Throughout the story, you'll see small photographs from our trip. You can see larger versions of the photographs by clicking on them. In addition, most of the links buried within the text will bring up photographs from my trip.
I first convinced my friend Sepandar to go on a six day trip to the area. Then, after finding some cheap plane tickets thanks to TWA, I was able to convince two of my friends from UNC (Tom and Fletch) to fly out as well. That put our group size at an even four.
When planning the trip, I used Backpacker magazine's June 2000 issue and scoured the
web for other information. I came up with an ambitious (you'll see later that it was
too ambitious) six day schedule through both Ansel Adams Wilderness and Yosemite
National Park. My initial plans began at Granite Creek Campground and the Isberg
Trailhead. From that trailhead, I planned a 5 mile or so jaunt up to Cora Lakes.
Day two would put is at Sadler Lake, just short of Isberg Peak Pass. I then wanted to
crank up the intensity level and push a good 10-12 miles until Red Devil Lake on day
three. Day four would have put us over Red Peak and down to Lower Merced Lake for the
evening. Day five would place us at Rutherford Lake, and back to the Clover Meadow
Ranger Station on day six.Once we had a group of four, we purchased tickets and got a wilderness permit from Sierra National Forest. Wilderness permits in the Sierras are based on the starting trailhead. We were starting at the Isberg Trailhead, which is located in Sierra National Forest. The nice part about this system is that once you start, you can go anywhere. Permits inside Yosemite proper must be reserved far in advance, but in the isolated Ansel Adams Wilderness, I was able to make a reservation just 6-8 weeks in advance. To make the reservation, call Sierra National Forest (559-297-0706) and ask for the Clover Meadow Ranger Station. You can only inquire about availability over the phone. To get a reservation, you need to send a letter with the size of your group, the starting trailhead, your itinerary, the number of days you will be there, and a fee of $3 per person (make checks out to USFS).
One more piece of knowledge that might come in handy is that Wilderness Press publishes a great map called Yosemite National Park & Vicinity that sells for $6.95 and has all the trails in Ansel Adams Wilderness.
The trip started early in the morning on August 14, 2000. We woke up at 4 in the
morning eastern time to get to our 6:55 flight to San Francisco via St. Louis. By
5am, we had parked our car and took the
shuttle to Terminal A at RDU. Then, after a short delay (FAA regulations stated
that our pilots didn't have enough rest), we left on our way to the west coast. The
only complication here was that our layover in St. Louis was just 40 minutes, and we
had a 30 minutes delay taking off. That meant we had to sprint through the St. Louis
airport to get to our connecting flight. Luckily we made it on time with at least 1
full minute to spare. We then landed at SFO and rented our Isuzu Rodeo before noon.We stopped by REI to buy some last minute gear, fuel for our stove, and to rent bear canisters, which are required about 9600 feet inside Yosemite National Park. To our dissapointment, they didn't have any left to rent. But we lucked out and found a store called "Any Mountain" in Silicon Valley that rented the bear canisters at an even cheaper rate than REI.
After that, we met some of my family for dinner, then went home early to my friend's apartment in Palo Alto to get a good night's sleep. We woke up that next morning at about 4 in the morning, took our final showers, put our gear in the car, and began our long trip to the mountains. The ride there took about 6.5 to 7 hours, but could have been shorter had we not gotten lost twice. Of course, the worst part was that Sepandar couldn't get us the 2 miles from his house to highway 101 without wasting 20 minutes driving in the wrong direction. But eventually, we made it to Clover Meadow Ranger Station without too much difficulty.
And then it happend. Sepandar blurted out, "Bears? What do we do if we see a bear?" The face on the poor forest ranger was of pure shock. Luckily, we had planned ahead with a bear canister per person, and I was carrying a bear bell in case we ran out of conversation. We also had some rope to hang some stuff from a tree if it came to that. She eventually recovered enough from her shock to tell us not to try and scare it away, but instead to really scare it away.
With those words of encouragement, we drove the car another three miles to a parking lot that had a mere 7 bear break-ins during the summer and started up the trail.
