The trip didn’t start off as a forced march. Far from it. In a little trailhead parking lot above Bishop, more than 9,000 feet high, we arranged our provisions into three fairly equal piles of bagged food, white gas, cookware, water bottles, and a fifth of José Cuervo tequila. At the foot of the mountain there, Paul’s yellow Chevette looked even smaller than it was. We were puffed up, though, anticipating the 30-mile loop through some of the best golden trout fishing in the state. As if we’d caught a whiff of laughing gas mixed into the rarified Sierra breeze, everyone was feeling it. Particularly Paul, the Boy Scout.
“You’re never gonna make it carrying two cameras and a float tube. Unless you hired a Sherpa.”
At sea level, Paul was tolerable. Square-jawed and punctual, he was the professional in the group. Working as a physical therapist in the little town where I lived at the time, Paul’s practice allowed him plenty of days off to roam around. We did a lot of roaming in that little Chevette. His enthusiasm for exploration and overall Boy Scout zeal led us to many memorable destinations around the West, including Havasu Falls, Mount Whitney, Joshua Tree, and Mount Eddy. We explored, conquered, or were humbled by all these places — the kind of adventure you never forget, if you’re lucky. Gary was the third member of our party that morning. His nickname fit him: Gar Bear. And like his spirit animal, he cut a pretty imposing figure in his prime. A loaded external-frame pack looked slightly undersized attached to his back, so it was tempting to make him carry a little more. He was also the only one of us who could cast a fly more than 20 feet and not have it land in a heap of line and leader. Gary and I had been fishing together since we were dunking salmon eggs and marshmallows in Marin’s watershed lakes. But we were out of college now, and as it had for so many before us, the Sierra beckoned constantly. Unencumbered by nine-to-five jobs, Gary worked winters at a Sausalito ski shop, Battens and Boards. I parked cars down the street at Sally Stanford’s Valhalla. It was our great good fortune to answer the call of the mountains almost every week, all season long, for several years running.
Crouching in frozen concentration, Gary decanted the tequila into a plastic flask of nearly equal volume. Without a funnel, he spilled barely a drop. That’s talent, natural born. Once he’d finished pouring, Gary looked up at Paul and me admiring his work. “Well boys,” he said, “that should hold us for a few days anyway.” It was true. Just enough Vitamin T for six high-Sierra happy hours. Paul sized up the weight of the provisions one last time. Tempting as it was to give Gary a few more pounds, we distributed the water, gear, and hooch about equally. We filled our packs with the lightest, most easily compressed stuff, like clothes and sleeping bags, going in first. Then the food. Finally, at the top went the heaviest items like fuel, camera gear, and fire water. We were convinced this arrangement made our packs feel lighter on the trail, which, thirty years hence, sounds like a Myth Busters episode.
Upper Lamarck Lake
We took turns lifting the aluminum-frame packs to each other’s shoulders. With 60 pounds hanging off our backs, we had to spread our boots a few inches wider to compensate. For our initial few footfalls, the party resembled the Frankenstein Brothers’ first alpine expedition.
We intended to make camp that night at Upper Lamarck Lake. From there, for the next six days we’d loop through the Evolution Valley. The plan was to give ourselves plenty of time to fish, hiking only a few hours a day. Several lakes along the route held populations of trout and sustained natural reproduction. I got all the details I needed from Ralph Cutter’s Sierra Trout Guide and an antiquated map I’d discovered at the Department of Fish and Game office in Sacramento. This is how one gleaned information in the days before the Internet. I’ve always been a gleaner, from my earliest days collecting maps and information about trout fishing. Also, I’m a bit of a dreamer. From my gleaning, a beautiful dream took shape: that I might catch a golden trout of two pounds or larger on a fly I tied myself.
