Ashley and the kids were in Utah over the 4th. What did I do? Sit on the couch, eat ice cream and cry? No – I took full advantage. The Desolation Wilderness is a 64,000 acre federally protected wilderness area south of Lake Tahoe. It is an area I have been dying to see, but with kids it has not been practical. When Ashley decided to go to Utah the first thing I did was see if there were any permits left and picked one up.
On the way up I passed this place:
If “Little Norway” is such a dump I am very grateful my grandparents made it out of “Big Norway.” That place must have been hell on earth!
There are 54 areas in the wilderness and you sign up for an area. You have to stay the first night in the area and then you can go wherever you want for the rest of your stay. There are a few trail heads. I picked Echo Lakes and parked where the purple arrow is. Actually, it was so full of cars I had to park about an mile away. This is not my exact route, but I use this to show all the names of the lakes. I hiked to “Channel Lake” which is just south of Lake Aloha and American Lake. It was about 8 miles in and out with the extra mile for the parking location.
My exact route was (in yellow):
The Desolation wilderness is part of the Pacific Crest Trail which goes from the Mexican Border to Canada. I wondered in my last email how the heck anyone could do it. Not just for the mileage, but how do you get new clothes when they wear out? My first 3 miles I hike with a guy names “butter finger” – on the trail you have a “trail name”, no one uses their real name. My trail name was Spoons. We talked about his adventure during our hike. He had turned 52 on the trail and had just past 1000 miles from Mexico and only 1500 miles to Canada. He was hoping to get to Canada by the end of September. He was an audio engineer and had talked with his wife about doing the hike when they retired. She determined that when she retired she did not want to walk for 5 months and suggested he do it now. She sends him new clothes and boots every 500 miles and meets him at different locations every few weeks. When he is close to a town he gets a hotel room to shower, otherwise he is just walking – 20 miles a day. So – who is in to do it with me (Underwood I am looking at you)? I don’t think I could or would want to walk 2500 miles. His blog is pretty interesting, I have been reading some of it – www.wiredwild.me I hope to do the Tahoe Rim Trail which is 165 miles around the mountains that surround Tahoe one day, but I think that’s my limit.
Anyway – the pictures I have are pretty lame – I had no one to take any of me, so they are all selfies or pictures of me holding things. Plus I had to bring a 3rd generation camera that doesn’t take very high quality pictures.
I had no idea what I would find. What the trail would be like. Nothing. I started on the trail around 8:30 am. 4 miles in and past Lower and Upper Echo Lake, this is what it looks like:
You can actually take a taxi from the base of Lower Echo Lake (back ground) to Upper Echo Lake (fore ground) for $12. Many people on day hikes or lazy people do that. I might next time as it shaves 3.2 miles off your trip. I figured that since I had all day and I wanted to see the whole thing the first time I would just hike it. Its not a big deal, at a decent pace 3.2 miles goes by pretty fast, especially when you are talking to butterfingers and getting knowledge. The Lakes are at elevation 7,400’ and Tahoe would be in the far background. Despite its name, Desolation is one of the most visited wilderness areas in the Country. Its not like the high Uintas in Utah where you don’t see anyone all week. The trail going up was pretty busy. I think tons of people going up for the 3 day weekend.
If you follow my map above, I broke off from the main trail (and Pacific Crest Trail) to head towards Woods Lake. At this point I lost the crowd and was by myself. The drop into Woods Lake is about 400’ not a big deal on the way up, but 2 days later going out after being fatigued it was a pain.
As I approached the water I was amazed at how blue and clear it was. I should not be, Tahoe, Fallen Leaf, Winnemucca Lakes, they are all the same. All beautiful, but still it makes you pause. Pictures obviously do not give it justice.
When I reached the north end of the Lake I stopped for lunch and to refill my water bottle. Dad bought Soren a water filter for his birthday and Soren was kind enough to let me use it. I also bought a “pocket rocket” hiking stove – it was awesome. Weighs nothing and gets water boiling in an instant, even at high elevations. Lunch was Miso Soup
This is a true story – As soon as I finished preparing the Miso Soup 4 Asians showed up out of no where – “Dis da way to Rake Aroha?” How the heck? – they smelled my Miso Soup and “just happened to walk by.” I didn’t give them any, and it was the only group of Asians I saw all weekend. That was really weird.
