:: John Muir Wilderness Backpacking Trip (June 5 - 6 2004) ::

:: Friday, June 4, 2004 @ 5:30 PM ::

I just got home from work and had to get my things packed and I'm trying to get to bed by 7 PM so that I can accomodate my itenerary of waking up at 1 AM and starting the trip out of town by 2 AM.

...

I got all my stuff ready and got a few things ready for Timber. It is time to hit the sack.

...

Surprisingly I was able to get up at 1 AM. Timber didn't even go to bed until around midnight, so she doesn't want to get up. I head downstairs to get a bite to eat and organize things in order to give her a chance to sleep a little longer.

...

After constant prodding on my part she finally relents and gets up. We start out of town about 30 minutes behind schedule. It is going to be a long weekend because we're going to be driving about 6 hours each way and backpacking the rest of the time. I think this will be about the limit for what we can do in a two day weekend.

...

We made it to the western entrance of Yosemite National Park. I have to say that driving this early in the morning totally rocks because there is practically no traffic on the roads. But I think the drawback is that there is a higher risk of running into drunk drivers on the roads.

...

We made it to the ranger station in Lee Vining to get our wilderness permit. It isn't really a ranger station for the Inyo National Forest, instead it is a visitor center for the Mono Lake area. We first thought that we came to the wrong place, but Timber found where they had deposited our wilderness permit for us. Our next task was to stop at the grocery store in Lee Vining to see if they had pumpkin muffins. Timber had gotten pumpkin muffins from the bakery in the grocery store a few years ago and still raves about them. But now she complains that you have to get in there early to get the muffins because the Germans the come to Yosemite always get up really early and buy them all up. In this case they didn't have any and it doesn't look like they make them anymore.

...

We stopped at the ranger station in Mammoth Lakes and finally found a topo map of the McGee Creek trail. I don't know why, but there are hardly any decent maps of the area we are going into. Now we have a nice collection of topo maps of all sorts of places. After we got our map and talked to the rangers we left for McGee Creek. On our way up the road to the parking lot we saw a flock of sheep. Timber went on to tell me that there is a sizable population of Basque people in California and that this sheep herd could possibly belong to a Basque family. For those of you familiar with current events, the train bombing in Madrid was first blamed on the Basque seperatists. You can find out more about the Basque people here. We continued up to the parking lot, parked, got our things ready, and got on the trail right at 10 AM. We were right on schedule.

...

We stopped a few times along the trail. It felt like I was carrying a bathtub on my back. On top of that it was pretty hot when we started and it only got hotter. We made it up to Horsetail Falls which comes down Mount Baldwin. My fly rod case kept getting caught on tree branches as we were walking up the trail and there were a lot of wildflowers blooming..

...

I'm starting to get a little tired at this point, and the people that we talk to coming down from Big McGee Lake say that it is still frozen over. My fishing hopes are dashed. I had heard that the golden trout fishing is awesome at Croker, Golden, and Little McGee lakes. But we keep forging ahead up the trail and over the bridges above McGee Creek.

...

I'm starting to bonk at this point and I'm not really sure why. We got above where it was really hot and I was drinking a lot of water. But once we got into the forest there were mosquitoes everywhere. While the snow was melting there seemed to be pools of standing water everywhere. Some kids we came across on the trail said that the golden trout were hitting a mosquito hatch hard. We certainly found the mosquito hatch.

...

Somewhere along the way we missed the turn for the McGee Creek Trail and aren't really sure where to go. We decide that this is a good place to camp. We're at about 10000 ft. We setup the tent and start to look around for the trail. We're right near a meadow with a waterfall, and we are camping about 50 feet away from McGee Creek. We look all around the area and can't seem to find the trail. We decide to take a nap and try to look for the trail and do some fishing later.

...

Once we woke up we tried to look around for the trail a little more and do a little fishing in McGee Creek. The fishing went badly because we didn't even see any fish. We decided to walk over to the waterfall and get a better view of it. The view from the meadow was beautiful. We still had no luck finding the trail so we decided to filter some water, eat dinner, and then turn in for the night. The water that we filtered out of McGee Creek tasted like freshly melted snow that had pine needles all in it. It was bearable but didn't really taste all that great. For dinner we split a cup-o-noodle and Mountain House Seafood Chowder. The seafood chowder smelled really good once it was ready but it tasted like crap. I wondered if I didn't put in enough water or something but I think I followed the directions correctly. I never could figure out if was really any kind of seafood in it. At any rate, I'll never get their seafood chowder again. I would have been better off not eating.

...

