the ghost pines

this is where I write stuff and share stuff check out all of my music and videos @ linktr.ee/theghostpines livestream sets weekly @ my youtube channel

[theghostpinesmusic]

The Timberline Trail (1/5)

Well, here we go. This is the big one.

Going into this past summer, I had big plans. I mean, I always have big plans, every summer. But I'd plotted out ideas for lots of brand new hikes this time: in southern Idaho, in the Sierra, in the north Cascades.

And of course, as is the way of things every summer, nature (and wildfires in particular) had other plans.

Long story short, I did not anticipate that my biggest hike of the season would be on a trail that I'd already hiked (and nearly drowned on) in 2019, and had you told me that in June, I would have been disappointed to hear it. But then, with the beginning of the academic year looming, circumstances made the Timberline Trail my only good option for a long September hike, so I took it. And it was amazing.

Back when I'd first done the Timberline in 2019, it had been with Lindsey, and at that point it had been the most difficult and complicated backpack we'd ever done together. We did it in early August, and that meant lots of green on the trail, snow on the mountain, and wildflowers everywhere, but it had also made some of the creek crossings legitimately scary. I'd be doing the Trail solo this time, and while I knew doing it in September would make those crossings safer, I also wondered how the rest of the experience would change, on the cusp of fall.

On September 16th, I made the long drive up from Klamath Falls to the Timberline Lodge to find out.

While the Lodge is arguably the most efficient place to start the loop from, I get why folks start from more remote trailheads: Timberline Lodge is a weird place to start a five-day backpacking trip from. Most of the people in the parking lot when I arrived were there to spend the night in the Lodge itself and/or get pictures of themselves with Mount Hood in the background by just stepping out of their cars. Not that there's anything wrong with any of that, but I felt like I stood out like a sore thumb as the only grizzly, gear-laden weirdo crossing the parking lot to the big PCT sign.

The Timberline is another one of those trails where the clockwise-versus-counter-clockwise decision is a weighty one. That said, in this case I only very briefly considered it. We'd gone clockwise in 2019, it was the way I knew, and I wasn't interested in introducing too many new variables to my hike this time around. If I ever do the Trail again, I'll likely go the other way around for variety's sake, but this time I wanted to at least mostly stick to what I knew.

So, from the Lodge it was west below the southern face of Mount Hood for me.

For the first half-mile or so, the PCT takes you under a few ski lifts while remaining basically flat, giving you a chance to get your legs warmed up while taking in your first views of the mountain.

Shortly after, things get hilly, and stay (at best) that way for pretty much the rest of the hike.

In fact, the Timberline reminds me a lot of some of my favorite hikes in the Trinity Alps due to the amount of time you'll spend either hiking uphill or downhill. This is, of course, an effect of the fact that you're circumnavigating a mountain, but that emotionless, logical fact of geology isn't much comfort after you've spent a full day (or two, or three) climbing down into a valley, crossing a creek, and then climbing back up the other side of the same valley over and over and over again.

The very first such descent-then-ascent on the clockwise route is a pretty minor one that takes you over the Little Zigzag River. In September, there wasn't even a river anymore, just dust...a lot of which I kicked up as I passed through.

About a mile after this first "crossing," I reached the first of many huge views of the glacier- and water-carved flanks of Mount Hood. This one is from the eastern edge of Zigzag Canyon.

I'd only been hiking for a short time at this point, but I decided to take a nice long break here to properly absorb the view. The mountain was certainly less snowy than the last time I'd been on the Timberline, but it was no less awe-inspiring for that. The immensity of the landscape is one of those things that photographs just can't capture.

It's a little intimidating to look down from such a height at the tiny ribbon of water tumbling along the Canyon bottom below and know that at some point soon, in some way, you need to get all the way down there and then afterward get back up and out...but that's sort of the whole ballgame on the Timberline, so not for anywhere near the last time I sucked it up and started a knee-rattling descent.

Once you've passed the view from the rim of the Canyon, the dayhikers thin out and pretty quickly disappear completely. By the time I reached the bottom of Zigzag Canyon they were gone completely, and the only people I would see for the rest of the day were other backpackers.

The Zigzag River was still flowing, albeit weakly. It made for an easy crossing after I took a short water break.

I noted one small-but-cozy camp spot right up against the river, but I had my heart set on camping at Paradise Park, so I noted said spot for later and started climbing back up and out of the canyon.

The good news was that from here it was only two miles to Paradise Park. The bad news was that I had to climb thirteen hundred feet over those two miles.

I've done this climb twice now, and both times the first half-ish wasn't bad at all. Eventually, though, you reach an intersection and have to choose between going left and staying on the PCT or going right and continuing to climb up to Paradise Park. Both times I've gone right because both times I wanted to camp at Paradise Park. And though the trail you follow to get there is beautiful (hence the name), it really feels like a grind. Maybe it's the sun exposure, maybe it's the steepness, I don't know. But it was a miserable climb the first time, and the second time wasn't any better.

As I grumbled to myself about the heat and the elevation gain, Hood loomed up ahead, presumably sitting in silent judgment of my moodiness.

Eventually, once you've gained most of the necessary altitude, the trail resumes traversing across the slopes rather than climbing up them, and the "Paradise" part of Paradise Park really comes into view.

The Park, too, was a little drier and certainly less full of wildflowers in September than it had been in August six years before, but I was very happy to be back.

I'd arrived a little earlier than I'd planned, and so I took the luxury of dropping my pack and wandering around, trying, as usual, to find The Best Camp Spot Possible. This also gave me a chance to enjoy the non-Hood-centric views out across the western hills.

There are a lot of nice flat spots with mind-boggling views in Paradise Park, but during Lindsey and I's previous trip around Hood we'd learned the peril of these super-exposed sites when we'd casually taken one and then been woken up in the middle of the night by a windstorm smashing the wall of our tent in. This time around, I was going to eschew the views in favor of a more protected spot.

Eventually, I found one tucked nicely below (behind?) the ridge, and though I couldn't see Hood from my tent, exactly, a short walk revealed a nice area for cooking dinner with a view that I would call "pretty damn good."

The waterfall dropping off of this cliff was audible from my tent, as well, and any night I get to fall asleep to the sound of rushing water is a good night. I was pretty stoked.

Before fully settling in for the night, though, I made sure all of my gear was safely stowed away and then headed back up the trail (and uphill) to the main Paradise Park trail to watch the sunset from the ill-fated spot Lindsey and I had camped at back in 2019.

As Hood came back into sight, I was greeted with some great alpenglow.

Then, I made my way over to "our" old tent spot, sat on a log, and watched the sun set while I chewed on a CLIF bar.

I was happy to end the day knowing that I wasn't going to get woken up in the middle of the night by a windstorm folding my tent over.

Once the sun's show was over, I made my way back down the hill, cooked up some dinner in the near-dark, and was in bed just in time to be able to avoid having to use my headlamp at all.

It had been a great first day, and a great start to my second trip around Mount Hood, but of course the first day was also both the shortest and the easiest one of the five. Day two would turn out to be more...interesting.

[theghostpinesmusic]

And, because the Four Lakes Loop is so jaw-droppingly gorgeous, here are a few random photos from the same trip that didn't fit in the original post!

[theghostpinesmusic]

The Four L4kes Loop

A whole five days after my harrowing drive back home from the Emigrant Wilderness, Lindsey and I geared up and I drove south again, this time to take on the Four Lakes Loop in the Trinity Alps.

I'd done the loop three times before: once solo, once with Lindsey, and then as part of my massive five-day tour of the Trinities in 2024. But, for a variety of reasons, Lindsey and I had decided that we wanted to take it on together a second time, and it really is one of those routes that is so beautiful you can always do it again. So we did.

Because I've done super-detailed trip reports about this particular route in the past, I'm going to do a shallower recap this time, but I wanted to at least write a little about this most recent time around, because it was a good one.