Upper Lamarck Lake was an ideal destination that day. It was close enough to reach in a few hours, climbing uphill every step. It was also a good jumping-off point for the next day’s ascent, which would be the most challenging of the trip. The plan for the following day began with a mile climb over a snowfield. From there, we imagined we would encounter a rocky, but navigable scree up to the Glacier Divide, the 125-mile rugged crest that divides the Sierra’s steep eastern escarpment from the more gradual declination falling off it to the west. Once we were standing atop the Glacier Divide the next morning, we would descend into Darwin Canyon to fish the largest, upper lake in the chain and soak in the scenery.
After we left the parking lot that first afternoon, a thunderstorm began pounding the Glacier Divide. The clouds covered the entire mountaintop. By the time we pulled ourselves up to the rocky shelf that contains Upper Lamarck, a warm, steady rain had begun to fall.
Trying to find shelter on this barren ledge was not easy. A handful of scrawny lodgepole pines had withstood the winters, sticking up a few feet high between the cracks in the rock. Three poor specimens crowded together on a little island of pulverized granite. You couldn’t call it a stand, because the trees were bent over, barely waist high. We threw a tarp over them anyway.
Crammed in with our packs under the blue plastic sheet, we could hear an electrical storm brewing. The lake turned gray and nervous-looking, anticipating the storm. Resting in a narrow cup at 11,000 feet, Upper Lamarck Lake is above the tree line — rugged, but not scenic. On the other side of this narrow lake, a vast snowfield covered the granite like cake frosting. Its iceberg-blue tongue lapped at the edge of the water. The rain beat a constant patter on the tarp while we decided what to do next. Given the conditions, we made what seemed the most sensible decision. From a handy pocket outside Gary’s backpack, he removed the flask, and we passed it around.
Tucked in to the side of a mountain, we could not see beyond the snow-covered wall across the lake. On the map, however, there were features drawn in for glaciers, peaks, and a tiny notch in the Glacier Divide. It had a designation of its own, Lamarck Col. This is where we planned to drop into Darwin Canyon the next day.
Hunkered down under a tarp, sipping tequila in a thundershower — that’s how I remember it: the only Friday the Thirteenth I can ever recall. It was July 1990.
Eventually, we were able to pitch the tents and make a temporary camp in the one practicable spot level and sandy enough to pound in tent stakes. By the time we finished setting up and made dinner, it was dark. There was a moon up there somewhere, illuminating the gray mass of clouds without revealing itself. We figured we’d sleep well, get up early, and be over the divide in time to fish the next afternoon. The expectation of casting for beautiful wild trout so high in the Sierra made it difficult to fall asleep, but eventually, like stars behind the clouds, we blinked out, too.
Paul and I awoke first and boiled water for oatmeal. Sitting Indian style around a little brass Svea stove, Paul recalled something we saw the night before. “Remember those guys coming down last night with the flashlights? That was crazy. Slip and fall on that glacier? You could wind up in the rocks all banged up. And at night.” I knew we had more sense than that. “Let’s not do that,” I offered.
Shortly after breakfast and before any mention of breaking camp, I strung up the old spin/fly combo rod and made my way around the near shore. It was soft and slow enough to be a decent-casting fly rod, but I was still not able to get much line out. I cast a size 14 Black Ant off the rounded granite mantle encircling the lake. It was a perfect platform, with no trees to snag an errant back cast. After a few offerings, I discovered plenty of eager trout very near shore. Unfortunately, they were all seven inches long, brook trout with heads too large for their slender bodies.
Cloud cover blew in on the morning breeze and ruffled up the lake, which had been clear to the bottom all morning. I cast the ant a little farther, and it disappeared into the chop. I could not see the fly, so I missed many of the strikes, but a single 30-foot cast produced so many bites and bumps there was always one colorful customer who took it harder than the rest and visited me on shore. I kept a few bleeders for the pan.