The climb up from Lake of the Woods gets kind of brutal. You start to get above the tree line which is around 10,000 feet. The trees become really spaced and you lose the shade. The terrain becomes just granite mountains and its not easy on the joints jumping up, jumping down with a 50 lb backpack:
I finally reached a point where I was ready to camp. The two pictures below are looking left and looking right, then finally my tent:
The above is a channel between American Lake and Channel Lake. It looked like a good place for trout. The only way to know for sure if there is trout is to get in the water and see. I packed my whole snorkel, mask and wet suit – that is why I had a 50 LB Pack. Actually after working so hard and sweating I was really excited to jump into the cold water and cool off. It was perfect! I was hoping to find a bunch of wallets, jewelry, and fishing equipment that maybe people had dropped in and realized it was too cold to go after. There was nothing in these lakes. Nothing at all except a ton of trout – a TON. The only other thing I saw was a mouse body that had fallen in.
I had a Timex watch that has been everywhere – ocean, marathon courses, pools, lakes. It was out of batteries so I got them replaced on Thursday. I guess this broke the seal because it went dead while I was snorkeling. For the next 2+ days I had no idea what time it is. No idea what time I woke up or went to bed. No idea what time I ate. It was uncomfortable to have no idea what time it was. Did I sleep until 10:00 or was it 8:00? Did I have lunch at 11:00 or 3:00? I don’t know.
When I fly fish at lower elevations the only fly I use is an “Elk Hairs Caddis” it works all the time:
but, the Elk Hairs Caddis is a lower elevation “big fly” the thing about fish is you have to get what they are used to seeing, so before I went up I stopped and got black gnats, mosquitos, and flying black ants:
Another thing about trout is these flies all float on the surface. Trout don’t come to the surface unless its early morning or late at night. During the day you have to go down deep to get them. From snorkeling I knew they were in about 12’ of water so I used a special bead head nymph that I can’t remember the name of. I was set – I had all of the flies I needed to outsmart the fish. Since it was 3:00 pm after my swim I started going deep. I had a hit the first hole. This is great – they recognize what I am feeding them as food. That’s a good sign. I fished for a while and had some success. I caught about 4 or 5 fish. Then I came across a guy doing Tenkara fly fishing (Japaneese Style).
Me: “Had any luck?”
Him: “I have caught 40 today.”
M – “Really using what?”
H – “Elk Hairs Caddis”
M – “What do you mean? It’s the middle of the day, how are you taking them off the surface?”
H – “These fish are stupid – I have been catching most of mine between noon and 5 pm, they will come up and eat anything.”
So that was my lesson – quit trying to out smart the fish. Just use an Elk Hairs Caddis all the time. Don’t buy anything else. Funny – I had 3 packs of Elks Hairs Caddis – tan, brown, and red. I use the tan and brown all the time, but don’t use the red as much. By the end of the trip I was using only my reds to get rid of them and the fish were going crazy for them. Honestly between Friday night and Sunday afternoon I probably caught between 60-70 fish and the great thing is there were no fingerlings. All between 8-14 inches. The only negative is that in the American Lake Drainage there are only Brook Trout which are the smallest trout. You have to go north of Aloha Lake to get Rainbows, Browns, and Lahontan. I will say the trout were beautiful. Look at the red and blue coloring, again the camera does not do it justice.
I think trout taste disgusting. They taste like dirt or earth. I have not eaten one in years. Plus I do not like to kill them, seems like a waste. If every fisherman takes a few it can be really damaging to wild populations. Whenever I catch fish Papa always asks “Did you eat them? I would.” I decided I would eat a few on this trip to see if they tasted better being raised in such a clean environment. I decided on this recipe and prepared all the ingredients before leaving home:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/anne-burrell/pan-fried-trout-recipe.html
I kept two 10-inches. My hiking pole handle is 5 inches.
I didn’t like bonking them on the head. One I hit on the head and it started to quiver as its life left. That’s kind of graphic – makes you feel bad.
The thing that was lame is that the mustard breading did not stick to the skin at all. I stuffed the inside with the breading, garlic, oregano mix, but was disappointed that I was not able to have a crisp breaded skin. How where they? Very neutral. They did not taste like earth/dirt, they did not have a fishy taste. They meat was pink like salmon. They were full of bones. They were fine. I would eat them again if I could find someone else to bonk them on the head. I also did not feel bad killing two when there are 1,000’s of them in the system.