For the third time, we started the loop from the Stoney Ridge Trailhead. When it comes to the Four Lakes Loop, you've got your Long Canyon stans, your Swift Creek fans, and the absolute freaks who think it makes sense to hike in from Deer Creek, but for my money, there's no better way to approach the loop than from Stoney Creek. The main pro is that it's a shorter approach than the others. The main con is that the elevation gain is packed into fewer miles (so it's steeper), but who cares? If you're going into the Four Lakes Loop worried about elevation gain, I've got bad news for you...

Admittedly, it is a long, windy, bumpy, hot drive to the trailhead from Klamath Falls, and unless you leave town at 5am (which we did not), you're starting the hike at the beginning of the hottest part of the day.

It is a relentless start, but if you're familiar with the Trinities you could have guessed that. You gain three thousand feet in the first four-and-a-half miles to Stonewall Pass, and though there are shady off-trail patches to take breathers in, the trail itself is mostly directly in the sunlight.

We had brought a lot of water for the initial climb in, of course, but it became clear quickly that it wasn't going to be enough. We were both pretty dehydrated when we stopped for our first real break in Red Mountain Meadows, about five hundred feet below the top of the Pass, but it being August the small creek I usually fill a bottle or two from was just mud. We kept on to the top of the Pass after resting a bit in the shade.

The view of the Trinity Alps from the top of Stonewall Pass is one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen. The first time I topped out there, not really knowing what I was in for at the time, I basically had an emotional breakdown and had to take a long break before I was recovered enough to keep going. I've been there many times since, but it still blows me away.

This was the first time that it occurred to me to have Lindsey take a photo of me at the top.

From the top of the pass, of course, you go downhill...briefly, but blessedly. It's a long, windy, descent, but after a nonstop three-thousand foot gain, it feels great, at least at first.

You shed about six hundred feet on this stretch of trail, but then, in the way of the Trinities, you have to gain it right back to get up to the Echo Lake basin, which we hoped we were going to be able to use for our base came for the rest of the adventure.

It was rough going, and Lindsey in particular was struggling a lot with dehydration by the end, but we made it to the lake in plenty of time to get set up at our favorite camp spot for the night, rest and rehydrate a bit (well, rehydrate a lot), and then make dinner while watching the sun set over Echo Lake...another one of my favorite places to be in any wilderness, anywhere.

The plan was to hike the whole Loop the next day, leaving most of our gear behind and returning to Echo Lake to camp again the second night. Lots of folks break the loop up over two days, and honestly base-camping at Echo Lake doesn't make a lot of sense logistically and makes for a long day going around the loop, but I love Echo Lake and will continue to do it this way until my knees don't work anymore.

On the subject of the inefficiency of this route, though...

We started the day by climbing up out of the Echo Lake basin and over Little Stonewall Pass, then down to Siligo Meadows, and then back up to Deer Creek Pass. And all this is before you even get to the Loop proper. Oh, and you have to do it again in the opposite direction to get back to Echo Lake at the end of the day.

Fortunately, the views keep you going.

The view from Deer Creek Pass is another all-time favorite of mine.

From here, you have a fairly weighty decision to make: right or left? Doing the loop counter-clockwise vs. clockwise is a classic climbing conundrum.

On the one hand, going counter-clockwise means starting the day by breaking your knees descending from Deer Lake to Deer Creek Meadows, and then basically climbing endlessly from there up to what I call but what is not officially named Siligo Pass, a two-thousand foot ascent in under four miles.

On the other hand, going clockwise means a brief initial climb to Siligo Pass, then a long mostly-descent from there down to Deer Creek Meadows before getting destroyed by the climb up from there back to Deer Creek Pass (this climb is fourteen-hundred feet in just over a mile).

And of course, whichever way you choose, you still have the Deer-Creek-Pass-to-Echo-Lake up-and-down to end your day.

This time, we went with clockwise because I wanted to be able to convince Lindsey to take a side trip to climb Siligo Peak (highly recommended) and we both felt like we'd be more likely to feel up to it if we got there earlier in the day. Sure, we would certainly still feel it later on, but that was a problem for the afternoon.

The initial climb up the switchbacks to the southern shoulder of Siligo Peak felt like a cruise after the morning's initial ups-and-downs, and before long we were dropping our packs at the Pass and scrambling the last few hundred feet to the summit of Siligo Peak.

I'm confident in saying that this is the best three-sixty view of the Trinities that's available to anyone who isn't up for risky scrambling and/or off-trail adventures.

If you're ever already on Siligo Pass and doubting whether it's worth it to take the side trail up to the top of Siligo Peak, do it.

We dropped down off the Peak safely and then chose to add a bit more optional distance to our day (afternoon be damned) to descend to Summit Lake. This is always a great break spot in spite of the extra distance, and it would also be a great place to camp if I could get over my fascination with Echo Lake.

From there, there's the insane, switchbacked descent to the gorgeous Diamond Lake. I've hiked this section of trail four times now, and it still never makes sense when you're looking down on it from above.

Keep going, you won't fall off.

The section of the loop between Diamond Lake and Luella Lake would be the highlight of the day if it was part of many other hikes I've done, but it's the least beautiful section of this Loop to me. Not that it's a competition, but when you're on a long, exhausting dayhike and motivating yourself mostly by the views, this section can drag a little. Plus, we were passing through at the hottest part of the day, which didn't help.

Fortunately for hydration, one thing that isn't hard about this loop is getting access to water. Y'know, because of the four lakes. In the loop. Hence the name. Yeah, you get it.

The drop down to Deer Creek Meadows past Luella Lake went without incident, and then we began the quad-killing climb back up to Deer Creek Pass.

Lindsey knocked this out pretty handily, but I was really struggling at this point in the day, to the point that I was legitimately worried a few times that I would have to call for a long break just to regain some energy. I was tired enough that climbing the granite steps back up to Deer Lake felt like I was climbing at 14,000 feet instead of 7,000. It was weird, and a little concerning, but eventually we made it up to the lake, and the weird part of the trail where you're actually below the lake while looking at it.

Then, there was the climb up to the Pass, then down, and then back up, and then down again into the Echo Lake basin.

This was a struggle for me, and I definitely slowed us down quite a bit in the last few miles, but once we made it back to camp, there wasn't much to do for a few hours but relax, recover, and (for me, at least) jump into Echo Lake and let the absolutely freezing water both unknot my muscles and shock me back awake.

The hike out the next morning was, as always, bittersweet. It was sad to leave the Trinities behind, but after the initial climb back up to Stonewall Pass, it was all downhill to the car. We'd packed up camp early enough, too, that the more exposed parts of the trail weren't entirely too hot yet.

We probably took fewer breaks than we should have on the way down, and my knees would feel it for a few days afterward, but hey, we got to Trinity Brewing Company and their insane veggie burgers just a little bit faster.

[theghostpinesmusic]

This one hit me extra hard this morning.

Her eyes are open, she's always hoping We can turn this old familiar nightmare into a song The sun keeps burning, the world keeps turning Reaching out and teaching love 'til the doubt is gone

[theghostpinesmusic]

Ads

Once again I find myself hurtling over ads To get to art Both are attempts to get my attention But one wants me to consume And the other wants me to be consumed One is the desperate shout of a huckster The other is a hand reaching out From amidst a world-sea of shouting hucksters To take my hand And lead me to a place where people do What they have always done Tell others how it is to be So that we can all be better Two souls, so different But for a few minutes, just the same

[theghostpinesmusic]

As someone who likes to think of themselves as a life-long student, I could spend basically all of my free time learning new things from podcasts and/audiobooks and not even realize that all the rest of life was passing me by.

To offset this, I limit myself to a few must-listen podcasts, and Why Is This Happening? has been on that list since the very first episode, which my phone tells me was in 2018, over four hundred episodes ago.

This is my all-time favorite episode (so far).

Granted, it's about the philosophy of games and gamification, which has been one of my research interests since I started grad school, but if you're a person who likes thinking about stuff at all, or is interested in why people do what they do, and you have an hour...you should check this out. It handles some pretty hefty philosophical concepts in a way that's accessible if you're not automatically into those sorts of things, but even so I finished listening to it yesterday and immediately started the episode over and listened through again, and I felt like I learned even more the second time around.

