TR 7/13-21 Hoover-Emigrant-Yosemite lunker lollipop
Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2021 8:12 pm
Part I: Introduction and Leavitt Meadow to Mary Lake.
Sometimes all the stars align and backpacking trips exceed our most sanguine expectations. For example, how could one expect to spend 5 days in Emigrant Wilderness with minimal mosquito harassment, experience outstanding wildflower blooms during a super dry year, or have wildfires burning north and south and yet have relatively clear air? So many things went right on this trip they swamped the usual issues that popped up, including equipment failures, and one comical wrong turn on a trail. The trip had a mix of peak bagging (first time for my daughter, Dawn), off trail route brainstorming, major itinerary revisions during the trip (I love improvising), uniquely varied scenery, breathtaking wildflowers, and possibly the best overall fishing I've experienced on a backpacking trip (comparable to or exceeding the Tunechuck 2008 epic). And this trip was physically easier than any extended (say ≥5 days) backpacking trip I've done, which meant more moments to relax and enjoy the wonders of the Sierran wilderness.
Since becoming an academic (2005), I've lost the flexibility to do long fall trips, and I avoided Emigrant Wilderness because as one of those mosquito-magnet people (my family, including daughter and ace backpacking buddy Dawn, is similarly cursed) I figured I'd wait until I was retired and head up there in September or October someday. This year, as I planned my one long backpacking trip, I figured I couldn't resist visiting the largest part of the Sierra I hadn't hiked in yet, especially since it included places legendary for producing exceptionally large fish. I fretted that so little of the planned route was off trail and was haunted by the vision of clouds of mosquitoes.
The lead-up issues connected with wilderness permit acquisition actually led to a better trip. Issues? There are some odd restrictions for trips originating/entering via Emigrant Wilderness which include: (a) trip cannot exceed 7 nights (I wanted 8), and (b) a trip originating in Emigrant Wilderness cannot enter adjacent wilderness areas (weird). I had planned to do the trip out of Leavitt Lake, but the rules caused me to change plans an enter via Hoover Wilderness and Leavitt Meadow. The planned nights as of when we left the trailhead were: Fremont Lake, Dorothy Lake, Mary Lake, Tilden Lake, Black Bear Lake, Huckleberry Lake, Emigrant Lake, High Emigrant L with no layover days and a super long ~16 mile hike to the trailhead on the final day. Many audibles were called during the trip with the net result of cutting out two of the above-planned destinations and reducing the hiking distances. In keeping with tradition, the fishing part of this story will be told asynchronously after the chronologic narrative that follows.
Day 1 7/13 Leavitt Meadow to campsite above south end of Fremont L. (8.2 mi, 1974' gain, 862' loss; ~0.2 mi off trail. GPS-based distance and elevation gain/loss data given herein are for the hiking with pack. dayhiking distances are not included)
Similar to 2020, Dawn and I teamed up with my old hiking buddy, Todd who met us at Leavitt Meadow at about 1030 am on 7/13. I was surprised at how quick the drive was from the East Bay: 3 hr 20 min. It got me thinking about future dayhikes and overnighters out of this or nearby trailheads. The temperatures were warm as forecast (high forecast to be high 80s at Leavitt Mdw and low 80s at Fremont Lake for 7/13) but they were balanced by a consistently stiff breeze as we charged over the bridge (over the W Walker R) and headed up the trail. Although I had seen a blanket of smoke over the Sierra as I drove up that morning, the view south and upstream to Tower Peak was only mildly hazy. The hike stirred some long dormant memories. I had only once hiked past Lane Lake from Leavitt Meadow, and that was in 1987 to Tower Lake (a trip to climb Tower Peak with my dad), yet the scenes and surroundings as I hiked beyond Lane Lake seemed so familiar. It was a bit spooky. How could those 1987 memories come back so vividly? In the meantime, we noticed some trail features in the area that made hiking a bit more difficult than one might plan for. First is that although the net elevation gain for long reaches of trail is low to moderate, many short portions of trail are quite steep and the height of the waterbars are quite inconvenient. Second, there are a lot more places with elevation loss on an otherwise ascending route than might be guessed by the trace of the trails on various topo maps. Todd verified the distressingly large amount of elevation loss with his GPS app to CalTopo; his mileage and elevation gain estimates for full pack travel are given for each day. Third, there are lots of well-developed trails that aren't shown on maps and commonly not signed at various trail junctions, either.