After we were done eating we got cleaned up and gathered all of our garbage and food so we could hang it from a tree so that the bears wouldn't come looking for us in the night. We took our two bags and tied them together and to the rope and then found a suitable tree. I thought for about a minute on how I would get the rope up and over the tree so we could hoist the bags up and then I thought of tying the rope around a rock and then throwing it over and then once the rope is on the other side hoise the bags up the tree. It took me another few minutes to successfully tie the rope around a rock and then throw it. I got it on the first try. In fact, while the rock was on it's way to the ground on the other side it came untied from the rope and the rope was hanging right at chest level. Then I hoisted the bags up the tree out of any bear's reach and tied the rope around the trunk. Any bear that wanted to undo my knot would have to have boating experience. :-) Just before turning in for the night I looked up to the sky and saw all the stars that were out. It is a shame that I don't get to see this many stars back home. It was a beautiful sight and probably one of main reasons why I like to get out away from the city. You just can't beat the view of the night sky from the wilderness.

...

I slept pretty well but figured it was time to get up by 8 AM. We had decided that we need to get back on the trail heading back to the truck no later than 10 AM in order to get home at a decent time. So instead of boiling water for oatmeal I had a cliff bar and some water for breakfast and we tried again to scout out the trail that would take us to Big McGee Lake. We didn't have any luck yet again.

...

After packing up our gear and deciding to leave a little early we retraced out steps back to the trail and then looked around there for a few minutes. We finally found where the trail continued up the mountain. By that time it was too late to do anything about it, but at least for next time we'll know where to turn right instead of turning left into the meadow like we did.

...

We made it back to the part of McGee Creek where Timber saw some fish yesterday so we decided to spend a little bit of time fishing for them. The creek was running a little to deep and fast to really have any luck with dry flies because in the time we spent observing the fish they were not coming up to the surface for anything. Actually they were hardly moving around in the water other than staying put in the current So instead of getting my fly rod out I decided to get out my telescopic spinner rod with a spinner on it. While I was scrambling down the bank the fish saw me and swam away. While I respect the intelligence of trout, their intelligence only goes so far. I sat next to the bank so that they couldn't see me as well and waited for them to come back. Sure enough, they came back. Next I worked on casting my spinner a bit upstream from them so that it would come down spinning right in front of them. This took a bit of work becuase the creek was running deep and fast and there were branches all along the river which made it very easy to get my lure snagged. I finally made a really good cast and my lure went right in front of one of the fish. It hit the lure and I had a nice little fight on my hands. Timber was watching and ran up the bank to get my camera and I pulled the fish out of the water and she came back down and snapped a few photos of it and I let it go. Unfortunately that was the only fish I would catch this trip. I gave my fishing pole to Timber to let her try but she had no luck. At noon we decided to keep moving down the trail.

...

We made it down to the beaver pond where there was supposedly good golden trout fishing. We told ourselves that we should leave the beaver pond no late than 1 PM. We got our fly rods ready and started to stalk the fish. We did see fish rising, but that was mainly in the channel which was hard to get to. I waded out as far as I could go but none of the flies I delivered to the channel seemed interesting to the trout. I worked my way down to a different part of the pond and tried my luck with a spinner. Once again, no luck. This fishing trip was turning out to be a lot of fishing but hardly any catching. We finally gave up and started back on the trail at 1:15 PM.

...

After speeding up our pace a bit we made it back to the truck at about the time we estimated that we would. Since it was still fairly early we decided to stop in at Mammoth Lakes again for a bite to eat and let Timber shop for some hiking boots before driving back through Yosemite. I was very suprised to see her buy a pair of hiking boots in the only shop that we stopped at. We ended up stopping at the most pitiful looking KFC I have ever seen. I hadn't had much of an appetite the whole weekend, but I forced myself to eat something.

...

The drive through Yosemite went a little slower this time because there were actually cars on the road. Sometimes the people driving RVs are really cool and use the turnouts to let faster cars go past them but sometimes they don't. I suppose the might always have to use the turnouts and that would make their trip even slower. The rest of the drive home was fairly uneventful. We had fun listening to the Mexican radio stations and having Timber tranlate the lyrics for me.

...

I learn something on every trip. This time I learned that if you want to get out of the Bay Area fast then you have to be driving the roads at odd hours. We left a little after 2 AM and really didn't start to see a lot of cars on the roads until we were out of the Bay Area. On the way back traffic totally slowed us down. Also, if you are going to hike to 10000 ft in the Sierras and you want to be able to fish the lakes, June is a little bit too early to go. Wait until July or August and you should get what you want in that respect. The last thing I learned was that driving six hours each way is about the most we can get out of a two day weekend. And even then you're just on the cusp of asking for trouble.

...