[theghostpinesmusic]

A few weekend road trip photos from my new camera.

I haven't read the manual yet.

[theghostpinesmusic]

Emigrant Wilderness Loop (5/5)

On my fourth night in Emigrant Wilderness, I slept like the proverbial baby. When I woke up late to the feeling of the inside of the tent heating up in the sun, I had no way of knowing that it would be almost twenty-four hours before I would sleep again...but I'll get to that part of the story eventually.

First, I had to hike back out of the wilderness to the Gianelli Trailhead. Thinking that I had a short day ahead of me, I dawdled a bit in camp. The Naked Campers had hiked out of the basin earlier in the morning as I slept, which means I had the whole place to myself, and I took advantage of it, sprawling out onto the granite slabs as they (and I) warmed in the light of the rising sun.

My new tent had been a champ for the entire trip, and I felt about as attached to it as it's possible to be attached to an inanimate product. Plus, it just looked cool as hell pitched on the cliffs above Granite Lake.

Next, I scuttled down a rock ramp to reach the lake and half-submerged for awhile, not wanting to get too wet or cold before I started my day in earnest, but wanting to get a little wet and cold. The view was insane by the light of early day, which didn't hurt.

Eventually, I made myself pack up my gear and turn my feet toward home...or, at least, the car.

It was easier to follow the faint trail back to Y Meadows Lake than it had been to find my way from it to Granite Lake in the first place. I was mostly headed downhill this time instead of uphill, which tends to make navigation easier since you can better see what's coming.

I reached Y Meadow Lake around 10am to find it almost eerily empty. After the circus of the previous afternoon, I'd expected to at least see some folks still packing up or hiking out. But where there had been (I'd estimate) twenty or thirty different groups camping along the shores the previous night, I saw literally one guy packing up his Durston tent on my way back out this morning. It was sort of surreal, but also gave me a chance to crawl around on the boulders around the shore for awhile without bothering anyone else. It would be a great place to camp if you got there on a less busy night.

Next, it was uphill (and even though it was morning and I was well-rested, I still felt it) to the intersection with the Burst Rock Trail, which would take me back to where I'd started five days ago.

There was about a mile of new-to-me trail to cover as I turned and hiked west, but aside from it being just as beautiful as any other stretch of trail in Emigrant Wilderness, there was nothing notable to write about.

Before long, I approached the trail intersection where, five days before, a right turn had led me to Chewing Gum Lake and my first camp site. This time, I continued westward instead. From here until the end, I'd be passing through familiar territory, a four-mile stick to the big ol' lollipop I'd made through the Wilderness.

This meant a return to the cliff overlooking Chewing Gum Lake that I'd first passed by in the dusky light of the trip's first evening. I planned my last break for that overlook. But first, goats!

More specifically, on my way uphill to the cliff, I crossed paths with an older couple who were packing into the Wilderness with a pack train of goats. I'd literally never seen such a thing before, though after chatting with them for a few minutes (as their goats, stopped temporarily, immediately starting eating everything, including their harnesses and each other) I learned that this wasn't quite as weird as I'd imagined it to be at first.

It was a really cool encounter, and by far the longest conversation with a human other than myself I'd had for at least two days. I didn't take any pictures of the goats though, because it felt inappropriate.

Then it was up to the cliff proper. I hadn't entirely planned on it, but a quick pack-drop and rock-scramble away from the trail gave me a vastly improved view of the Wilderness than I'd had when I'd been at this spot previously.

I don't, generally speaking, hike for the accomplishment of it (mileage, pace, elevation gain, etc.), but one thing I do love is when long backpacking trips give you a vista of the area you've covered near the end. The last leg of the Three-Sisters-And-Broken-Top Loop is maybe the best example of this, where a view off the shoulder of Broken Top lets you see essentially the entirety of the seventy-ish miles of wilderness you've traversed to that point.

This was a similar view, and I really enjoyed taking a few minutes to identify various landmarks along my just-finished route while I rehydrated and ate a CLIF bar.

The rest of the hike out was pretty uneventful. Again, mistakenly thinking that I had a short day ahead of me, I took twenty extra minutes to hike north to Powell Lake (the lake I'd skipped past on my first night). It was pretty and there appeared to be a number of decent (occupied) sites, but nothing that made me retroactively regret stopping at Chewing Gum instead.

Eventually, Burst Rock came into view, and I had the always-disconcerting feeling of having been there last what felt like a month before, but of course had only been five days.

It's an odd but great feeling, having packed so much actual life into a few days that you can almost tangibly feel the elongation of them.

Next was the view of the Chimneys atop the final overlook of the trail to bring things truly full-circle.

Then, a five-hundred foot descent down the ascent I'd taken on my first night (which was much appreciated on dog-tired legs) and I was back at the trailhead.

I spent an inordinate amount of time at the car, soaking in the last dregs of the experience (or so I thought, at least) along with some Gatorade and sugary snacks I'd left in the hatchback for just this occasion.

I was completely wiped out but happy, and ready to drive on from Pinecrest to Carson City, where I'd reserved a hotel room for the night.

Here's where things started to go wrong(ish?).

I didn't know the area very well, so I was (perhaps idiotically) relying on Google Maps to help me out. For some reason, it decided that the fastest way from Pinecrest to Carson City was to take Highway 108 east, and link up eventually with 395 North.

It's not.

What I didn't know at the time was that that stretch of Highway 108 is the Sonora Pass Highway, one of the highest, windiest, and narrowest highways in the Sierra. So, what I thought would be a pretty straightforward, quick few hours' drive from Pinecrest north to my hotel turned into an unplanned high-altitude cliffside adventure.

Now, I love crazy highways and beautiful vistas (which this drive turned out to have in spades), but I love them noticeably less after a five-day hiking trip that leaves me wanting to do nothing but eat a whole pizza and fall asleep in a real bed.

Now, I can't stress enough how gorgeous this drive was. Three separate times while crossing the pass, I had to stop on the shoulder of the road (such as it was) to have a moderate-grade emotional breakdown due to the beauty of the Sierra, the collective impact of my five days of hiking, and whatever aggressively emotional music I was playing through the car stereo.

It was a wild experience, and if/when I drive back to Emigrant this summer to hike again, I'm definitely taking Highway 108 back the other direction. But it also meant that by the time I reached Carson City, I was two hours behind schedule and absolutely wiped out.

Here is where things got straight-up bad. The hotel, in spite of many positive online reviews, was absolute garbage. The room I got was much smaller than the room I'd reserved and paid for, which wasn't a huge problem, really, since it was just me who would be using it. But the AC was also broken, and it was 100 degrees in Carson City, which meant it was 87 in the room (according to the manual thermometer in my backpack). The windows were sealed and locked, there was no fan, and a call down to the front desk to politely complain was met with a response of "Oh, yeah. The AC doesn't work in that room. Sorry." There were, apparently, no other rooms to move me to instead, despite the fact that the large parking lot had all of four cars in it, including mine.

I shrugged it off for the moment, hungry and ready to drive into downtown to secure between 2,000 and 3,000 calories of dinner to eat and use to knock myself into a restful sleep.

I chose Domino's as the purveyor of these calories for some reason. I blame the altitude.

Long story short, after an absolute fiasco that eventually resulted in Domino's grudgingly cooking and giving me the pizza I'd paid for (or so I thought), I drove back to the hotel. Now the room was 89 degrees and, upon opening the pizza box, I found something that was somehow both desiccated and half-cooked, and had cheese but seemingly no sauce on it.

I angrily ate a few pieces (this made me laugh out loud to type, but there's no other way to explain it) and then gave up in despair. My dream of a luxurious hotel-room recovery night wasn't just dead, it had been violently murdered in front of me.

Maybe I was overreacting at this point, but the idea of trying and failing to sleep in a brutally hot hotel room with nothing to eat but shitty, cold pizza and camp food and nothing to drink but water (oh, right, the single vending machine in the hotel was also broken) made me feel claustrophobic.

Outside, the sun was setting when I pulled up Google Maps to see how long it would take me to drive to Klamath Falls from Carson City.