The finding of the trail junction to Fremont Lake was actually difficult owing to the splitting of the trail into a stock trail that crosses the W. Walker and a hikers trail that does not. The actual trail junction is off of the stock trail but we didn't know this based on the maps we had (I had the 2017 Tom Harrison Hoover Wilderness and Todd had a National Geographic topo map of the region; the 2002 Tom Harrison Emigrant Wilderness map I did not carry does in fact show the two trails). At one point we searched for a crossing of the river and crossed on a big log jam, then clambered over a bunch of fallen timber and other obstacles to reach the stock trail. It is a good thing Todd spotted the trail junction sign a bit downstream as I was thinking of following the stock trail upstream. What would have happened had we continued to follow the "hiker" trail upstream? I'm not sure. In any case, we found the final trail ascent to Fremont Lake a lot steeper than one would surmise by looking at topo maps. It was quite a grunt at the end of the day.
As usual, to reduce mosquito issues we looked for a campsite as high above the lake as possible and found a reasonably high camping spot above the south end of the lake. It was a long way to go to get to place to fetch water with my folding water bucket but I'm pretty accustomed to hauling water a long way to campsites. Two other groups were camped at the lake, both much closer to shore where the mosquitoes were much more intense. We had seen but one solitary hiker en route, one campsite (at the Hidden Lake trail junction), and encountered a pack train that was descending from Fremont L. We found wood-fringed and wind-whipped Fremont Lake reasonably attractive but we eagerly awaited the higher altitudes and cooler temperatures promised on the second day. Day 2. Fremont L to campsite on above south shore of Dorothy Lake (8.8 mi, 2125' gain, 963' loss; off trail ~1.5 mi). This looked to be the most strenuous day of the trip. I had figured on something in excess of 10 mi based on various maps. As we did each morning of the trip, we kickstarted our day with oatmeal, hot chocolate and the caffeine-laced mint chocolate chip Clif Bar. We headed up the unofficial, but well-developed, trail heading south from Fremont L. and soon rejoined the official trail that bounced up and down past the Chain of Lakes to intersect the PCT just beyond Upper Long Lake.
We saw no one until we reached the PCT but now we met folks at regular intervals. Nearly everyone we met was headed north except for a group that was more locally-directed, headed south, and looking to base camp at Harriet Lake. At Harriet Lake I was misdirected by a use trail near the crossing of the outlet and was hiking on the east side of the lake when Todd suggested that we needed to backtrack to the outlet to find the real trail. This presaged a far more egregious error later in the trip. Once back on the trail, a short ascent brought us to a place where we could see Bonnie Lake below and north of the trail. We dropped our packs and hiked down to relax a bit at Bonnie. Being so close to the bustling PCT, I expected a "trailside" sort of used appearance to the lake but we found very little evidence of human presence there. It is amazing what 0.2 mi of off trail distance can do. While at Bonnie Lake, I reapplied sunscreen and the tube ruptured a bit below the cap. I didn't realize at the time that this leak was another "foreshadowing" of sorts. After taking our little break at Bonnie L., we strode back to our packs, hopped back on the PCT freeway, then exited at Dorothy Lake Pass, hiking off trail into Yosemite (Dorothy Pass is at the Hoover Wilderness-Yosemite boundary) to gain our usual "high ground" campsite probably 60' of elevation above the lake. I did the usual long haul to bring water back to the camp. I told Dawn that the bucket hauls were my replacement for the strength training I was missing on this trip. Later in the evening I noticed the water level had dropped in the water bucket and found that it had a slow leak. Not a surprise, I suppose, for this bucket was at least 30 years old. It didn't leak fast enough to be a real problem, but the leak theme for the trip did not conclude with this bucket. Although there was certainly evidence of past camping on the south shore, including some old horse poop near our campsite, we saw no one there, while we could occasionally hear voices on the distant PCT across the big lake. Day 3. Dorothy Lake to Mary Lake (all off trail 5.0 miles, 1430' gain, 1224' loss). The eagerly-awaited (for me and Todd, at least) off trail trek to Mary Lake from Dorothy Lake followed the off trail principle of "staying greedy" about elevation unless the terrain dictates otherwise. The planned route "wrapped around the corner" southward into the west-flowing drainage between Forsyth Peak and Keyes Peak, then aimed for the pass between Keyes Peak and Saurian Crest. Sidehill off trail hiking can be difficult, depending on brush, boulder fields, small gullies, etc., and we were prepared to drop into Jack Main canyon if necessary, but in this case "staying greedy" worked and we maintained elevation nicely and turned the corner into the pleasant drainage between Forsyth and Keyes. During the sidehill hike to the drainage we were struck by richness of the wildflower displays, something we had noticed earlier around Dorothy Lake. At the stream we took a hydration break. Dawn really enjoys being able to drink directly (ie instead of filtering) out of streams like this; I too have long considered this one of the pleasures of backcountry hiking.