When Gary and Paul saw the regular, though slight bend in my rod, they rigged up and started around the other side. An hour or two later, we lit the stove for one last meal. We all agreed that our first impression of Upper Lamarck Lake had been too hasty. We would be sorry to leave it. This lake had a special charm. From our granite perch, we could see across the width of the Owens Valley to the White Mountains. Like so many lakes tucked under the divide south of Yosemite, Lamarck had inserted itself like a soap dish against the side of a granite wall. This didn’t make for great trout habitat. It was pretty, though, a relatively shallow tarn alive with trout slowly starving to death. Such easy fishing.
Plans change quickly at 11,000 feet. Before we knew it, a spitting rain bounced sizzling off our cooktop while we fried up several fresh trout with squeezy margarine and bread crumbs. We finished breakfast in a rush. The next thing we knew, we were in full retreat to Gary’s tent. He informed us reassuringly that he’d seam-sealed and Scotchguarded the rain fly and floor in the off season. This was somewhat consoling while the thunder and lightning pulsed outside. Then one went off directly overhead. KABOOM! Like a bomb had exploded. From sitting cross-legged on the tent floor, Gary launched himself into the air. For an instant, he resembled a very large Olympic gymnast or Aladdin, if Aladdin had a scruffy beard.
“Whoa! Hey! That’s too close!”
I’d never seen Gary freak before. He could get a little crazy on the dance floor, but otherwise, there was never any drama. Even 20 years later, when Matt Cain pitched his perfect game for the Giants in 2012, Gary was 10 rows behind home plate. He didn’t realize he was watching history in the making until the middle of the eighth. In fairness, Gary was never much of a baseball fan. The point is, the man is not prone to overexcitement, even when events encourage it.
He was screaming his head off now. This was a unique situation though, one that evokes a singular type of reaction we call “quivering.” Look it up: quivering n. 1: a weather-related event during which grown men are compelled to scream in fear while sitting inside a wet nylon box.
Peering out from under the rain fly, we saw the sandy flat we dug into was slowly becoming the consistency of wet cement from water streaming off the rocks that enclosed us. Pulling the plastic spade from the sealable t.p. bag, we dug a little trench around the tent and hoped for the best. For the next several hours, we tended to it regularly. Eventually, the valley heat pushed the storm north and west of us. And when the full sun returned, it set the elephantine walls and granite tables steaming. They dried remarkably fast, and when they did, we had a hot surface on which to spread out our storm-soaked tents and gear.
Delayed from our ascent over the Glacier Divide into Darwin Canyon, we gladly gave in to the pleasures of camp and the prospect of another night perched under the glacier. It was a beautifully clear, rain-scoured evening. We enjoyed a few hours casting and a stick fire. Someone had foraged a few pieces of damp cedar. Glowing under the granite amphitheater, our smoky little campfire smelled like incense.
A Campfire Story
Around the fire, several stories made the rounds, most of them unencumbered by truth. One of them concerned Paul’s and my hike up Mount Whitney in August 1984. Despite my friend’s careful preparation for the trip, more than halfway into the climb, he was struck by altitude sickness at the top of the steepest section, a 45-degree zigzag trail called 97 Switchbacks. Anyone who’s ever seen a photograph of Mount Whitney has seen this section. It’s the wall below the peak. Unfortunately, when Paul began feeling the effects of too little oxygen getting to his brain, we still had about a quarter of the climb remaining.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. Paul’s usual high spirits and energetic pace had dissipated. “I dunno man. I’ve got a headache. Feelin’ pretty small all the sudden.” Fairly quickly, we surmised that the elevation gain had sapped him.
Without the aid of bottled oxygen, there is only one cure for this physical condition, which is known as hypoxia: that is to descend. Ask any medical professional. Despite being a real-life medical professional himself, Paul continued ascending to the summit. I may have made some remark like, “Maybe this is not such a good idea.” But I was feeling fine and wanted to continue, thus enabling my friend’s folly.
