McGee Lakes - Davis Lake; Goddard Creek Pass - Beta?

[EpicSteve]

Wow! I'd like to thank everyone who has contributed to this thread. Really great, detailed info. I'm impressed and grateful to all of you for sharing so much of your knowledge and time.

I'm quite experienced at XC and consider myself more than competent at "micro-route-finding." My days of enjoying death-defying terrain are long over and I never did like the loose stuff, but I'm good at steep talus, as long as it's not too loose. My buddy does have some limited XC experience, including some talus-hopping, but only for hours at a time, not multiple days. We will not be carrying ice axes, as he has never been shown how to self-arrest, let alone master it, so we will abort any route that requires an axe for safe passage.

For myself, I'd almost prefer to have a little less info prior to the trip, to heighten the sense of adventure. But I really want my friend to have a great time on his first big XC trip and I don't want to drag him through too much of the downside to "epic" XC journeys, so all the info is much appreciated!

[Rwestphal]

Thanks all for your replies - I am starting to think that unless we can track a route by following the series of small lakes up to davis and after crossing the small divider between the davis lakes, we may just have to stay at davis and then continue our trip by going to Wanda lake and missing out on McGee lakes. It just seems that with the past three years of drought we may just not encounter the aforementioned snow finger. According to one thread I read 1.4 miles essentially due east of mt. McGee there is a small notch that from my Tom Harrison looks like a pass between two buttresses. As for my previous experience, I have done a west to east trans- Sierra trip for the past 23 years and we always try and do at least two days of cross country. My group consists of 7 this year and we are rather experienced but we try and avoid class 3's - my father who is 74 is sick of crawling over rocks. I guess, we will have to get up early and do a day hike and see if we can locate an easy way down to McGee. We aren't going till September 1st, so by then there hopefully there is no snow. It looks looks like you can get to McGee by going well east around davis but since we are headed to Muir pass from there, the detour may be too much. As for our trip - We are going for 6 nights and won't hit the trailhead at voyager rock until about 3pm so we plan to get to post corral at 7:30. The following day we are going to hell for sure lake for the night. Next night Martha lake and then if all goes as planned to McGee lake - if not possible then davis. From there we are going to big Pete meadow after crossing Muir pass. Next day dust basin not sure if we are headed to upper or lower but it just depends on how we are faring. The finally out over bishop to south lake and of course the pizza place. I am headed to the usgs in Menlo park tomorrow to get my quadrants so hopefully I can find the way to McGee. Glad to hear there is great fishing as we are all anglers as we'll. thanks again and I will post upon return

[EpicSteve]

I'd like to give another big "Thank You!" to all the hikers who shared their knowledge with me in this thread. You can find my Trip Report here:

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(Sorry, but I couldn't figure out how to embed the URL in the word "here.")

As you'll see in my TR, my partner and I took the advice of several people from this thread and skipped McGee Lakes altogether. Instead, we hiked nearly to Wanda Lake and crossed Davis Lake Pass. We also skipped the high bench leading to Martha Lake (couldn't be sure where it began!) Instead, we followed North Goddard Creek all the way to the floor of Goddard Canyon and followed the Canyon to Martha Lake.

We didn't do nearly as good a job as Rogue Photonic did in our route finding on Goddard Creek Pass, that's for sure! It turned into a long scary epic. We didn't climb any peaks, as we weren't anxious to confront EVEN MORE long slopes of loose rock and we were already getting tired enough and seeing incredible enough scenery. Unlike some folks, we found Black Giant Pass to be extremely easy. I guess sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't. But either way, it was an absolutely incredible journey!