We started hiking around 1PM and made our way through some healthy
old-growth forest
that was much more sparse than the dense forest growth the four of us grew up with on
the east coast. The photo to the right shows three of us early in the day hiking
through a typical stretch of forest. In addition to the old growth forests, the trail
crossed a number of larger open
rocky areas, giving just a hint of the alpine terrain we would soon encounter.
As the trail meandered over the gentle slopes leading up to Cora Lake, we crossed the wilderness boundary and entered Ansel Adams Wilderness. It is worth noting at this point that Sepandar borrowed my water purifier and pumped a fresh liter of water from a nearby stream. When he was done, he mentioned that he had always used iodine, and that it was hard work to pump. I dismissed his complaints without much thought and we continued on our way.
After crossing into the wilderness area, we found a number of large rock out-cropping
on which to explore. We had plenty of time to make camp before sunset, so we dropped
our packs and starting climbing around. There were a number of great views, including
this view towards the south.
We also had views of
the Ritter Range to the northeast. Three more views from the same area can be seen
here,
here, and
here.
Finally, we reached Cora Lake, our first night's camp site. We had the lake entirely to ourselves, and all of us except Tom enjoyed a refreshing swim in the frigid mountain lake. We then set up camp and settled in for our first night in the woods. We cooked dinner, then went straight to bed after a long day of driving and hiking.
I woke up at 5:30 in the morning on our second day and found a nice place to sit down
on the shore of Cora Lake. At first, the valley was lit only by
the full moon that
reflected of the still lake. While the rest of the guys continued to sleep, I watched
the sun rise over the mountains to the east, marking a new day in Ansel Adams Wilderness.
Birds began to sound off first, and soon the forest was alive with the sounds of wildlife.
I was able to watch the lake's trout jump out of the water, presumably catching breakfast
bugs from the surface of the water. At one point, I saw the same fish jump three times in
a matter of 10 seconds.After the sun had fully cleared the mountains and began to warm up the valley, the rest of the group slowly awoke and we started preparing breakfast. We then slowly broke down camp and pumped fresh water for the day. This was the first time I had tried to pump water through my purifier, and to my suprise, it was just as hard as Sepandar had claimed the afternoon before. We were on just our second day and the purifier had already started to give out. This became my first lesson of the trip: always start a long trip with a fresh filter cartridge.
At this point we also ran into a forest ranger who was spending a strech in the woods performing trail maintenance. Apparently, he had spent the night on the far side of the lake and was heading off to work. We talked for a while about the fish, the trails ahead, and if he had seen any bears. Finally, after a lazy morning of pumping water, we were all set to start hiking by 10 in the morning.
We left the lake and headed further north on the Isberg Trail. We made our way through
similar terrain as on day 1, climbing another 1,200 feet our so over 5 more miles. After
passing through a some more wooded areas, the trail began to open up even more than the day
before. We saw more open rocky areas, and we started to have
views towards the west. These
western views gave us a prevue of our trip for the rest of the week. We pushed forward
and after lunch we were passed by a group of horse packers destined for the Sadler Lake.
We then crossed paths with our park ranger friend from earlier in the day on his way down
from Isberg Pass. Finally, we reached
Sadler Lake and its pitcturesque campsites
at the foot of Isberg and Post Peaks.
We circled around Sadler Lake, spotting the horsepackers setting up camp and one more family, visiting from Fresno, that had backpacked up to the lake for a few days to share the backpacking experience with two of their children. On the west side of the lake, we took a hard-to-follow path up to McClure Lake. McClure lake was more alpine than Sadler Lake, partially surrounded by 600 foot cliffs. It was a mile or so further to the lake, and about 500 additional elevation gain, but we had an easy day, and it was worth the extra effort. As we crested the rise just before McClure lake, we were rewared with great views of Isberg Peak to the north-east and the distant mountains to the south-east.
We reached McClure lake with plenty of time for another swim before setting up camp. This time, all four of us braved the cold water and took a swim. And McClure was even colder than Cora Lake. Not only was the water from the spring snow melt, it was from the current snow melt. Even in mid-August, there were two large patches of snow at the edge of the lake, slowly contributing ice cold water to the lake. We also so various tracks in the soft mud on edge of the lake. We saw tracks from deer, racoons, bear, and a few other animals that we couldn't identify.
