Four mile hike from hwy 89 toBarker Pass (mile 1125) to Dick’s Lake (mile 1108)
Total PCT miles hiked: 1130 (including the 11 miles between Five Lakes and Barker Pass which we did not hike.)
Due to our early start Keith (Starman) and I arrived at the Sierras when there was still a lot of snow, and decided it wasn’t safe to attempt a crossing given my skill level. We elected to flip up to northern California and hike southbound (SoBo) back to where we left off near Lone Pine – giving the snow a chance to melt out. During this flip the PCT milage will be counting down, but I’ll include a tally of our total milage hiked so that you can keep aprised of our progress in a linear fashion.
I first hiked into the Desolation Wilderness in the summer of 2016. I was high on solo backpacking, using an old day pack and borrowed gear from Keith I had been spending nearly every weekend in the backcountry. Embarking on my most ambitious hike yet, I planned a circuitous figure eight loop—exclusively because it was the only permit I could get—that would traverse the entire wilderness in three days. The trip ultimately proved to be a comedy of errors. During my three days tromping around: I got more mosquito bites than I ever have in my entire life. Lost the trail not once but twice, which resulted in me walking the PCT past Middle Velma Lake repeatedly as I tried to find my way on low res paper maps. In the end I basically hiked in circles for two days before bailing early only to return to a car with a dead battery because I’d left the headlights on when I’d crawled out through the passengers side door. You see, the front fender on the car had been jammed back when I’d hit a deer on the drive up, and as a result the front drivers door wouldn’t open. Yes, I also hit a deer while driving Keith’s car, or rather it hit me as it sprinted to it’s untimely death upon the side of the vehicle.
At least I can honestly say I’ve become a more proficient backpacker in the intervening years. And have killed no more deer.
I have such vivid memories of this place that it feels as though the 2016 trip has been superimposed on the landscape around me. Campsites and missed trail markers remind me of settling on a site above the lake where in the morning I would easily find the missed trail that I was so sure didn’t exist. Or the side trail where I emerged from a swamp onto the PCT with no fewer than 50 mosquito bites—a number that would swell to 80 before the weekend was out. I counted.
Memory vignettes slide across the screen in my mind and I marvel at the feeling of fondness bubbling up for an experience which at the time felt a complete fiasco. Time has worn the sharp edges from memory and the misery of Type 2 Fun has been long ago morphed into the kind of good story you can laugh at. It also helps that I can see the improvements rendered on myself. More capable, better traveled in the outdoors.
What is more striking, however, is the different face of Desolation. Just a few weeks earlier in the season and the area feels wildly changed. Long snow fields hide the green grass and bright wild flowers of July. While rivers run hight, loud, and white from water that pours from the hills. Snow melting fast as we approach the longest day of the year. The lakes feel the same, a visual anchor of sorts. It makes me question, a little, my tendency to want to see everything, try everything just once. The pull deep within myself that wants to explore more than know intimately. I am not really the type to return to the same lakes in a high alpine valley and see how they change with the seasons. Sometimes I wonder if that is a mistake. Is it indeed better to know one thing deeply, or many things superficially?