Following the water break we trudged up to the pass, then did a somewhat tedious (crossing lots of small ridges and gullies) sidehill traverse to the SE ("staying greedy") to reach a point where we could easily follow a bench to a campsite above the outlet of Mary Lake. Rounding the corner to Mary provided amazing (and clear) views downstream to Tilden and the mid elevation domeland downstream of it, and across Tilden Creek to the mighty Tower Peak and the summits south of it (Craig and Snow Peaks). The relatively short hiking day gave us plenty of time to enjoy the alpine surroundings of Mary Lake. Although below 10000' (elev 9619) the alpine granite-girded appearance of Mary Lake and its surroundings resemble that of places such as Upper Mills Creek L. or Bear Basin area lakes at elevations in the 11000' range. During the course of this day as well as the previous one, Todd and I had decided on several major changes to the trip plan. Day 4 had been planned as a short hike down to Tilden Lake, but we felt this pushed a long Day 5 to head up Jack Main Canyon to eventually reach Snow, Bigelow, and Black Bear Lake. Accordingly, we figured we could cut out the original day 4 and head directly for Bigelow Lake using the off trail past east of it. This would gain us an extra day which could be applied to shorten the long last day (High Emigrant to Leavitt Meadow); we now planned the last night for Cinko Lake, which looked to be about 12.5 mi or so from trailhead. Todd also reminded me that the direct off trail route to Bigelow Lake looked easy topographically and this would seem to save a lot of distance compared to taking the trail up Jack Main Canyon then going over Bond Pass and splitting off to Snow and then Bigelow.
Sometimes all the stars align and backpacking trips exceed our most sanguine expectations. For example, how could one expect to spend 5 days in Emigrant Wilderness with minimal mosquito harassment, experience outstanding wildflower blooms during a super dry year, or have wildfires burning north and south and yet have relatively clear air? So many things went right on this trip they swamped the usual issues that popped up, including equipment failures, and one comical wrong turn on a trail. The trip had a mix of peak bagging (first time for my daughter, Dawn), off trail route brainstorming, major itinerary revisions during the trip (I love improvising), uniquely varied scenery, breathtaking wildflowers, and possibly the best overall fishing I've experienced on a backpacking trip (comparable to or exceeding the Tunechuck 2008 epic). And this trip was physically easier than any extended (say ≥5 days) backpacking trip I've done, which meant more moments to relax and enjoy the wonders of the Sierran wilderness.
Since becoming an academic (2005), I've lost the flexibility to do long fall trips, and I avoided Emigrant Wilderness because as one of those mosquito-magnet people (my family, including daughter and ace backpacking buddy Dawn, is similarly cursed) I figured I'd wait until I was retired and head up there in September or October someday. This year, as I planned my one long backpacking trip, I figured I couldn't resist visiting the largest part of the Sierra I hadn't hiked in yet, especially since it included places legendary for producing exceptionally large fish. I fretted that so little of the planned route was off trail and was haunted by the vision of clouds of mosquitoes.
The lead-up issues connected with wilderness permit acquisition actually led to a better trip. Issues? There are some odd restrictions for trips originating/entering via Emigrant Wilderness which include: (a) trip cannot exceed 7 nights (I wanted 8), and (b) a trip originating in Emigrant Wilderness cannot enter adjacent wilderness areas (weird). I had planned to do the trip out of Leavitt Lake, but the rules caused me to change plans an enter via Hoover Wilderness and Leavitt Meadow. The planned nights as of when we left the trailhead were: Fremont Lake, Dorothy Lake, Mary Lake, Tilden Lake, Black Bear Lake, Huckleberry Lake, Emigrant Lake, High Emigrant L with no layover days and a super long ~16 mile hike to the trailhead on the final day. Many audibles were called during the trip with the net result of cutting out two of the above-planned destinations and reducing the hiking distances. In keeping with tradition, the fishing part of this story will be told asynchronously after the chronologic narrative that follows.
