We then traveled to Hutchison Meadow basically to reminisce about a trip my brother and I did there about 30 years ago.
I was amazed at the amount of hikers doing the South to north lake loop, and couldn't wait to make a right up the French Canyon. We camped at the Merriam Lake outlet with plans of a scramble up to Merriam before heading up to L lake. During the night, it began to rain, and upon awakening, we decided to forego Merriam and get moving since a storm appeared to be on the way.
It was amazing how the sierras can change, At French it was 70 and sunny and the next day it was 30 something and either raining or hailing most of the day.
The next day was spectacular with blue bird skies again. We hiked up to Puppet and Paris with plenty of descent fish at Paris, and a few blow ups on the fly (I farmed both hits) at Puppet. After about 3 hours of fishing and nothing spectacular, we hit Puppet pass.
I have really started to enjoy the easier passes and simple route finding. I now find myself eying most of the peaks around me assessing how I would attack them. From there, we fished Deso lake, and then headed over to upper Golden Lake to camp. This put us back into the rat race, so we decided the next day to hike back to the pass via Wahoo, Goethe and Lost Lakes in order to fish our way out and stay off the trail.
Thanks to every one for the in put for this hike. After spending a most of my time around 11K, I find myself thinking that I enjoy the forest and meadows of the lower elevations more than the stark and photogenic environment of the higher elevations. I have really begun to enjoy off trail route finding and the solitude that goes with it. By the way, My pizza continues to be unbelievable and with a simple change, it is now easy. I now take the Betty Crocker pizza dough and mix in water, Spaghetti sauce, dehydrated mozzarella, Parmesan, peperoni, dried mushrooms and freeze dried olives. this is all mixed together and poured into the skillet and cooked as a pancake into Italian bread.