As evening set in, we set up camp, ate dinner, and boiled some water to extend the life of
the failing water purifier. We enjoyed the incredible
view from our campsite, and sat in awe as
the sun set and revealed a clear sky full of stars. The stars were so bright that even under
a full moon we had spectacular views of the Milky Way's cloudy path across the sky. While
the final liters of water silently boiled on the stove, Tom helped us identify a number
of constilations, and we saw a huge number of shooting stars. After a couple of hours spent
staring at the heavens, we moved into our tents and went to sleep, full of anticipation for
tomorrow's hike.
We had a quick mile back towards Sadler lake to pick up Isberg Trail. After the warm-up mile was over, the real hiking began. Prior to leaving on our trip, I got advice from another hiker that "the trail up around Isberg Pass and Post Peak Pass is harder than it looks on the map." They weren't kidding. While climbing just over 1000 feet in about 2 miles, there are stretches of switchbacks that are incredibly steep. Combine that with the thin air at 10,500 and you have a recipe for hell.
The hike started off innocently enough. We had a good climb for about a mile as we circled
around to the north, but nothing too steep. Then it started to level off a little as the
trail swung back around to the west and passed
Lower Isberg Lake. As we approched the lake,
we passed through an open alpine region, and even though we knew a lake was coming, we couldn't
imagine a lake sitting in the middle of all of this rock. Then, all of a sudden, we came
around a bend in the trail and we had an open view of a large grassy meadow, full of wild
flowers, a dark blue mountain lake, and
spacious views down into the valley.
As we continued up Isberg Trail towards the pass, the trail moved back south without gaining much elevation. We continued south until it reached the top of the headwall that surrounds McClure Lake. After moving slightly off-trail, we had views down from the top of the cliffs towards our camp from the previous evening. As the trail continued winding around towards the west and remained relatively flat, we began to understand how steep the final ascent would be. We had a lot of elevation to gain, as the longer we continued before the climb, the steeper the climb would be for us when we finally got there. Just before the final ascent, we stopped to pump some more water at a small pond and watched as the horse packers from the previous day passed us once again. Finally, we were ready to attack the main climb up to the pass.
Leaving Sadler Lake at 10am, it took until 1pm for the first of us to reach the pass, and it was almost 3:30 before we had all reached the pass, rested up, and ate lunch. The switchbacks and steep loose rock seemed endless as we slowly made our way to the top. Just before the pass, the switchbacks ceased and we had one final strech of trail that skirted around Isberg Peak to reach the pass. When we got there, the views were incredible, as you can see from these photos the the north-east, south-east, and south-west. The view to the north-west was the best, as you can see in this photograph, taken slight further down the west side of the pass. Off in the distance we could see the more famous peaks of Yosemite Valley. Because we reached the pass so much later than I had planned, this is where we decided to cut off some mileage and make it a 5 day trip. We would camp just below the Pass on the Yosemite side, and hike up through Post Peak Pass the next day.
Since we had extra time now that our plans had changed, we had lots of time to explore. We were
able to hike up to a minor peak just to the south of the pass, affording even better views of the
terrain around us. We then settled in for a late lunch, and then started hiking down into
Yosemite National Park. As we continued down
the west side of the pass, we slowly reached
the open meadow which spralled across a couple
square miles of the high-high-country west of the pass. It is hard to get a sense of scale in
many of these pictures, so I've included another picture of
the same meadow with Sepandar sitting
on a boulder. It should convey the vast open space of the meadow.
Walking across the meadow, we had views of the Clark Range, including Merced Peak, which marks the start of the Merced River. The Merced River is the river responsible for carving out the well known geological features in Yosemite Valley. We also saw acres of wildflowers in a plethora of colors, including red, white, blue, yellow and purple. We continued hiking around the edge of the meadow until the trail started to turn back to the north. Here we set up camp, prepared for dinner, and rested.
In the remaining hours of daylight, Sepandar hiked a mile or two across the meadow to the large lake for an afternoon swim, while the rest of us sat and looked out across the meadow hoping to spot some wildlife. We were treated to a group of three marmots darting around the middle of the meadow, and Fletch was even brave enough to explore closer to the nest. He ended up meeting the marmot face-to-face at a distance of just a few feet.
