High Sierra Topix

I took a few friends up to Dusy last week, and had a great time. I would like to thank Papercup, Mav, Fly Dave and a few others for their help in making this trip so great. We ended up camping at Lake 11390 and found a nice place to set up a base camp right where Mav and a few others said.




The fishing at the upper lake was very good with relatively large brookies and great fighting larger rainbows. I had my heart set on getting into the Palisade basin, so the next day we headed over Knapsack pass using some before mentioned intel of making sure to stay low enough to be out of the boulders, but not lose a lot of elevation. On the way, we saw a huge buck.

It was my first X/C experience, and I found it to be lot of fun. We fished a lake in the basin that Papercup had PMed me about and his intel was right on. We caught quite a few of my largest to date sierra trout using #6 weighted line and an olive wooly bug as Dave had suggested. This was my first attempt at weighted line, and had very good success with it thanks to Fly Dave.

We had planned on exiting out through Knapsack, but since we were so close to Thunder bolt Pass and we had now seen both sides, we thought we could handle it even though I knew it wasn’t going to be as easy as KS pass. So up we went.

The ascent was easy, but the boulder field on the descent was tiring. In retrospect, we probably should have traversed the field near the top, but we decided to play it safe and follow the very faint use trail down the boulder field.

Got back to camp around 3 in time to cook up some pizza and reflect on my first and second XC passes ever. Since this trip was relatively easy, I experimented with our meals in an attempt to spice things up a little. I hit home runs with making pizza and Breakfast Burritos from mostly dehydrated, lightweight products.



The rest of the trip was uneventful as we headed out the next day and were back in Huntington Beach by 8.

That is a nice hog

Sounds, and looks, like you had a really great trip, and had a good x-country
experience, now the fun really begins.
Thanks for coming back Phil, and taking the time, to share your experience with your
fellow HST members, this is what makes HST a great place and community!

Thanks for the report!! I'm headed that way in a couple weeks.. Nice fish too!! I can't wait!!

PM me if you have any ?s

I think you answered my ? Already!! Olive Wooley Buggers!! Haha!! Now to just dig up my sinking line..

Neat report, including the camp culinary details--nice! The fishing situation is interesting, too--big brookies and rainbows in Upper Dusy. In the "old days" of air drops the upper lakes were goldens and rainbow-golden hybrids (I last wetted a line there in 1993). I've never taken enough time in Palisade basin---I should drop in sometime (detoured through there and fired in a few blank casts on return from a very long dayhike to Mt Sill's summit from Dusy 11393). The scenery in the Dusy-Palisade basin area is always hard to beat, too.

Sorry, you are right, we caught relatively large rainbows in the upper lake. We did catch some nice Brookies, but not there.

Hiking, fishing & photo opportunities, my favourite combo.
Oh, and the luxury of a pizza in the wilderness....icing on the cake.
Thanks for sharing your adventure.

I was shocked at how good the pizza was. Betty Crocker pizza dough mix, spaghetti mix with dehydrated paste, dried mushrooms, dehydrated black olives, a small stick of pepperoni and dehydrates mozzarella cheese and cook for 5 to 8 minutes on low. I swear it was as good as home. The ova easy eggs and cheesy dehydrated hash brown along with some smoked bacon and some hot sauce (del scorcho packs next time) made for a great break fast burrito.