Five hours. If I left now, I'd get home around two o'clock in the morning. That doesn't seem bad at all, I thought to myself. I laughed. It definitely didn't feel as crazy as it probably was.

Five minutes later, I was pulling out of the hotel parking lot and getting on 395 North, headed toward home.

I made it to Reno before the sun fully set, settling into the embrace of the mountains around Lake Tahoe over my left shoulder. As the sky lit up in twilight pinks and oranges, I cranked The War On Drugs' I Don't Live Here Anymore and started laughing out loud to myself happily. Bone-tiredness aside, this was so much better than sweating the night away in a hotel room.

The next four hours were filled with too much coffee, some edge-of-your-seat driving through some of the emptiest land in the northwest, and plenty of music from my favorite road-trip albums, but eventually I made it home. What had started as a night that seemed destined to conclude my Emigrant trip on a bum note had turned into yet another great adventure (albeit one that followed roads instead of trails). It had been a night that took me back to my twenties, when it had been routine for me to drive alone from Washington state to Ohio, often racking up twelve- to fourteen-hour days in the car in the process.

In short, in spite of it all, it turned out to be the perfect end to a great trip.

Whether it's on the trail or the road, I always recommend getting lost from time to time. It's really the only way to actually find anything other than what you already expect to.

[theghostpinesmusic]

Emigrant Wilderness Loop (4/5)

Waking up on the shore of Lertora Lake, at the beginning of the fourth day of my trip, I finally felt like I was going to make it.

I still had a lot of walking to do to finish out the loop and get back to the car over the next two days, but there was much less elevation gain involved in the last bit of the loop, more frequent access to water, and I had convinced myself (whether it was objectively true or not) that I'd finally gotten better acclimated to the elevation.

I'd also (by necessity) be headed back through some of the area I'd hiked through on the second day of the trip, which would be repetitive, sure, but would also make things a bit more predictable.

Regardless of the reason(s), I woke up feeling much better than I'd felt at pretty much any point since I'd left Klamath Falls. I celebrated by spending a bit more time than usual lazing around camp, and taking in the views I'd lucked into.

They certainly weren't worse in the morning light.

I started the day with a quick jaunt from Lertora Lake to Cow Meadow Lake. The name is pretty descriptive, as it turns out. I don't think I need to say much more about it.

From there, it was a short climb up to Wood Lake, which was one of the strangest lakes I'd ever seen. It was nestled in a pretty normal, pine-y forest, but it was barbell-shaped, and there were points as I was hiking along the shore beside the "handle" part of the barbell where it was almost narrow enough to jump across. This narrow section also had a current, which made it seem more like a river than a lake (which it is, in fact, officially categorized as, and who am I to argue?).

I didn't do a great job of capturing the narrow-ness of the lake in my photos, but it was a unique section of the hike for sure.

At the west end of Wood Lake, I intersected the Bell Meadow Trail, the same trail that, two days before and much further east, I'd passed by in favor of the Crabtree Trail.

This was a busy intersection in general, and featured a few large, open campsites, but I didn't feel in need of a rest yet, so I continued north and through another long, rocky ascent.

This part was hotter going than I'd expected at the start, and I blame my late start out of Lertora. On the flipside, this trail showed up on the map as a barely-maintained connector between the Bell Meadow and Crabtree Trails, but in reality it was obvious and easy to follow the entire way, a nice change from my typical Emigrant experience up until that point.

Eventually, I intersected the Crabtree Trail, turned left, and very shortly was back at Deer Lake for the second time!

When planning trips, I tend to try to identify routes that will let me see the most amount of new and novel things possible, but after four days on the trail in an area that was completely new to me, it was also nice to see something familiar for once.

I plopped down for a snack on the exact same rock bench I'd cooked dinner on two days before and enjoyed the view of Deer Lake's granite islands for a half-hour or so. Then, it was on to more new terrain.

At this point, it was about midday, and I had about twelve more miles of trail between me and the Gianelli Trailhead by the shortest route. I fully intended to take the rest of that day and part of the fifth and next day to get there, but there were a lot of potential camping areas between me and the car and where I would stop for my last night was still up in the air.

Before long, the north-running trail took me past use trails leading to Long Lake and then the Wire Lakes. I'd heard good things about both of these and would have liked to have seen them, but they both felt a little too far out of my way to add to my day as an out-and-back diversion, and it was too early in the day to stop and camp at either.

Besides, the conversation I'd had with those hikers on my first day about Granite Lake was still stuck in my head, and I hoped to be able to find it before the sun set.

Past the turnoff for the Wire Lakes, the forest receded and the land opened up again, which meant wider views, but also more sun.

My itinerary for the fourth day might not have been as aggressive as it had been for days two and three, but it was still a long, hot day at high elevation, and I was feeling it as I rolled into the intimidating expanse of Spring Meadow.

Even with a heat-addled brain, these huge Sierra meadows still blew my mind a little bit. The size of them is almost impossible to capture (at least with a phone camera), but in their own way they are as striking as a mountain peak or alpine lake. You do have to walk across them, though.

By the time I reached Salt Lick Meadow, the next meadow along the same trail, I was once again hungry and thirsty, and once again felt as if I didn't sit down soon I was going to fall down. So I found a little shaded niche at the far end of the meadow, plopped down there, ate a snack bar and drank a whole bottle of water, then unexpectedly fell asleep immediately after in the leaf litter.

I guess I was tired.

I was woken up shortly after by two women hiking by, which was a little awkward, but I did (somehow) wake up feeling refreshed in spite of it all.

I took another quick break at the intersection for the use trail to Toejam Lake to keep my energy up. Despite the name, I'd heard a lot about the particular beauty (and relative solitude) of this lake. But the siren song of Granite Lake was still ringing in my ears, so before long I moved away.

Next, it was on to the final big meadow, Whitesides Meadow, which first featured the biggest bloom of owl clover (one of my favorites!) that I've ever seen, and then turned out to be home to a herd of black cows that proceeded to freaking chase me across the meadow and into the trees!

Cows, as it turns out, can be fast when they want to be.

But not fast enough!

Once I was sure I'd left my bovine pursuers behind, I covered the brief remaining distance to the oddly-named Y Meadows Lake. The trip to Granite Lake required a trip past Y Meadows Lake anyway, and Y Meadows itself showed up on a lot of folks' short lists of the best camping spots in Emigrant Wilderness. So I figured I'd see what Y Meadows Lake looked like, continue on to Granite if necessary, and I'd have a backup location to double back to if Granite didn't work out.

Y Meadows was beautiful, but I didn't expect it to also be the Disney World of Emigrant Wilderness.

It was only Thursday night at this point, but I saw more campers at Y Meadow than I'd seen during my entire trip so far, total. Nobody in particular was being as loud and abrasive as the Gem Lake Music Festival had been, but there were just way too many people, to the point that two times during my north-to-south traverse along the lake shore, I found a rock nook that made me think "Ah! I place to take a pee break!" only to turn the corner and find someone else peeing there already.

Needless to say, I kept moving south.

Due to Y Meadows being so crowded, I felt at this point that it was sort of necessary for me to find my way to the (hopefully less crowded) Granite Lake. Unfortunately, the use trail I'd been following along the eastern shore of Y Meadows Lake petered out just as I reached the lake's dam and there was no sign of how to proceed from there.

Luckily, I've been in a lot of situations like this one, I had a map, and the terrain, though steep, was still open enough that struggling up and over the granite plinths to the south of the lake was difficult, but not overwhelmingly so.

In my tired state, I didn't relish the idea of bushwhacking all the way to Granite Lake, but fortunately before long I saw a clear trail below me: I'd climbed too high, but otherwise in the right direction! I dropped down through a rockfield to the trail and was able to more-or-less proceed from there on a clear route to Granite Lake.

Along the way, I passed one small, absolutely gorgeous lake that doesn't even have a name. So goes the Sierra, again.

Eventually, I managed to make my way into the Granite Lake basin, and...wow. It was worth the extra effort.

As almost every lake in the Wilderness is ensconced in granite to some degree, it feels silly to point out that Granite Lake sits in a basin of granite, but it does.