Perhaps because of the lack of oxygen available to his brain or because he was 25 years old and in extremely good physical shape, Paul fell prone to a psychological condition, as well — the notion that he would live forever. Climbing with hypoxia at 14,000 feet did not change that. With no small effort, we made it up the last few switchbacks — though my partner was not in peak condition.
Once one surmounts the wall, the reward is that the summit comes into view. Another visual treat from this vantage is the perspective down the west side of Mount Whitney to the Hitchcock Lakes a mile below. After a few pictures, we finally reached the shack at the top of the mountain. This modest structure rests a few steps below the summit height of 14,495 feet. It is the size of a single-wide trailer and made from rock and corrugated metal — built to withstand, not to impress. Since its construction, it has greeted innumerable exhausted and elated hikers and climbers. Unfortunately, at this moment, Paul was not elated. He was a very unhappy camper when we went inside. The rock walls in the hut dripped with condensation. There were no seats — just hard, wet boulders. The interior was lit dimly from a few small windows.
With our backs against a moist wall, we sat on the rocks and said little, considering what we’d just accomplished. But Paul was not in his usual talkative mood. I pulled out my food bag and offered him a whole-wheat fig bar. He returned a sideways death stare without comment.
We didn’t stay long in the hut. All the action was outside. Unfortunately, it was cloudy to the east, so the hoped-for view into Death Valley had been erased. After a few pictures standing at the spot that non-climbers call the “tippy top,” we descended. Right around the middle of the 97 Switchbacks, Paul’s mood improved, and we clambered heavy-legged down to our camp on Lone Pine Lake to recover.
Surviving hypoxia and risking pulmonary edema, Paul had lived to tell the story. And he told it that night around the campfire at Upper Lamarck with a slightly more heroic middle section — about as much smoke as flame, but worthy of our attention.
Day Three, July 15, 1990
The morning of our big ascent from Upper Lamarck to the Glacier Divide broke bright and clear. Before the sun came up over the Owens Valley, we watched its glow slip downward, touching every rock and snowfield until the smoking embers of our campfire caught it, too. Gary had not awakened yet. It was just Paul and me, sitting on our thermal pads above the coals. The light all around was soft enough to reveal subtlety in the granite: several shades of gray one could not appreciate in the hot afternoon light.
Then it was gone. Our sublime sunrise in the Range of Light disappeared behind a cloud bank. You don’t have to be a meteorologist to know that cloud cover this early means worsening weather. By the time Gary got up and had a little oatmeal, we decided to break camp immediately.
It was a good decision, but before we could get our sleeping bags stuffed, it started raining. Hard. Out came the raingear. We created a little cacophony of swishing nylon, furiously trying to get the contents of our tents and camp into the backpacks. A few choice expletives were hurled at the granite walls, the weather above us, and anyone else in earshot, which, of course, was no one. We were all by ourselves up there, and for good reason.
The contents of our packs were fairly damp throughout; we removed them to a dry patch of sand under a rock. Then the feeble tarp shelter was reconstructed around the straining lodgepoles. This second go-round under the plastic lacked the excitement and adventure of the first day. No one offered the flask or even suggested it. Of course, it was eight a.m.
While sitting in the sand, trying to keep dry and come up with a plan, we heard a low rumble coming down from the mountain above us. An electrical storm was brewing and getting a very early start. The crackling of thunder while you’re sitting under a tarp in the rain is invigorating — you’re in the presence of the most powerful force on Earth. Also, it’s a little defeating. In any case, enjoy the moment, because every Sierra thundershower beats the best day at work.
For all the talk and weather observation, we could not invent a plan. Then it was imposed on us. The electrical storm was intensifying, and there was no way we were going to climb into that gray, flashing cauldron. We had a saying in 1990 for these situations, mimicking our then president, George Herbert Walker Bush.
“Wouldn’t be prudent.”
For the rest of the morning and afternoon, the rain was constant. The only change was our shelter. After an hour quivering under the tarp, we thought we might put up Gary’s tent and quiver inside it.