Next morning I fished again
I found one lucky hole and pulled 13 out of it:
You can see they are consistently larger than my hand – all between 8-12 inches. Every cast, you could catch 100 – love the color of them.
After lunch I decided to hike up to Aloha Lake to give it a look – it was awesome! I did not realize that a dam separated American Lake from Lake Aloha
The shadow of my camera covers a portion of the benchmark but it states “Pacific Gas & Electric Co” Oct 1962 (I think) Elevation 8111.43 – its odd because when you get into the Uintah Mountains you are talking peaks above 13,000 feet. This portion of the Sierras only has a few peaks above 10,000 feet. They are not very high. Lake Aloha is really spectacular – huge expanse. At the dam the depth was 19-feet and you could see the bottom like you were looking through glass. I wish I would have swam in it, but it was too far to hike to in a wet suit:
I went back to camp and swam for a while to cool off from my trek to Aloha. I will say bout the whether. Look at every picture I have taken – not one cloud anywhere. On Sunday a few, but Fri-Sat no clouds. Temps in the upper 70s and overnight lows in the upper 40s/low 50s. Perfect for a campout. Never needed anything more than my Ex-Officio Shirt and Columbia Pants. Very comfortable.
If you look at the map there is a Lake between Chanel Lake and Desolation Lake without a name. This is how the entrance to his Lake Looks:
It gets deep so fast so you have all this water bringing in food and trout just lining up to eat it. I had 3 casts in a row on Sunday night where I caught brook trout approaching 18-inches. The first one when it hit I thought for sure I had hooked a rainbow. It was sooo big, and then I caught 3 of them. Fat fish just full of food – yes one did have a black ant in its mouth. It was really awesome!
I want to tell you how dumb these fish were -
1) If your fly is moving in a way that is not natural trout will not eat it. In one lake I was getting ready to leave so I started reeling in really fast – upstream. No way a fly could move like that – a trout hit it.
2) If the trout see you and you spook them they will not eat. I stood on a ledge and a school of trout saw me, I spooked them. They swam upstream and I cast over them. My line spooked them so they swam back. They were looking at me so I cast again. Nothing. I cast again – one of the bigger fish in the group went to look at the fly but decided it was not worth it. I cast again and he went up and hit it – stupid.
Also – the fish aggressively hit my strike indicator which is like a bobber and a few times they hit my fly line. I have never had that happen before.
Saturday night as I was finishing up my fly was torn apart. The batting was gone, the color was gone, it was not in the shape of a fly. It was basically a piece of cotton with a hook. I was done for the night, but as I headed to the tent I passed a cove that they were just jumping all over. I threw in my pathetic fly and caught 5 more before I called it a night.
Sunday morning I took 10 trout from this hole:
You can see – all about the same size and a very good size. I saw a guy and asked him what time it was and it was 1:10. I decided to go have lunch. I then went for a swim to cool off and decided to pack up. It took a lot longer than I thought to pack everything up and get ready to go. I don’t know what time I left, but your legs are dead from the hike in and now you have to do it all over again. The trail seemed really long on the way out. Luckily I had this dork to help me read my map:
It was really odd – I saw only 5 people on the way out. Really solitary as I hiked. There were so many people on the way up I thought they would all be getting out around the same time. Really time to thing and it felt really good to have your body tested. I have lost a lot of conditioning since my surgery and the 6 weeks off after that I could not run. I was still able to do it though. Getting to the car was really a great feeling. It was 7:00 pm. I would not have wanted to get out of there too much later.
Thoughts – What a cool place! I am glad I saw it. It is a backpackers dream, a fly fishermans paradise, a wildflower enthusiasts heaven and bird watchers nirvana. Such a place of quiet – the flowers, the birds (wood peckers, humming birds, owls, all kinds) the trees, meadows, water, changes in vista.
Another thing – its so niche to have Columbia pants and hiking boots, Ex-Officio Shirts, Outdoor Research Hat, Leki Hiking Poles, a Pocket Rocket Stove, Marmot Tent, and a nice pack. So much better than the days of scout camp when your parents would kick you out the door with two pairs of jeans, some old basketball shoes, a sweat shirt and some 1950s sleeping bag made of wool and lead. Many of the items have been gifts or purchased with gift cards (a lot of it I also busted my backside to earn). Thank you for your generosity to make it more comfortable. It was great.
When can I go back?
1 comment:
Great write up. I am envious.
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