), so during my two and a half hours at the shoreline I probably consumed 2.5 liters of liquid of which 1 L was Gatorade. So at the point when I started back to the car I'd put down about 3.5 L from start (counting the "pre-saturation"). I put down another 1L of Gatorade during the multiple forced stops on the way out. So that's 4.5L (2L of which was Gatorade) or so for a November hike (excluding the 0.5L I did to help with cramps when I reached the car), which is way more than usual for me (I generally put down a lot of water) for a fall trip and doubtlessly because it was pretty warm. The only times I can remember consuming more water than that during a dayhike have been some of my geologic fieldwork hikes in Coast Range weather of >80F. I've rarely had in-hike cramp issues, but the worst until this trip was back in 2019 on Mt Diablo when it was 100+. I pre-hydrated with 1L, carried 5L! in my daypack (dubious refill possibilities on my route), all of which was Gatorade-loaded (had seen weather report and knew what I was up against). I consumed all 5L in my daypack during that blazing hot hiking day and had only to descend 3 miles on the road back to where I was parked. I had some serious cramps that began as I was taking photographs while descending, then I reached the car and cramped so badly again I couldn't put my pack into the trunk. I think that in addition to dehydration/electrolyte deficiencies a factor in this cramping experience was not resting the legs enough (not a factor on the Diablo hike owing to frequent stopping to record data). Most of the stopped time at Hetch Hetchy was standing up and casting and minimal time was spent taking weight off those old legs.

[balzaccom]

Wow. That should be enough! Of course, driving up from the Bay Area, you're probably already a bit dehydrated from the drive--not that it's exhausting, but your body breathes out enough moisture to require some replenishment at that point, I think. And of course if you're hiking with only a daypack, you might not notice how much you are sweating out, because it dries so quickly up there. The last trial crew I worked on was only half a day, and I spent a couple of days up there before hand, but I know the humidity was around 12% the day we were working.

And I hope you didn't take my last comment as anything other than a shared experience. I dehydrate quicker than anyone I know, so I've had my fair share of similar experiences.

[giantbrookie]

Yeah I figured you had a lot of experiences given all your hiking experiences and trail crew experiences. Over the years I've noticed that I seem to require more water than most folks doing the same activity, including my family, so I plan accordingly with what I carry sufficient water to carry me between refilling points. I long ago noticed how much stronger I hike when properly hydrated, so I have habitually consumed copious amounts of water since my early adult years. I'm still a bit surprised that I had all those cramps after 4.5L of water + Gatorade on a day that really was pretty mild in temps and a hike that was in the easy to moderate class (moderate only because of pace, really). Whereas hamstrings and calves are my normal cramping spots, the groin cramps were new and they may be specifically related to having the lower ab and groin restriction from my hernia belt. I think that the fact I didn't take rest stops as I did on the super long Vernon hike (one rest stop en route, plus a lot of casting done while sitting down) and Ebbetts region dayhike (in warmer weather) was also a contributor. I didn't really feel sore the day after, either, except for the usual mild soreness in the trapezius area (from the shoulder straps) that I get after nearly all hikes.

[Harlen]

Those are very nice big fish John, and it sounds like you really enjoyed your last trip of the year.
You write:

There were the usual moments of anxiety as I carefully set my one-handed rod position to guide the fish head-first into the net.

I wonder what that one-handed rod hold looks like? Do you hold the rod near the tip, and balance the rest of the rod on your shoulder? I am just guessing, as I have never yet caught a fish I couldn't easily swing out of the water. I accomplish this feat with the greatest of ease, trip after trip, year after year, by studiously avoiding the bigger fish of the lakes.

It's not hard John, and an added benefit for you is the lightening of your oversize packs. You can dispense with the awkward fish nets, and the cursing fits of frustration each time you manage to lose them.