With all the open space to our west, we were treated to
a beautiful sunset over the distant mountains of
Yosemite Valley. As the sunset deepened, we were treated to some of the most
spectecular evening clouds we had ever seen.
We stayed up for a few more hours taking in the starscape, then turned in to get some rest for
the day to come.
We eventually crested the pass and began our descent back into the valley. We started
to pick up the pace now that gravity was on our side, and we were moving along at
almost four miles per hour from here to camp if you don't count our breaks for water
and food. As we began our descent from the pass, we could see
far down the trail
where it led into a grassy mountain meadow. As we
hiked down into the meadow,
we were treated to more
wildflowers and a return to the forest. After our extened stay above tree
line, we were thankful for the protection from the sun.
Once in the woods, we passed a couple of small ponds, before finally reaching the trail junction at Fernandez Trail. From there is was a quick 1 mile walk to the turn off for Rainbow Lake. To reduce the heavy impact of campers, you can no longer set up camp at Rainbow Lake. However, there are a huge number of lakes in the area, and I'd bet that each has a few good camp sites. We chose Flat Lake, which down the same trail as Rainbow lake. After a short walk on the Rainbow Lake trail, a trail breaks off to the right and continues for another mile until you reach Flat Lake. This is where we set up camp for our final night in the wilderness. Sepandar and I went swimming in the lake, and practiced our climbing skills by messing around on the huge boulders at the edge of the lake.
We knew that it was our last night, so the tradition of Fast Food Dreams began in earnest. No longer were we thinking about mountain peaks and open meadows. Instead our minds began to fixate on grease and saturated fat. We also started to run out of normal conversation, which let to quotes like "Can I lick your backpack?" and "I like little girls." As the sun began to set, we went around collecting wood to use in our only campfire of the week. The air was so dry during the summer of 2000 that you could hold a lighter next to a large piece of wood and have no problem getting it started. So we ate dinner, lit the campfire, and talked the night away until we were ready to call it a day.
Our final day began early with a lazy hike through sparse forest terrain similar to
our first day. We once again passed through several fields of
wild flowers, including the
photograph to the right, which shows
two butterflies dancing around
yellow flowers. As we made our way lower and lower into the valley, we started
seeing more evidence of the animals that make the valley their home. Tom saw a deer
just as we got back to the Fernandez trail. And as we continued
hiking through the tall trees, I twice
saw more deer moving through the area. With fast food on our minds, we again hiked at
a fast pace and reached the Fernandez Trailhead just after noon. That meant just about
two miles for us until we returned to Clover Meadow Ranger Station and the end of our
hike. We kept moving through the trees until I once again noticed some leaves moving
off to the right of the trail.
I quickly raised my arm to tell the rest of the group to stop walking and be quiet. But as quickly as I raised my arm, I staggered back about 15 feet as I noticed that this wasn't any deer. I saw four dark, thick, hairy legs. It was a bear. The four of us quickly huddled to decide what to do. I quietly took out my camera in case I got a clear shot, then we yelled towards the bear to convince it we were tougher than he was. Luckily it either didn't care about us or was actually scared by our noise, and it moved away through the trees. All that was left was an empty patch of grass between the trees.
After all that excitement, the rest of the trip was uneventful. We finished off the last mile or two and arrived at Clover Meadow Ranger Station. There we treated ourselves to fresh water and a makeshift shower from a graden hose. Sepandar and I then dropped our packs and hiked three more miles back to our car while Tom and Fletch relaxed and watched our stuff.
Once back in the car, I made use of the four wheel drive car by speeding down the bumpy mountain
roads. On the way out of the forest, we saw a few dear, including a bady dear feeding from its mother.
We also saw a few "wild cows," grazing on the side of the road.
After an hour or so of driving, we made it to Oakhurst, CA. Oakhurst is the first sign of civilization on the way out of the forest, and like any meca of American culture, it has a McDonalds. We excitedly pulled into the parking lot and shoved as much oil and fat down our throats as we could handle. We then drove all the way back to San Francisco, and instead of a 10,600' sunset, we enjoyed one on the beach.