Almost immediately, I identified a few good-to-great tent sites, and from my high perch on the rim of the lake basin I could only see one other party in my entire range of sight.

I'd found my last stop.

Me being me, I took a short break to rest and rehydrate, then dropped my pack in an easy-to-find location and proceeded to bushwhack around the entire lake "for fun," to take in both the sights and the sites (get it?). On the upside, this allowed me to appreciate the basin from all angles, and I ended up climbing up and over the large granite dome on the east end of the lake, which was a blast.

On the downside, I passed close enough to that other group's camp area to discover that they'd felt so comfortable in their solo inhabitation of the basin that they were both completely naked. One hiker was striding purposefully around camp that way and headed for cover when he heard me coming. The other, unfortunately, had swum (swam?) all the way out to a rock island in the middle of the lake and had nowhere to hide once they noticed the interloper (me).

I averted my eyes as much as possible to help them preserve their modesty, but they were just...there. There wasn't a lot I could do.

Anyway, eventually I passed to the north and left them to their nude (mis)adventures.

From just below the rock dome, I had a great view of the lake, including the rock island that had, until recently, been inhabited by a nude sleeper.

Eventually, I chose a flat granite slab just below where I'd entered the basin the first place as my spot for the night and dumped all of my gear there. Then it was time for a swim in the obnoxiously/refreshingly cold waters of the lake: at this point in the hike, it was both celebratory and necessary.

The water was warm enough that I was able to make it out to some of the nearest rock islands before my limbs started to go numb. I climbed up onto one for a few minutes to dry in the sun and shake some life back into my arms, then swam back. It was great.

Refreshed, clean(ish), and with only a few miles of mostly-known trail between me and the car ahead the next morning, I spent perhaps the most relaxing and enjoyable two hours of the entire trip perched on the slabs above my tent, reading a book and watching the sun set.

It had taken a lot to get to this point, but this, I was sure, was what it was all about.

I stayed up late enough to see the first stars reflected in the lake, and then I went to bed relatively early, hoping to get some extra sleep.

As it turned out, I would need it.

[theghostpinesmusic]

Emigrant Wilderness Loop (3/5)

Over our decade-plus of backpacking together, Lindsey and I have frequently experienced and discussed a phenomenon I think of as the Three-Day Rule. I've probably written about this before in previous trip reports, but the short version is that we often have trouble fully settling into a backpacking trip until the third day.

The first day is usually a bit strange because most of it is spent in the car getting to the hiking, and the hiking that does follow is often short and hurried. The second day (and first full day of hiking) is often really fun, but we're also still getting used to all the things that make backpacking different from normal life: lots of walking, exposure to the elements, sleeping on the ground, digesting camp food, etc. By the time the third day rolls around, though, we're finally ready to face the wilderness on its own terms and things that might have felt overwhelming previously are easier to take in stride.

I bring this up here because I experienced this phenomenon even harder than usual during my Emigrant trip. It was likely a combination of the long drive to the Sierra and higher-than-usual expectations, but by the time I'd gone to sleep at Deer Lake on the second night, I'd felt like I'd spent the previous two days constantly struggling physically, I'd become paranoid about losing the trail even more often as I traveled deeper into the wilderness, and even though I'd seen some beautiful lakes so far, there hadn't been much to make me feel like all of my struggling had been worth it.

I'd be lying if I said that I woke up on the third day refreshed and raring to go. Instead, I ate breakfast while toying with the idea of turning around completely, or at least cutting one day off of my loop and going home slightly early, which is a real rarity for me. I was still dispirited, but I would ultimately decide to push on anyway, and by the end of the third day, at least, I'd find myself totally fascinated by Emigrant Wilderness to the point that I'd spend that evening watching the sun set while poring over my map, already imagining some future trip back.

I left Deer Lake behind early on the third morning, and had a relatively easy, relatively cool jaunt from there to Buck Lake, my last stop before reaching the Wilderness's namesake lake. I had, at one point during the madness of day two, imagined hiking all the way to Buck Lake to camp. I don't know that I physically could have made it, actually, but if I had, it would have been an incredible stopping place.

I was finally getting close to the mountain range in the eastern part of the Wilderness, and something about those granite peaks standing up above the wide, meadow-fenced lake made me feel like I'd entered a different, more alpine biome than the one I'd been hiking through during the previous two days.

Lower Buck Lake was, well, just south of Buck Lake, and I considered briefly following the spur trail down just to get a look at it, but my current plan would lead me just below Lower Buck on the morning of the fourth day, and so ultimately I decided to keep moving on, thinking that if I really regretted skipping that particular lake the first time, I could make up for it later.

So I continued past the lake and through Buck Meadow, which was really hard to capture well in a photograph, but was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.

The only catch to this wonderful bit of ambling was that I knew that at some point I was going to have to climb up into those hills to get to Emigrant Lake. And, eventually, the trail bent to the east and up I went. Just to the right of that large granite dome in my photo, actually.

Buck Lake and Buck Meadow might have made me more enthusiastic about the hike than I'd been before, but my leg and my lungs were still struggling with big elevation gains, so it was a difficult ascent for me, even though it was only six hundred feet or so. I found myself checking my GaiaGPS app at every switchback, counting the remaining feet...and then, all of a sudden, I wasn't thinking about anything at all because I'd turned a corner and arrived at the shore of Emigrant Lake.

If you were to design an alpine lake to create the largest possible dopamine hit for me specifically, it would look exactly like Emigrant Lake. I immediately loved it as much as one can love a natural geographical feature.

This is a bit strange, because I feel like in all of my pre-trip reading, this lake was barely mentioned. It did seem to be popular to both hikers and campers on the day I was there, for what that's worth, but didn't seem to be the locus of anyone's hike or trip. And it shouldn't be! It sucks and you should never go there (so I can have it to myself).

I did more or less have the western shore to myself for a long post-climb snack break, so I paused to take in the beauty of the water, my reverie only occasionally interrupted by shouts and barks from a pair of hikers and their dog further around the edge of the shore from me.

I took a truly embarrassing amount of pictures of this section of the trail, but I can only include one or two without going over my Instagram-specific limit.

Eventually I got going again, walking the mile-plus stretch of cliff-topping trail that contoured along above the lake's northern edge. For at least the first half of this mile, it felt as if the views just got more incredible with every step.

Shortly after the midpoint, I ran into a hiker and his son coming from the other direction. Normally, I might have said a friendly hello and continued on, trying to keep my pace up. In this case, high off the beauty of the lake, I stopped for a nearly half-hour chat. This duo, too, had found themselves so taken by the Wilderness that they were hoping to extend their planned three-day trip to a five-day trip by catching enough fish to feed themselves. After a long conversation, I wished them luck in their frankly super-rad endeavor and continued on (I would see them again on my fourth day, near Deer Lake, so they must have caught some fish!).

The east end of Emigrant Lake was a little more developed, and in particular featured a few tall tree stands that were filled by large camps that looked like they'd been portered in by animals at some point. I made a mental note to camp at the other end of the lake if I ever came back, and continued on.

There was a short climb from there up to Blackbird Lake, which I started fueled entirely by joy and ended half-melted alive from the sun.

Blackbird Lake itself had a much more desert-like aspect than the previous few lakes I'd passed (and camped at, in one case). I assume this was partly because of the altitude: at this point, I was at 9,300 feet, which is essentially the same altitude as the summit of Mount McLoughlin back home. So goes the Sierra, I guess. This seems to be one of the less popular sections of the Wilderness, but I found it really gorgeous in a high-altitude sort of way.

It did not, however, provide much respite from the afternoon sun.

I followed the trail until I saw a pine big enough to cast a Bunting-sized shadow and then made a beeline for it. Much water was drunk (drank?). This high up, the shade was sublimely cool compared to the heat of direct sunlight, and I recovered more quickly than I'd expected to.

It was only early afternoon, and my plan at this point was to take the Huckleberry Trail south and then around the bulk of the Sachse Monument to Huckleberry Lake proper and then, hopefully, camp there.