For entertainment, we had a small radio tuned to a Bishop FM station. The several maps we brought were laid out, picked up, pointed at, and discussed. Of course, I liked the old Fish and Game Angler’s Guide and shared a few descriptions. Paul shook his head, then asserted his opinion.
“The map is forty years old! And the information is even older.” This guy could drive you crazy, even if you weren’t trapped with him in a tent. “No way!” I said. “If there was a good food source and spawning in the outlet in 1958, it’s still like that.” But Paul was unrelenting. Though he wasn’t wearing it at the moment, he’d clearly been awarded a merit badge for pessimism. “You know, trout live only a couple years in that kinda terrain.”
“Yeah, I know. And every spring when it thaws out, they get the same feeling. It’s called propagation. They’re probly propagatin’ right now.”
Gary listened quietly to our cabin feverish rant then reached for the Angler’s Guide to read the italicized subtitle and section that entranced me: Description of Waters and Their Features.
I like to think he was seduced by the circa 1958 assessment of fisheries we would soon visit — perhaps that day, if the damn storm would let up. The most promising on our route was Desolation Lake: “Golden trout are reported to average 14 inches and fish up to 20 inches may be taken occasionally.” That’s sure to draw a mental picture in the mind of a frustrated angler after a few hours stuck inside a tent. Surely, somewhere in that forlorn-named impoundment 11,375 feet high, a 20-inch golden trout was swimming with my name on it. On the other side of the rain fly, reality imposed itself again.
The haphazard sandy trench system we’d dug the day before proved inadequate for today’s deluge. The ditch began falling in on itself, so we constructed a kind of California-style French drain. We took care to build it with gravel rocks, which kept the flow directed toward the lake. Mulholland would have approved. It was a pleasure to be outside with the warm rain pouring down. By the time the project was finished and we returned to Gary’s tent, we were soaked through to the seat of our pants. On the plus side, except where our soggy butts met it, the tent floor was dry.
A lot of laughter emanated from that confined, semidry space. We mixed a few cocktails in our Sierra cups, stirring in snowballs and cherry Kool-Aid to conserve the precious Vitamin T. We did a little reading and perused the maps again.
Around dusk, we were getting restless when a radio report mentioned an accident on Mount Whitney. Our ears perked up. The exact words the reporter spoke are lost to time, but not the events he described.
During the storm that day, a group of hikers had taken shelter in the hut on top of Mount Whitney when it was struck by lightning. Several members of the party were electrocuted. One could not be resuscitated. A helicopter airlifted him to a Bishop hospital, where he died.
All laughter ceased while we discussed this unimaginably awful event, which had happened so near us. We got a little spooked talking about it.
The Glacier Divide and Lamarck Col
We woke up before dawn the morning of July 16, mixed some M&Ms into our oatmeal, and broke camp. With three quart bottles full of filtered lake water and our bootlaces pulled tight, we set off in the direction of the glacier.
We called it the Lamarck Glacier that day, but there is no such designation on the Forest Service map. Named or not, the vast snowfield stretched up steeply until the snow line disappeared into the elevated horizon. We went up single file, with the lead climber creating footholds for the two behind him. Switching off occasionally, it wasn’t too strenuous, just slow. Expert climbers might suggest that we should have roped together for safety, but we didn’t. In fact, we didn’t even wear gaiters to keep the snow out of our boots. Old school.
After an hour, we put the glacier behind us and stepped on to hard ground. Our eyes met a landscape we had not foreseen on the map. Crowded with automobile-sized boulders, a trailless, rocky field stretched into the clouds. Slowly and carefully, we picked out a route. Occasionally, we found ourselves rock-hopping with our packs on. Navigating a granite wilderness, we went down blind leads, doubled back, then separated to find the best route. All the while, the clouds grew darker.
