TR: Haeckel-Lamarck Comedy of Errors, 9/11-13/2023

[Sam R]

Hello! Though I’ve posted a couple short questions on this helpful site before, this is my first trip report here. I owe the trip to my wife, who watched the kids. Linking 13,000-foot passes was the easy job.

This was my first solo backpacking trip since the first of those kids arrived almost 10 years ago. These were also my first nights on the ground in 15 years in the Sierras, the range where it all began for me, on a dozen or so backpacking trips in my teens and twenties. (I did most of my wandering in the interim in the WA Cascades and the Four Corners area.) We’re back in the neighborhood now, and I couldn’t wait.

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So was that hiatus, along with the eagerness it occasioned, the reason so much seemed to go screwy on this trip? Because screwy was sure how it went. Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned, unless it’s just that I’m a doofus. But that would be good to know, too.

Day 1

I started off with a skip in my step. I’d done trips over Bishop Pass, Piute Pass, and Lamarck Col back in the day, but I’d never been to Sabrina Basin. Glaciated granite, sparkling water, trees, but trees that wouldn’t dream of blocking the view—these were the Sierras I'd thought of so many times from afar. I glanced at my map to see what was what along the crest—my first night’s goal was one of the lakes below Haeckel Col—then put the map in my shorts pocket for easy access when I needed it down the road.

Can you see where this is headed? If so, please lead my next expedition.

I turned right at Blue Lake, came after a time to another decent-sized lake, and went up the ridge beside it to have a look around. On top, eager to see what the map had to say about my newly expansive surroundings, I reached into my pocket to find—nothing at all! The map must have fallen out when I took a big step up, possibly in one of the other places I went off the trail to look at the view or a bird or whatever else. Good grief. Keeping the map in my pocket—if that wasn’t the dumbest thing I ever did, it doesn’t have a lot of competition.

What to do? I don’t make a habit of backpacking without a map. On the other hand, you can hardly get lost in a place like Sabrina Basin—if you want out, just go down. True, I was planning to cross the crest, but Evolution Basin and Darwin Canyon are also pretty hard to get wrong, if you know what you’re looking for. I’d miss ID’ing far peaks from high perches, but maybe I’d be fine without the map. (That wouldn’t be my advice for most people—if, uh, anyone wanted my advice—but perhaps I can speak freely here.)

I was more bothered by the thought of littering this place I loved. I hated that thought. Maybe someone would pick it up and make my trash their treasure, but still. If I’d known where it was, it would have been easy to turn around. I’ve backtracked in the wilderness for the same reason before. But to have 5 miles and a 1500 foot drop in which to look for the map… when it might not even be on the trail, or in plain sight… and when my ticket to tundraland was only good for three days… sigh. I decided, with misgivings, to keep going, and hope to pick up someone else’s trash along the way. (And if not on this trip, then on the next, and the one after that.)

Cue the doofus. I hadn’t studied the on-trail portion of the route nearly as well as the off- (figuring I could just, you know, look at the map). I think I thought Dingleberry Lake was Midnight Lake, forgetting Dingleberry was merely on the way to Midnight. I think I thought—I don’t know what I thought. At any rate, I figured it was time to stay off the trail and keep to the ridge. It didn’t look quite like the ridge in the picture online, but maybe there was more than one way to explain that. Hell, it looked like a good ridge! Thus, one thing leading to another, I found myself at what, in retrospect, must have been one of the Hell Diver Lakes.

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I knew that wasn’t right, nice as it was, so I kept going, till I found myself at what had to have been Blue Heaven Lake. Lovely, that one, though that wasn’t right, either. My growing desire to have a clue how to get where I wanted to be was briefly relieved by the sight of a coyote bounding, almost flowing up the rocky drainage and, after seeming to confer somehow with another coyote who appeared much further below, back down again in swift, sure-footed silence.