I'd read a lot about the beauty of further-on Lertora Lake, but it had also sounded popular and after my long second day, pushing on to Lertora on the third day already felt a bit overwhelming.

(You've likely guessed already at this point that I camped at Lertora after all, but let's not jump there immediately.)

Past Blackbird Lake, the trail actually dropped downhill for a bit before depositing me on the northeast shore of Maxwell Lake. From what I could tell, it seemed like you can take a use trail from there west along the lakeshore for some decent tent sites, but at least from the main trail, I found this area to be really thick and brushy, and the views of the lake were fleeting at best. I did appreciate the shade of the thick forest, though.

Shortly after, I passed through Horse Meadow, yet another in a series of amazing Sierra meadows that would continue for the rest of my trip.

After the meadow, the trail made a gentle, three-mile descent to Huckleberry Lake. Much of this was exposed to the sun, though, so it was hot, tiring going on what seemed to be an old roadbed (i.e., lots of big, loose rocks to step on and slide around atop). By the time I reached a calm-but-wide crossing of East Fork Cherry Creek, I was more than happy to take a long break, including a foot soak and my first quick wash-up of the hike so far.

This was a great rest stop, and I started up again refreshed and ready to take on more miles of trail. Which turned out to be good, because there was nowhere to camp at Huckleberry Lake.

After a lot of consecutive miles of hot, dry hiking (Cherry Creek excepted), seeing the wide open, blue expanse of massive Huckleberry Lake open up before me was a great feeling. Unfortunately, this ended being another sort-of Maxwell Lake situation: there is a north trail around the lake and a south trail around the lake, and I took the north, "wrong" trail. I took it because the north route was about two miles shorter at getting me to where I'd eventually want to be come the next day, but I think all of Huckleberry Lake's camp spots must be along the southern trail, because I saw nothing on my northerly way around the lake. And by the time I realized I might have made a mistake, it didn't really make much sense to turn back.

On to Lertora, then!

Sigh.

Unfortunately, the climb out of the Huckleberry Lake basin required a lot of narrow, steep, switchback-y climbing and it was extremely difficult for me to stay on trail, especially when crossing the large, featureless granite slabs that comprised most of the route. Fortunately, it was late enough in the day by this point that the sun wasn't beating down on me quite as hard as it had been.

Normally, I'd love this sort of challenge, and I was in a particularly pretty area for rock-scrambling, but I could feel myself reaching the end of my rope for the second day in a row, and I just wanted to get to Lertora Lake and collapse into a camp spot.

Eventually, after one final and particularly demanding slab-scramble, I climbed up into the Lertora Lake basin...and it was everything the Internets had said it would be. This was probably the pinnacle of what I called the Emigrant Wilderness aesthetic in my previous post, at least out of what I saw on my trip.

It was, accordingly, insanely packed with campers.

They were all of the quiet and respectful sort, but there were a lot of them, and only a few sites to be found. So, after an already-long day, I spent an inordinate amount of time climbing around on the lake's granite cliffs, desperately searching for a spot that was hidden enough from others' eyes that I could at least, you know, change clothes in peace if not quiet.

Eventually, despairing a bit, I tried fording a marsh at the southern edge of the lake to access the southern shore instead of the popular western end, and lo and behold, there was a small beach with an almost-flat tent spot waiting for me!

Like the previous night, there was little to quibble over here: I dropped my pack and set up my tent immediately. I had just enough light left to make and eat dinner by, then I spent some time luxuriating in a legitimately amazing sunset while I imagined how best to wrap up the rest of my trip without wearing my legs completely down to nubs.

[theghostpinesmusic]

Emigrant Wilderness Loop (2/5)

I woke up to a beautiful, sunny morning and only had to walk about five feet from the door of my tent to see, in the light of day, why Chewing Gum Lake is regarded as one of the most beautiful places to camp in Emigrant Wilderness.

After wrecking my trusty Copper Spur UL1 earlier in the summer during the East Boulder Lake trip and then faking my way through the South Jefferson trip with my ancient, battered North Face Flint 2, I'd been inspired by the increased floor space and minimal weight penalty to replace my UL1 with a new UL2. The previous night's unceremonious, hurried set-up had been my first-ever camp with that UL 2 and despite the rush it had been awesome. The new tent would continue to kick ass (and be 100% worth the minimal weight penalty) through the rest of my Emigrant trip as well as the rest of the summer. It didn't look bad in the morning light, either.

I cooked and ate my usual breakfast of moderately crappy oatmeal and then appreciatively packed up the new tent (and everything else), and headed south on the Chewing Gum Trail to start my first full day in the Emigrant Wilderness.

Though my inclination is to have at least an initial route planned down to the finest detail before I start a trip and then improvise as desired from there, I hadn't formulated much of a plan at all this time around. This was because the whole Emigrant area is interwoven with trails and, often, where there aren't trails there are open flats of granite that encourage off-trail exploration. I had started driving south from Klamath Falls with a vague sense that I wanted to head south and west from Gianelli Trailhead toward Emigrant Lake over the course of my five days before doubling back to the car eventually, but the how of it all was going to be negotiated on the fly between me and my old-school, waterproof paper map. I was pretty excited about that.

While eating my oatmeal that first morning, I'd at least decided to follow the Chewing Gum Lake Trail southwest to the popular Crabtree Trailhead, which would allow me to then access the west-to-east Crabtree Trail and visit a handful of sure-to-be-gorgeous lakes en route to Deer Lake, which served as a sort of central hub for a number of the Wilderness's bigger trails.

So that's what I did.

Things got off to a good start, as the Chewing Gum Lake Trail took me through some beautiful, wildflower-studded marshland south of its namesake lake. But before long, the gentle, granitic terrain that had initially struck me as so friendly to intentional off-trail exploration showed that it was also good at enabling unintentional off-trail exploration.

Namely, at some point a mile or so into my day, certain I'd been following the trail the entire time, I found myself more or less cliffed out on the edge of a precipice, looking down at a lake that, had I been on-route, shouldn't have been there. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw nothing that actually looked like a trail on second glance.

I'd stumbled upon a gorgeous vista, sure. But I was definitely lost.

A quick check of my map told me that I was looking down at the extremely creatively-named Bear Lake. A consultation of the topo lines convinced me that I could probably continue down the cliff off trail to the lake, check it out, and then take an access trail south to intersect with the Crabtree Trail. On the one hand, if this bushwhack worked, it would save me a significant amount of distance and, potentially, time. On the other hand, I didn't really want to skip seeing the remainder of the trail down to and back out of Crabtree Trailhead. Not to mention the fact that getting that far off trail this early in my trip, when I wasn't comfortable with the terrain yet, seemed like a bad idea.

So, for once, I made the responsible choice and used my GaiaGPS map to steer a bushwhack back uphill across the offending granite slabs and (occasionally) loose dirt until I regained the real trail.

At this point, I was inclined to pat myself on the back for being a good grown-up. Little did I know that I would get completely lost in a very similar fashion at least three more times in the next four days. One thing among many that ended up surprising me about Emigrant was just how easy it is to get off-trail and how hard it can be to then get back on trail.

Anyway, with the trail regained, the rest of the way to Crabtree Trailhead was really straightforward. The trail dropped gently but consistently through some shady pine barrens, and though it faded in and out from time to time, in the forest it was much easier to understand where you were supposed to go, even when the trail was buried under piles of rotting deadfall.

Crabtree Trailhead was busy with the sounds of hikers and their cars arriving and leaving, but this early into the trip, the business didn't really bother me. It was actually kind of nice to see so many people so enthusiastic to be getting out for a hike on a beautiful morning. I continued hiking slightly past the trailhead until I found a stump that I could sit on to take a snack break.

For fifteen minutes or so, I alternated between tracing various routes on my map into daydreams and chatting with the parties of dayhikers that kept filing past me. They were all super friendly, and many awesome dogs were pet. And then it was time to get moving again.