Eventually, the obstacle course of boulders got less crowded, and a trail sign emerged, rocks stacked a few inches high. These “ducks” were a welcome sight. Even though we knew from the peaks around us that our path had been fairly straight, the markers pointed the way to an intermittent trail that weaved between rocky sections. Here we made better time and passed the fresh-squeezed lake water between us as we moved. It would have been nice to stop and savor it. It was sweet water, but there was no time to rest.
Inevitably, the storm gathered strength — emitting the occasional cloud-obscured lightning flash just out of sight, but in the direction we were headed. There was no turning back. Finally we got high enough to see the notch at the top. We could make it. For the first time that day, the distance seemed shorter than it was.
The distance between this point and Mount Whitney also seemed shorter. A few minutes away from the ridgeline, there was a bright flash over my shoulder in the direction of Mount Lamarck. The flash, thunderclap, and crashing of falling rocks was simultaneous. The violence of it spun me around. I saw where it landed. It was close, a few hundred yards up the hill. Though the thunder had ceased and it was quiet except for the wind, Gary screamed: “THIS IS BAD!”
They say you can smell lightning when you’re very, very close to it. I don’t believe that now. I think what people smell is actually an involuntary olfactory reaction right before you evacuate your bowels. We did not stop to admire the scenery or to take a picture. We did evacuate, however — in the immediate direction of Lamarck Col and Darwin Canyon.
Darwin Canyon
The divide at Lamarck Col was marked by a one-foot-wide wooden sign bolted to a short, heavy post. On the other side of it, we took our first steps downhill. It was pitched as steeply as the uphill, but we moved much faster now and did not break stride the entire descent into Darwin Canyon. Eventually, on a sandy bench above Darwin Lake Number 3, we stopped to assess. The consensus was that we were finished for the day. Though we’d covered barely four miles as the crow flies, we were spent. The boulder field had done us in — that, and the excitement on top.
Miraculously, on the opposite side of the Glacier Divide, it was sunny again. The treeless granite canyon rolled out in a pleasing slow curve supporting sheer gray walls, snow-covered peaks, and ridgelines. That high in the Sierra, distances are greater than they appear. What looks like a short walk may take hours. Time and space up there are harder to measure. It’s a different world.
We didn’t bother setting up camp. The weather was too unpredictable. We ate and drank and rested. I could not take my eyes off the lake and its twinkling invitation. How long since anyone had fished it? Rainbow trout lay underneath the surface, but how large or numerous? It seemed a much better prospect than the lake we’d left. I assembled my rod. All my gear fit in a fanny pack I’d put together for the trip: two fly boxes, a few fresh leaders and tippet, clippers, floatant, and half a bag of split shot. My Leatherman stood in for hemostats.
I thought about going out in my float tube. The lake was large and deep enough. The float tube was a cheap mail-order type made of glued nylon and weighed a few pounds. It was the perfect craft for backpacking. The problem was, it leaked. Earlier in the season, I had patched the hole, but it didn’t take. It was a slow leak, fortunately, a pinhole along the bottom seam that bubbled up behind the back rest and made me uneasy. On the water, it sounded like a drowning cicada. Because of the leak, I never paddled farther than I felt I could safely swim back to shore while wearing waders and clutching my fly rod. Despite its imperfections, the old Bass Catcher never let me down and was the vehicle to some of the greatest sport I’ve ever enjoyed. I’ve had some misgivings about the decision since, but this day, I elected to cast from shore and leave the Bass Catcher in my pack.
Paul joined me to explore the near side of the lake. This third impoundment in the chain enjoyed a healthy inlet flow. Where they met, a swirling back eddy pushed against a rock and below a little maze of spiderwebs. Inside this trap, dried bits of flora and dead bugs dangled. When I examined the last, they looked like damselflies. Seeing the exoskeleton of a damselfly at more than 11,000 feet seems unlikely to me now. There was little vegetation around the lake. No insects were present. It didn’t look like any other lake I’ve fished before or since that had good damselfly action.
