Trip Report: Dinkey Lakes Wilderness: Three Sisters loop

A friend proposed a backpacking trip in the Dinkey Lakes Wilderness a few weeks back, and I finally have a chance to recollect the highlights. Rob and I drove up through Los Banos on Friday June 26, 2009, where we chanced upon Wool Growers Restaurant, which offered a family-style "French Basque" experience. We had a really weird experience entering the restaurant; the entrance was a little side door, which led to a dimly-lit hallway with no windows that was just long enough to be unsettling. There was nobody around, and we had wondered if perhaps we accidentally entered the back door of an accounting office or something. Following the hallway to its end, we found a beat-up wooden door, with no window on it, which was closed. We both kind of looked at each other and shrugged, and then one of us, I forget who, opened the door. A roar of voices exploded and we were thrust into a bewildering sea of activity, with what had to be 150 diners sitting side-by-side (I assume this was family style) at three huge long tables. Kids were running around screaming, there were waiters running in a panic trying to feed all of these people, and we were quickly led to a little two-top table in the far corner of the restaurant. It was the only table in the whole establishment where you weren't sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with someone else -- which initially was a relief, until it gave way to a strange feeling of alienation. See, I was just going to say "It was an unusual dining experience" but I felt that something so odd had to be shared with the hundreds and millions of people who visit this blog. Here is a picture I took -- the place was so busy that nobody even noticed when a 6'5" guy in hiking boots and a blue Coolmax performance t-shirt stood up with a camera and leisurely took a photograph. Notice the bewildered people in the back of the picture, near the right, standing on the other side of the door -- that's the entrance.

We made it through Fresno, up Highway 168 and turned right into the Tamarck Sno Park area, and followed the OHV road (with some difficulty as it was 11:30PM and thus pitch black), finally parking a few hundred yards south of the the Limestone Campsite (at about 8,630 ft). We slept on the ground next to the car, and awoke Saturday morning and headed east down the Swamp Lake OHV trail, toward Rainbow Mine. After checking out the mine, we headed cross-country up the drainage of Eastern Brook lake and Rainbow Lake. Our intention was to hike up the drainage of Rainbow Lake, and then drop down the northwestern shoulder of the Three Sisters ridge down to the main Dinkey Lakes trail area, where we could camp at any of the lakes (Swede Lake, South Lake, etc) that night; then summit the Three Sisters on Sunday, and hike out the most prudent way.

Unfortunately, we got a little turned around and never made it far enough north to get to Rainbow Lake before turning due east, thereby heading

directly up to the western portion of the Three Sisters ridge at First Sister (10,432 ft). We didn't discover this until we were well up the ridge, so we decided to go ahead and bag the Three Sisters peaks west-to-east today, and then find adequate camping either up on the ridge, or down in the Dinkey Lakes basin.

It's worth noting that the mosquitoes through this area during this time of year were the worse I've ever seen in all my outdoor experiences to date. At any given point on our hike, regardless of the time of day, elevation, distance from water, or wind speed, stopping for more than a couple of seconds -- to take a quick breather, or a hurried photograph, a sip of water, guaranteed a cloud of mosquitoes. In hindsight, I realize there was truly no respite at any time during the entire trip from their constant fog -- it was unreal. We both had 98% deet and had been slathering it on, but were also sweating it off quickly due to thin air, direct sun, and 80-degree temperatures; I think we both knew that running out of deet would have been dire.

We contemplated camping on the ridge rather than down below in the Dinkey Lakes area, figuring the mosquitoes wouldn't have been so bad up on a 10,000 ft ridge -- but when we made First and Second Sister peaks (10,432 ft and 10,438 ft resp.), they were as overwhelming up on the ridge as anywhere else! I was pooped and managed to convince Rob to forgo summiting Third Sister (10,612 ft), and we scrambled down the north-east aspect of the ridge below Second Sister between, and headed directly north to one of the nicer looking lakes, Island Lake. Here is a picture from our campsite, taken the next morning.

On the eastern shore of Island Lake, we found an astonishingly good campsite about 100 yards from the lake. After taking a quick dip in Island Lake at elevation 9,807 ft, whose water was surprisingly pleasant, my plan was to dive immediately into my tiny 2-man backpacking tent to escape the mosquitoes, and sit it out until

it was supper time. I offered Rob space in the tent for the evening, because I knew he would have lost all of his blood well before dinner otherwise. I dozed for about three hours away and then we re-applied Deet & crawled out of the tent to make dinner. We both wolfed it down quickly, and dove back into the tent.

The next morning, we woke to the hum of dozens of mosquitoes waiting for us directly on the other side of the mesh netting on the tent -- a quick breakfast and we broke camp and headed down toward the Dinkey Lakes Trail, passing Second and First Dinkey Lake, then South Lake (which might possibly have been a better camping destination than Island Lake), Swede Lake, and the south short of Mystery Lake. The Dinkey Lakes Basin offered up some fantastic camping, and I anticipate it's quite busy through the late fall. We had a mellow downhill hike and ended up back at our car at around noon; we did a little four-wheeling on the OHV trail to Brewer Lake before we headed back down through Madera (112 degrees). Thankfully in Santa Cruz, it was a balmy 62 degrees and overcast.

In hindsight, I should have gone later in the season (like September or October) -- I'm no stranger to the early summer mosquito season, but not of the calibre offered in Dinkey Lakes Wilderness. Our cross-country trail up the Three Sisters Ridge was mostly slow-going scramble that might have been better executed by hiking the OHV road all the way to Swamp meadow, and then ascending directly north up the ridge to Second Sister. And next time, I would like to camp at South Lake. All in all, a good backpacking trip with the usual balance of discomfort and beauty that for some reason keeps me coming back for more.