Next, I took the trail south and then east toward Camp Lake. Just after the eastward turn, there was a spur trail that led downhill and south to the Bell Meadow Trail, which (weirdly) runs parallel to the Crabtree Trail for almost ten miles. I'd wondered a number of times, both at home and after starting the trip, which of these two routes I should take to get to Deer Lake. Ultimately, I decided to skip the spur trail and instead continued following the Crabtree Trail to Camp Lake. Occasionally, I would get glimpses from above down into the valley that the Bell Meadow Trail runs through, which caused me to second-guess myself a few times.

The grass (moss?) is always greener, I guess.

It was a straightforward amble the rest of the way to Camp Lake, which was a beautiful spot in what I'd eventually come to recognize as Emigrant's signature style.

There were a few small, flat spots along the lake and I took up brief residence at one to have another snack. A short climb at the east end of the lake revealed a few nice tent spots atop an overhanging cliff, but it was way too early in the day for me to stop already. In fact, as I was reminded every time I came out from under the trees into direct sunlight, the heat of the afternoon was just starting to settle in.

I made it about a half-mile from Camp Lake before I got lost again.

This one felt even sillier because after my misadventure above Bear Lake I was specifically trying extra hard to avoid losing the trail. Yet, after following it around a rock buttress and then downhill along a series of granite slabs, I continued atop a narrow ridge above the nearly-dry Lily Creek until...I reached another dead-end: a fifty foot drop-off onto yet more granite slabs.

Obviously, I had lost the trail at some point. But where? I didn't bother to find out. Instead, I just tracked back the way I'd come until I was able to safely descend the rocks to Lily Creek. I crossed it at a point where I could do so while keeping my feet dry, then climbed up the rocks on the creek's east side and once again used my trusty GaiaGPS app to work my way across the slabs and through some thick brush until I found the trail again.

It was at this point that I wondered, not for the last time, how people managed to navigate through this deceptively complicated Wilderness without modern GPS technology.

Hotter and tireder than I'd expected to be at this point (likely both because of the altitude and the two unplanned bushwhacking escapades), I struggled on to Lily Lake.

It looked exactly as described.

I had another snack here but because of the lily pads and difficult water access decided to put off refilling my bottles until the next lake.

This wouldn't end up being a big mistake or anything, but it certainly didn't make the next few miles any cooler.

Piute Lake was the first lake of the day that I seriously thought about stopping to camp at. It was only 3:30 when I got there, but I felt like a melted candle from all of the sun exposure, the lake was nice and clear, and there were some decent camp spots off the main trail to the south. And so I considered that a short day might do me good.

I considered it. For a few minutes.

But after another snack break and a brief rest I was feeling better, and the next three lakes (Gem Lake, Jewelry Lake, and Deer Lake) would all follow in quick succession as I continued east. If the heat or exhaustion caught up with me in a serious way, there was no shortage of places to stop for good. I hadn't really intended to hike all the way to Deer Lake on the second day initially, but at this point I'd come to like the idea of it. So, leaving a bookmark on my map so I'd remember Piute Lake as a solid camping option for future trips, I kept moving.

Based on all my pre-trip reading at least, Gem Lake, like Chewing Gum Lake, has a bit of a reputation for being a busy party spot. And where Chewing Gum (thankfully) hadn't lived up (down?) to that reputation, Gem Lake did.

I got there a little before 5pm, and already the high granite dam across the lake from the trail was crawling with campers. There were more than a few folks taking turns diving from the dam down into the lake, and their excited screams mingled with the scent of weed smoke and the sound of generic EDM beats issuing from tinny portable speakers.

Now I am, as you might know, not adverse to consciousness-altering drugs or what might ungenerously be called "drug music," but this was definitely not my scene.

I'd only covered about a mile and a half of distance at this point since Piute Lake, but I was feeling the tiredness and specifically the dehydration even more acutely now. So, I retreated back up the shore a bit, out of sight of the revelers, so I could sit and force myself to drink an entire bottle of concerningly-gross-tasting water in peace. Then, with only two or so miles left until Deer Lake, I filled up both of my empty bottles completely, because it seemed like the responsible thing to do.

Hiking out and around the impromptu Gem Lake Music Festival, I continued on to Jewelry Lake. This was a pretty little lake as well, but there didn't seem to be any viable tent spots near it except for the one that two other hikers were already ensconced in. I'd sort of given up on not pushing all the way to Deer Lake at this point anyway, so I shrugged and kept on going.

Around this time was when the sun finally dipped low enough in the sky that the oppressive heat of the day starting dialing down, and as a result I actually had a much easier time covering the last mile-and-a-half than I'd feared.

With it getting late and with Deer Lake being a crossroads of sorts, it too was busy with campers when I rolled in. They were the quieter, more respectful type, but nonetheless as I proceeded east along the northern shore of the lake, I started to fear that I'd hiked too late into the day and that there would be nowhere to stay, forcing me to continue on to yet another lake.

The going had been easier during the last leg of my hike, sure, but I have a pretty good handle on my limits and I wasn't entirely sure if I'd be able to cover another two or three miles without some dinner and some sleep. So I felt incredibly fortunate when suddenly, to my left off of the main trail, a use trail led me up into a little pine barren encircled by granite boulders...and an open tent site!

It was a bit crooked and knobbly by my usual high (arguably neurotic) standards, but tonight I was going to take it, and I was going to like it.

(In actuality, I dropped all of my gear, staked out my ground cloth, and then continued wandering another quarter-mile east in search of something better. Not finding it, though, I came back and settled in for the night.)

I found a little lip of granite downhill from my tent spot that made a perfect bench for cooking, eating, and then stretching out and watching the moon rise.

So that's what I did. The end.

(I ended the day having covered seventeen miles and having climbed nearly 3,000 feet, numbers that astounded me when I checked my watch, considering the terrain. This was another way that Emigrant would continue to surprise me.)

[theghostpinesmusic]

A Rounder God

Why yoke yourself to the body of a man And the finitude of one world? Be like the wheel, man And roll on forever This orange on a toothpick Can't take a hit And this too-big brain Can't take a joke You should know this You made them that way (Or so you say) When we die You die Because what is a King Without His servants? Nothing. So chill, man Be like the Buddha And reboot Every once in awhile A fresh coat of paint Every few thousand years Won't kill you But we might.

[theghostpinesmusic]

A great solo version of a fantastic song.

[theghostpinesmusic]

Ohio, Pt. II

I balance on a crooked, plastic lawn chair Drawing the last warmth From a dying fire The stars are sharp-edged with cold Their heat faded to nothing Light-years ago Snow falls like shavings From those same stars Glitter in the firelight In the distance, a cabin hums Light paints its windows warm And throws human shadows From inside Voices lift, tinny across the snow Hinting at Life Laughter Love Footprints show a way through the snow From the fire to the cabin And back It's a short walk But I don't take it And they don't take it It gets colder This is Ohio

[theghostpinesmusic]

Lotus - Phish.net

In fiction at least, the end of the world is almost never ...

In a career full of weird publications, this is maybe my weirdest yet...from a professional standpoint, at least.

From a personal standpoint, I've been wanting to write something about "Lotus" in particular for a long time, and getting solicited by phish.net (a site that's been around since 1992 and that I've been a member of and used regularly since 2011) finally gave me the push I needed to make time to do it.

I'm really happy with how this came out. It was super fun to write, and I got to combine my jam band geekiness with my textual analysis geekiness.

Check it out if you want and let me know what you think! It's a short read.

[theghostpinesmusic]

A winter is never late, nor is it early. It arrives precisely when it means to.

[theghostpinesmusic]

Emigrant Wilderness Loop (1/5)

Improvising a loop through Emigrant Wilderness had been on my list for years, but come this past summer, I just hadn't gotten around to it yet. The drive from Klamath Falls south to the north-most trailheads takes between eight and ten hours, just about the maximum that I'm willing to drive in a day and then hike instead of getting a hotel, and though the area looked beautiful in photos, it also seemed similar enough to Desolation Wilderness that for the previous few summers I'd decided to just sate my desire for granite and alpine lakes hiking in the Tahoe area (and of course the Trinities) instead.