Nevertheless, on July 16, 1990, I thought I saw damselflies in Upper Darwin Number 3, so I tied one on — a tan nymph. Above it, 18 inches or so, I bit down on a split shot while surveying the slightly turbulent inlet corner. Bending over slightly, I made a few false casts. The ground was open all around the lake, and the back cast unfurled easily before my forward cast. Ploop! Pushed by the gentle flow, the split shot clicked along the rocks. Then suddenly the line pulled tight in my fingertips. I let out several feet of line before stripping it back. I was fast to a decent trout, finally. I called to Paul, “Hey, get down here! I’ve got a nice one on!” When he met me on the bank, my rod was bent over, horsing the fish into the grass. It was easily twice the length of the biggest fish we caught in Lamarck and heavy through the shoulders. We took a picture of it curled up on its stomach. It was a dark fish. And the band across it was deep red, not bright. It was a spawner. I hated to take it, but we needed the meat.
Cooked over the Svea that night, the flesh was orange and flavorful. With Top Ramen and tequila punch, we enjoyed a memorable dinner. No campfire light, just glowing peaks all around. We had a lot to talk about. The events of the day were recounted in detail and began to forge in our memory.
Evolution Valley
However carefully one plans a trip through the mountains, Nature controls the itinerary — even when Sherpas or Boy Scouts are involved. The several days lost to thunderstorms turned a fairly leisurely schedule of hiking and fishing into two full days of hiking. That rainbow from the inlet in Darwin Number 3 was the best fish of the trip. The next morning, descending into Evolution Valley, we stopped above the lowermost lake in the Darwin chain. At the outlet, 20 rainbows chased each other around the shallows, occasionally stirring the surface with their tails. Many were larger than the trout we took the night before. Standing there with our packs on, we watched for a bit. But there was no time to fish that day or the next. We had more than 20 miles to cover, much of it above the tree line.
When we reached the valley around dusk, I attempted fishing in Evolution Creek near camp. Peaks named for scientists such as Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin gazed serenely over this perpetually beautiful setting.
I caught my first and only golden trout that evening. I can picture it now. There in my hand with the Black Ant stuck in its mouth was the most colorful fish I’ve ever held — all seven inches. When I lifted my head, the peaks were glowing intensely, changing color imperceptibly, like the minute hand on a clock, from bright orange to pink, then purple and indigo.
Day Six broke under a perfect blue sky. What I would have given for an afternoon fishing Golden Trout Lake. . . but our schedule would not permit it. After eight hours hiking that day, we made camp at the tree line by Piute Creek. In that neighborhood, the creek carved its course over, through, and between the granite — strictly rockbound. As dusk settled in, I hopped up the canyon to a series of plunge pools full of little trout who, in their short lives, had apparently never seen a yellow Humpy. Some became quite attached to it.
And that was the extent of our sport. During the week we had set aside to catch the trout of a lifetime, we passed within a few miles of Desolation Lake and Golden Trout Lake without fishing either.
There’s an abbreviated version of this story that I like to tell — about how my ultimate high-Sierra golden trout adventure was hijacked by a Boy Scout. And that he turned a leisurely hiking and trout-fishing excursion through the most beautiful mountain scenery on Earth into a death march. The details of how we were delayed and that Paul ultimately had no control over whatsoever do not figure much in my retelling. It’s not as funny. All these years later, one might think I’m disappointed that I didn’t take advantage of my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to catch a big golden trout. Not exactly.
That trip up and over the Glacier Divide remains the most thrilling, awe-inspiring trip of my life. On the drive out, after a stop for ice cream and cheeseburgers, we enjoyed a long, muscle-sore soak in Hot Creek. Heaven for weary backpackers, it was a nice bit of punctuation at the end of our slightly soft survivor’s story.
Besides the Bass Catcher, I also carried a Konica medium-format camera. I used it only once during the trip — at the top of Piute Pass on the last day. Who needs a Sherpa?
