Trip Report: Emigrant Wilderness: Bell Meadow to Piute Lake

Marci had some free time and was hankering for a backpacking trip, and so we planned a three-night trip in Emigrant Wilderness, which is northwest of Yosemite National Park, beginning Friday July 10th, 2009. We planned to hike east along the Bell Meadow trail to the Louse Canyon area, camp, and then head up to Leopold Lake or Toejam Lake, camp, start making our way back west, camp, and finally trek back to the car and drive home. Oh, how our plans did change!

We left Santa Cruz on the morning of Friday July 10th at around 7:30 AM, hoping to make it to the Bell Meadow trailhead, right behind Dodge Ridge ski resort, by noon-ish. I was expecting we'd hit some commute traffic going over Highway 17 into Los Gatos, but inexplicably there was nobody on the road -- I mean, it looked like HW17 looks at 4:30 in the morning. No complaints! We made it to the Pinecrest Ranger Station around noon and got our wilderness permit; I was pleased to see that, like the Groveland Ranger Station, Pinecrest has a drop-box for after-hours wilderness permit pickups, so I gave them a $10 donation. I hate dealing with ranger districts that require you to show up at the station in-person between 8 AM and 4 PM to get a wilderness permit -- like I'm really going to take an extra day off of work just so I can get a wilderness permit during their open hours!

From the ranger station, we drove up and around Dodge Ridge to the dirt road that ends at Bell Meadow, where the trailhead begins. We hiked up and over a ridge, and descended down into Pine Valley, and finally came to pretty Grouse Lake, stocked with ducks, lily pads, and dragonflies.

When we got to the east end of Pine Valley, it was all uphill, and it was a slog. We made it to the top, and then crossed over to the Crabtree Trail, and continued eastward and further up a saddle. We were really tired, so we planned to camp at the unnamed lake just south of Crabtree Trail at the high point of the saddle, expecting commanding views of West Fork Cherry Creek. There view there was quite good, and there was good camping -- but I couldn't help but notice a superior camping spot on granite about a half mile down, along the drainage of Piute Lake. It was a risk: We were hoping to take a dip and rinse off a bit before we set up camp, but the sun was getting ready to set, and the mosquitoes had been very bad all day (though not quite as bad as my Dinkey Lakes trip a few weeks earlier). If we didn't act fast, we would be bathing in the dark, and precisely when the mosquitoes would be at their worst. We hustled down to the Piute Lake drainage, and I had the foresight to set up the tent to provide us shelter for when our Deet had rinsed off; I'm getting really good at setting up my tent in about 45 seconds amidst clouds of mosquitoes. We quickly bathed and the mosquitoes began to swarm, but we dove into the tent and relaxed until well after the sun had set. When we emerged at around 9:30 PM, there was a nice breeze and barely any mosquitoes, so we set up a fire and made dinner, cracked open some wine, and enjoyed views of the stars and milky way, before the moon rose and its light obscured things. After hiking 8.84 miles with 1790' elevation gain, we both slept as soundly as either of us could remember.

When we got up the next morning, we were greeted by swarms of mosquitoes outside out tent. Spending every waking moment dodging mosquitoes doesn't make for fun camping, so we made the call to pack out and try again a little later in the season, when the bugs weren't so bad: Mosquito season in the Sierras typically runs from May and tapers off near the middle or end of July, but it is particularly bad this year. Our hike out was mostly all downhill, and we made it back to the car at around 3:30 PM.

Since we had both taken the following Monday off, and it was only Saturday afternoon, we weren't about to drive back home! I had always wanted to drive Highway 108 over Sonora Pass and drop down east of the Sierras, and this was a perfect opportunity. We decided to drive to Lee Vining and try to find lodging, so we started through Strawberry and up Sonora Pass, marveling at The Dardanelles. When we dropped down into the Mono Lake basin, Lee Vining was booked up with a softball tournament, so we headed further south to June Lake, and found a quiet cabin tucked away just past the ski lifts for June Mountain.

On Sunday morning, we cooked some of our camping breakfast (basically oatmeal and coffee) in our cabin, and then drove back to Lee Vining. Our plan was to take Tioga Pass (Highway 120) all the way west through Yosemite, and stop for a dayhike and lunch along the way. Many people will tell you that the taking the eastern portion of 120 as it climbs up out of the Mono Lake Basin and into Yosemite National Park has to be one of the most scenic drives of all time; however, I think the drive over HW108 was slightly more amazing. Nonetheless, I felt lucky to drive them both back-on-back! We stopped and day-hiked up to Lukens Lake in Yosemite, and had a very nice, mosquito-free lunch. Since it was only about two miles, we brought some beers we had in a cooler, quite the treat! I couldn't resist going for a swim in Lukens Lake.

It was Sunday afternoon, and we still had one more day, so we decided to drive out of Yosemite and then through Angels Camp and stay at Murphys, to do some Calaveras County wine tasting on Monday morning, before we headed back home. Murphys is a really cool small town that has lots of restaurants, shops, and more wine tasting rooms than you can shake a stick at. It has a fun downtown area where everybody hangs out, and we discovered a park that has a mellow river running through it, with little kids (and some bigger kids) playing in the water. It reminded me of a scaled-down version of the huge park that winds through downtown Ashland, Oregon.

We tasted wine at a few wineries -- Milliare, Black Sheep, Hatcher. There were many more, but we needed to head out of town before the afternoon, so we cut it short and promised to come back to Murphys a little later in the season (perhaps when it wasn't quite so warm!).

So our backpacking trip turned into more of a choose-your-own-adventure trip, despite our only having our bare essential backpacking supplies, one change of clothes each that we had packed in the truck, and a cooler. I guess during summer, that's all you really need for a good time!

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.