This past summer, though, I'd bumped Emigrant up onto a list of three specific five-day trips that I hoped to pull off before October. The other two trips kept falling through due to weather and/or smoke, and so by the time the beginning of August rolled around, I semi-grudgingly got in my car the morning after dayhiking Aspen Butte with Milo and started driving south toward Gianelli trailhead, just east of Pinecrest, California.

Now, I don't have a ton of experience in what is likely considered the "legit" Sierra: I soloed Mt. Whitney a decade ago, but it was a whirlwind trip, and the closest I've been since is, again, Desolation Wilderness (which is, geographically speaking, part of the Sierra, but seems to not really be recognized as such by most Sierra-obsessed hikers). So, I was excited to finally get a bit further south than Tahoe and to spend five days exploring a bit of that "legit" Sierra without necessarily getting into any of the areas that are 1) topographically gnarly, 2) crazy busy, or 3) both.

From afar, Emigrant seemed perfect for this sort of thing. Then, during the trip, I spent the first few days struggling a lot physically and navigationally, and just sort of generally regretting having taken the time to drive there...until, suddenly, sitting on a rock next to my car at the conclusion of the hike, I found myself crying because I didn't want to leave.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about the Sierra since.

All that said, I would really have liked to have been able to write this trip report in September instead of January, when the details were still fresh in my mind, because this was (clearly) an even more moving and meaningful trip for me than most. But life (mostly work) got in the way, like it often does, and I'm just now getting around to having time to write this. So, I'll do my best to recapture the feeling of the experience, and, after, will likely go back to researching other routes through the area so I can get back there as soon as summer comes again.

So, the drive down from Klamath Falls to the Gianelli trailhead was long, but straightforward. Almost too straightforward, in fact: the atlas suggested a few more-or-less equidistant routes, but knowing I'd be wanting to get to the trailhead as early as possible, I chose the "efficiency" of the Highway-97-to-I-5 route, which meant I spent a lot of time doing the mind-numbing drive through California's Central Valley. An unexpected amount of traffic and road construction stretched a drive that Google Maps said would take seven-and-a-half hours to about ten hours, and by the time I finished the skull-rattling ascent up rock-strewn Forest Route 4N47, I only had about two hours until sunset.

I actually wasn't particularly worried about the time: I'd driven to Gianelli specifically because there was a lake two miles from the trailhead, and another four(ish) in, in case I needed to have an extra-short first day. I was worried about the temperature, though: it was way colder than I'd expected when I stepped out of the car, and I wondered if I'd underestimated the effect of starting my trip at 8,600 feet.

Eventually, of course, the positives would trickle in: on my drive from Stockton up into the mountains, I'd passed by a lot of gorgeous views and landscapes that were wildly different than what I was used to and now I was walking into the heart of it all to live there for the next five days. But there's a difference between car-brain and forest-brain, and I was firmly in the grip of car-brain still after ten hours on the highways.

Eventually, it would all shake out alright. As you may have noticed if you've really literally any other trip report of mine, I tend to be neurotically worried at the beginning of trips about things that end up not mattering all that much. In this particular case, these lines from The Rolling Stones' "Torn and Frayed" came to mind as I was tying up my boots: "On stage the band has got problems / They're a bag of nerves on first nights."

Chilly in shorts and wearing a knee brace on my left leg after a summer that had already been plagued by weird long-COVID-like symptoms and recurring leg and hip pain, I started off on my first long trip into the Sierra.

Despite already starting at the top of a long uphill drive, the Gianelli Trail climbs immediately. Admittedly, it's only about four hundred feet up to Burst Rock from the trailhead, but after a full day in the car, on a somewhat bum leg, I was immediately struggling. I tried to focus on the surrounding forest instead - which was beautiful in a novel-to-me, undefinably Sierra way - but I couldn't help wondering already if I'd bit off more than I could chew.

Eventually, though, I hit the top of the ascent and simultaneously realized that I had started the hike at almost 9,000 feet: the lack of oxygen was almost certainly part of my problem. The now-flat trail gave me a chance to catch my slightly oxygen-deprived breath and provided my first long view of the wilderness I was headed into.

To the northeast, I could see the aptly-named Three Chimneys and Castle Rock in the late afternoon light, and, before them, the first of many deep, granite-lined valleys I'd encounter throughout the trip.

Shortly after, I hit the north-facing turnoff for Powell Lake. It was almost sunset at this point, and I'd already been planning on using Powell as my "bail-out" camping spot if I was running behind schedule (which I was); however, even stopping briefly above the lake on the main trail, I could hear the sounds of many campers laughing and yelling to each other below, and after a long day in the car I decided it was worth hiking further in the hope of finding somewhere quieter to call it a night. So I kept hiking east.

Soon, the trail descended a bit into a wetter area, and I found that despite it being early August, at this elevation in the Sierra the wildflowers seemed to still be at their peak.

Next, the trail deposited me on the edge of a cliff before turning north to contour along the cliff's edge for awhile. This was my first view directly into the part of the Wilderness I planned to hike through, and though I couldn't see as clearly as I would have liked due to the setting sun and fading light, I could see Chewing Gum Lake below me, my next best hope for a comfortable and quiet camp for the night.

I knew from my research that Chewing Gum tended to be one of the more popular (and thus populated) lakes in the Wilderness, but I hoped that on an unseasonably cold Monday evening, it might not be quite as popular.

Racing the sunset, I continued east and downhill toward the intersection between the Gianelli Trail and the Chewing Gum Lake Trail. En route, I had a brief conversation with a group of backpackers who were headed back to their car at Gianelli after spending a few days hiking and camping in the area mostly off trail. They highly recommended that I spend a night at off-trail Granite Lake, and I filed that away in my mind for later on in the trip.

Upon getting to Chewing Gum Lake Trail, I saw that the trail intersections in Emigrant Wilderness were marked by posts like the ones in Desolation Wilderness. Aside from just being fun progress-markers, these posts would be extremely useful navigational aids in a few cases later on in my trip!

Hiking south from the trail intersection toward Chewing Gum, through the valley I'd seen earlier from above, led to some wet but enjoyable wading through thick, marshy meadows populated by owl clover, among other things.

About four-and-a-half miles into the hike, the sun was touching the horizon and I was sauntering into the Chewing Gum Lake basin proper.

As it turned out, there was one large (and loud) party camping at one of the prime spots in the basin, but it was otherwise empty, and there were a lot of great places to set up a tent. It was easy to imagine this lake being surrounded by fifty or sixty people on a busy weekend: luckily for me, though, it wasn't a busy weekend.

I scouted around for the ideal spot a little longer than probably made sense (like I do), and had originally decided on a cozy spot tucked into a thick stand of trees a bit away from the lake.

In the failing light, though, it felt equal parts comfy and creepy, and when a second look revealed a profusion of bear prints coming down out of the cliffs and then heading back up into them, I decided to look for something closer to the lake and the other group of campers, their loud chatter be damned.

In the end, I set up right on a granite slab along the northwest edge of the lake. I wasn't that far from the bear prints, but my tent was high enough and visible enough to any animals that might wander by the night that it certainly wasn't going to surprise them. Plus, the view couldn't be beat.

Still stuck a bit in car-brain, I set up quickly and unsentimentally, more interested in getting comfortable before the dark and cold fully set in than in appreciating the area. I reasoned that I had four more days ahead to get to know Emigrant Wilderness better when I wasn't so much up against the clock.

I was up later than usual making and eating dinner in the dark, and throughout that whole process my neighbors were as carelessly loud as a group of college-aged backpackers are wont to be, but while I was cleaning up after dinner, a nearby pack of coyotes sent up a series of chilling howls that seemed to drive the campers into scared silence and shortly thereafter into their tents for the night, so I took that as a win.

I quick review of my GaiaGPS map told me that, somehow, I'd already climbed nearly a thousand feet in my first four-and-a-half miles. That surprised me, but after a few more days, it wouldn't: Emigrant turned out to be quite good at making me climb more than I might have expected (or wanted) to on multiple occasions.

At least the elevation gain explained why I fell asleep almost immediately after my head hit the camp pillow and stayed asleep until the sun woke me up the next morning for my first full day in Emigrant Wilderness.