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I followed the coyotes down a ways, wondering if I should just make camp and regroup in the morning, and—there was my ridge! No doubt about it. So I made my way over to it (around the real Midnight Lake) and up to “Haeckel Basin,” the sun already down but with enough evening left

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to find a patch of decomposed granite not too much smaller than an un-tarped sleeping bag.

As soon as I took my pack off, the altitude hit me. I suddenly felt exceedingly ill. Maybe it wouldn’t have so hard if I hadn’t tacked on Blue Heaven. Or maybe it was ambitious in the first place to go from sea level to 12,000 feet in about 30 hours. I’d kind of forgotten about that. In the NW elevation’s not an issue, and living in much of the SW you’re already acclimated. How many other places are there in this country where you can take an easy day’s drive to a trailhead 9- or 10,000 feet higher than your driveway? How many places are there in the world?? Dang, California!

I made dinner but couldn’t touch a bite. This was a new one for me, a long-standing member of the clean plate club. It became a theme of the rest of the trip, and after each breakfast and dinner my pack got heavier with packed-out rehydrated food. Lunch didn't go much better. At one point I tried a pistachio, something I normally love, but was possessed by a wish to keep its pistachio brethren outside of my mouth for as long as I lived. The memory of the taste haunted me for days. (My wife says altitude sickness sounds a bit like being pregnant.)

Things were starting to happen in the sky

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but my powers of appreciation were at a low ebb. I felt like Toad when Frog is trying to interest him in the springtime but he just wants to stay in bed.

Blah, said Toad.

Night 1

At midnight I woke up with my sleeping bag covered in a thick frost and my mattress completely deflated. I immediately did the most sensible thing I could think of, which was to blow the mattress back up and try to go back to sleep as if nothing were the matter. Half an hour later I’d sunk back to the ground. I gave in and got the patch kit and followed its instruction to find the wee hole (an adventure in itself), cover it with goo, and give it 2 hours (!) to dry. Actually I fudged it a bit, given the dry air, and was back in the sack by 2:30, with a final bedtime prayer to St. Epoxy.

Day 2

Prayers granted, and feeling somewhat improved, I made for Haeckel Col (which is not the low point—thank you, HST!)

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I planned to turn back if it seemed risky without an ice axe. (I’m happy with Married Men’s Point, wherever I find it.) However, it looked less friendly from below than it actually turned out to be, and having taken care but not run into trouble, and stayed off the snow, I was on top before long. You can’t walk across—there’s a short, simple downclimb—and when I let my pack go first, it sat obediently on the rock I’d dropped it to.

Lower down, things got trickier. There’s only one reasonable chute that I could find, and at first I went too far down the wrong one, before having to re-ascend and try again. At one point while figuring this out I said “no really, after you” to my pack again, but this time it did a somersault and coughed up my Steripen, which I’d forgotten about in the outside mesh pocket, and which went cartwheeling merrily down the mountainside before losing its cap and running glass-end first into a boulder. Doh! (At least I could pick up the pieces.) I wasn’t even going to necessarily treat my water up high and off-trail, only in more populated areas, and maybe even then I could still find some snowmelt-trickle, but still. I really would not have minded a do-over on that one.

I decided to just stay in the basin above Sapphire Lake. About that place I could not complain.

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Day 3

The morning dawned clear after a rainy night, which I took as a sign, while boiling water for my tea, that this, the last full day of the trip, would be the first of blessedly smooth sailing. Then the stove ran out of gas. It was my first time with a canister stove, having stuck with my prelapsarian Whisperlite until now, and I’d read online that one small canister would be enough for three days and nights. Who writes this stuff? Do they not require at least three cups of Japanese loose-leaf to face the day, too? At any rate, the signs had changed. Pistachios for dinner and no genmaicha to wake up to? It was time to get back to the car.

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A wildflower reunion was going on around Darwin Bench. The whole gang was there—lupine, paintbrush, yarrow, the daisy clan, heather, penstemon, columbine, primrose, pussypaws, shooting stars, and more—all still at it, as if “they think warm days will never cease.”