Day 1 7/13 Leavitt Meadow to campsite above south end of Fremont L. (8.2 mi, 1974' gain, 862' loss; ~0.2 mi off trail. GPS-based distance and elevation gain/loss data given herein are for the hiking with pack. dayhiking distances are not included)
Similar to 2020, Dawn and I teamed up with my old hiking buddy, Todd who met us at Leavitt Meadow at about 1030 am on 7/13. I was surprised at how quick the drive was from the East Bay: 3 hr 20 min. It got me thinking about future dayhikes and overnighters out of this or nearby trailheads. The temperatures were warm as forecast (high forecast to be high 80s at Leavitt Mdw and low 80s at Fremont Lake for 7/13) but they were balanced by a consistently stiff breeze as we charged over the bridge (over the W Walker R) and headed up the trail. Although I had seen a blanket of smoke over the Sierra as I drove up that morning, the view south and upstream to Tower Peak was only mildly hazy. The hike stirred some long dormant memories. I had only once hiked past Lane Lake from Leavitt Meadow, and that was in 1987 to Tower Lake (a trip to climb Tower Peak with my dad), yet the scenes and surroundings as I hiked beyond Lane Lake seemed so familiar. It was a bit spooky. How could those 1987 memories come back so vividly? In the meantime, we noticed some trail features in the area that made hiking a bit more difficult than one might plan for. First is that although the net elevation gain for long reaches of trail is low to moderate, many short portions of trail are quite steep and the height of the waterbars are quite inconvenient. Second, there are a lot more places with elevation loss on an otherwise ascending route than might be guessed by the trace of the trails on various topo maps. Todd verified the distressingly large amount of elevation loss with his GPS app to CalTopo; his mileage and elevation gain estimates for full pack travel are given for each day. Third, there are lots of well-developed trails that aren't shown on maps and commonly not signed at various trail junctions, either.
The finding of the trail junction to Fremont Lake was actually difficult owing to the splitting of the trail into a stock trail that crosses the W. Walker and a hikers trail that does not. The actual trail junction is off of the stock trail but we didn't know this based on the maps we had (I had the 2017 Tom Harrison Hoover Wilderness and Todd had a National Geographic topo map of the region; the 2002 Tom Harrison Emigrant Wilderness map I did not carry does in fact show the two trails). At one point we searched for a crossing of the river and crossed on a big log jam, then clambered over a bunch of fallen timber and other obstacles to reach the stock trail. It is a good thing Todd spotted the trail junction sign a bit downstream as I was thinking of following the stock trail upstream. What would have happened had we continued to follow the "hiker" trail upstream? I'm not sure. In any case, we found the final trail ascent to Fremont Lake a lot steeper than one would surmise by looking at topo maps. It was quite a grunt at the end of the day.
As usual, to reduce mosquito issues we looked for a campsite as high above the lake as possible and found a reasonably high camping spot above the south end of the lake. It was a long way to go to get to place to fetch water with my folding water bucket but I'm pretty accustomed to hauling water a long way to campsites. Two other groups were camped at the lake, both much closer to shore where the mosquitoes were much more intense. We had seen but one solitary hiker en route, one campsite (at the Hidden Lake trail junction), and encountered a pack train that was descending from Fremont L. We found wood-fringed and wind-whipped Fremont Lake reasonably attractive but we eagerly awaited the higher altitudes and cooler temperatures promised on the second day. Day 2. Fremont L to campsite on above south shore of Dorothy Lake (8.8 mi, 2125' gain, 963' loss; off trail ~1.5 mi). This looked to be the most strenuous day of the trip. I had figured on something in excess of 10 mi based on various maps. As we did each morning of the trip, we kickstarted our day with oatmeal, hot chocolate and the caffeine-laced mint chocolate chip Clif Bar. We headed up the unofficial, but well-developed, trail heading south from Fremont L. and soon rejoined the official trail that bounced up and down past the Chain of Lakes to intersect the PCT just beyond Upper Long Lake.