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In Darwin Canyon I met a man who kindly offered me food when I happened to mention my fuel-lessness. I then led his unfortunate wife and daughter astray, when they followed me going needlessly high across the boulders between the third & fourth Darwin Lakes. (Given a choice, I tend to pick the higher route, which may or may not actually be the best one.) After Lamarck Col, I thought of going back into Sabrina Basin off-trail via the Schober Lakes, but it was getting late, and I didn’t want to be on Lord knows what after sunset, so I headed for North Lake, despite the extra miles, figuring it would be worth it to be on a trail.

Then things got interesting again. In retrospect, I imagine you cross to river right at the end of the high sandy basin. But not having expected to use the route, so not having brushed up on it, going rather on a Bush II-era memory of coming up the opposite way, I followed a use trail to the left. That was not much fun—steep, loose stuff followed by gazebo-sized boulders. At one point I stepped off a boulder onto a snowbank, and, despite having tested it first, plunged through anyway, getting a cut the length of the back of my thigh courtesy of the boulder’s pointed edge. Well, I suppose those were the wages of my winging it. Eventually I came across the trail again, and I was not sad to see it.

The rest was racing the sun down,

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and though I lost, I still made it back by headlamp to the car, in not too much rain, in time to get bandages before Rite Aid closed and to place the lights-out order at Taqueria Mi Guadalajara, where my appetite miraculously returned.

So what’s the moral of the story? 42 is not the new 24? Stay home and do the crossword? Try to not, like, lose stuff in the backcountry, or break it?

Whatever it is, may Fortune smile on your next trip!

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[Sam R]

A few more pics:

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On the short list of All-Time Most Tempting Swimming Holes I Didn't Have Time to Jump Into:

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[sekihiker]

The photos were so fantastic, I didn't spend much time on your words. Thanks for posting.

[grampy]

Sam R -
As far as TRs go, this is a nice first effort - but I suspect you’ve done this sort of thing before. I enjoyed the dry humor in your narrative about as much as your excellent photos, thank you for posting it !

[DaveF]

I've lurked here for years without posting much - too deskbound for my liking. This TR had the best combination of gorgeous photos and entertaining prose that I can remember. Thanks for sharing!

[Mike M.]

Great trail report. I admire your lively writing style and self-deprecating sense of humor.

I was out on a long solo trip about the same time as you, starting from North Lake and moving at a snail's pace toward Lamarck Col. The weather turned foul after my second day, raining every day and then again every night. Then the monsoon event (Hurricane Hillary) hit and streams swelled, trails became streams, and everything was wet wet wet. I had planned to hike into Blackcap Basin, but changed plans and enjoyed a siege-like almost loop to South Lake via Muir and Bishop Passes. Some day I'll post a trip report.

Mike M.

[giantbrookie]

What a terrific report. Unsaid in all of this is the fact that you have to be one heck of an off trail hiker to have done all of that navigating without a map. I've been doing off trail stuff for decades and I am familiar with this area on top of that, but I can't imagine doing your route without a map--you clearly have a photographic memory of the studying you did before you left on the trip to be able to pull this one off.

[kpeter]

I thought I had posted a response...but it apparently is gone. In any case, I appreciate your sense of humor. But what struck me most was how fit you must be and how knowledgeable a hiker. For example, you barely mention getting from Blue Heaven over to Haeckel Col, but that must have involved a huge detour back through Midnight and Hungry Packer or else some serious climbing. To do it rather nonchalantly while you were suffering from altitude sickness--whew!

[Moonwalker]

Echoing the other comments -- great report. I'm impressed with both the nonchalance and the patience.

[thegib]

Thanks for the funny report. (I just do not understand lowering/dropping your pack.) I love seeing coyote in the mountains. A couple times I've watched or followed them over passes, and I've come to trust their sense of direction. I've found that coyote tracks over a snowed pass trace the most direct route possible - yet another reason to appreciate their presence.