We saw no one until we reached the PCT but now we met folks at regular intervals. Nearly everyone we met was headed north except for a group that was more locally-directed, headed south, and looking to base camp at Harriet Lake. At Harriet Lake I was misdirected by a use trail near the crossing of the outlet and was hiking on the east side of the lake when Todd suggested that we needed to backtrack to the outlet to find the real trail. This presaged a far more egregious error later in the trip. Once back on the trail, a short ascent brought us to a place where we could see Bonnie Lake below and north of the trail. We dropped our packs and hiked down to relax a bit at Bonnie. Being so close to the bustling PCT, I expected a "trailside" sort of used appearance to the lake but we found very little evidence of human presence there. It is amazing what 0.2 mi of off trail distance can do. While at Bonnie Lake, I reapplied sunscreen and the tube ruptured a bit below the cap. I didn't realize at the time that this leak was another "foreshadowing" of sorts. After taking our little break at Bonnie L., we strode back to our packs, hopped back on the PCT freeway, then exited at Dorothy Lake Pass, hiking off trail into Yosemite (Dorothy Pass is at the Hoover Wilderness-Yosemite boundary) to gain our usual "high ground" campsite probably 60' of elevation above the lake. I did the usual long haul to bring water back to the camp. I told Dawn that the bucket hauls were my replacement for the strength training I was missing on this trip. Later in the evening I noticed the water level had dropped in the water bucket and found that it had a slow leak. Not a surprise, I suppose, for this bucket was at least 30 years old. It didn't leak fast enough to be a real problem, but the leak theme for the trip did not conclude with this bucket. Although there was certainly evidence of past camping on the south shore, including some old horse poop near our campsite, we saw no one there, while we could occasionally hear voices on the distant PCT across the big lake. Day 3. Dorothy Lake to Mary Lake (all off trail 5.0 miles, 1430' gain, 1224' loss). The eagerly-awaited (for me and Todd, at least) off trail trek to Mary Lake from Dorothy Lake followed the off trail principle of "staying greedy" about elevation unless the terrain dictates otherwise. The planned route "wrapped around the corner" southward into the west-flowing drainage between Forsyth Peak and Keyes Peak, then aimed for the pass between Keyes Peak and Saurian Crest. Sidehill off trail hiking can be difficult, depending on brush, boulder fields, small gullies, etc., and we were prepared to drop into Jack Main canyon if necessary, but in this case "staying greedy" worked and we maintained elevation nicely and turned the corner into the pleasant drainage between Forsyth and Keyes. During the sidehill hike to the drainage we were struck by richness of the wildflower displays, something we had noticed earlier around Dorothy Lake. At the stream we took a hydration break. Dawn really enjoys being able to drink directly (ie instead of filtering) out of streams like this; I too have long considered this one of the pleasures of backcountry hiking.
Following the water break we trudged up to the pass, then did a somewhat tedious (crossing lots of small ridges and gullies) sidehill traverse to the SE ("staying greedy") to reach a point where we could easily follow a bench to a campsite above the outlet of Mary Lake. Rounding the corner to Mary provided amazing (and clear) views downstream to Tilden and the mid elevation domeland downstream of it, and across Tilden Creek to the mighty Tower Peak and the summits south of it (Craig and Snow Peaks). The relatively short hiking day gave us plenty of time to enjoy the alpine surroundings of Mary Lake. Although below 10000' (elev 9619) the alpine granite-girded appearance of Mary Lake and its surroundings resemble that of places such as Upper Mills Creek L. or Bear Basin area lakes at elevations in the 11000' range. During the course of this day as well as the previous one, Todd and I had decided on several major changes to the trip plan. Day 4 had been planned as a short hike down to Tilden Lake, but we felt this pushed a long Day 5 to head up Jack Main Canyon to eventually reach Snow, Bigelow, and Black Bear Lake. Accordingly, we figured we could cut out the original day 4 and head directly for Bigelow Lake using the off trail past east of it. This would gain us an extra day which could be applied to shorten the long last day (High Emigrant to Leavitt Meadow); we now planned the last night for Cinko Lake, which looked to be about 12.5 mi or so from trailhead. Todd also reminded me that the direct off trail route to Bigelow Lake looked easy topographically and this would seem to save a lot of distance compared to taking the trail up Jack Main Canyon then going over Bond Pass and splitting off to Snow and then Bigelow.