Desolation Wilderness - 7/2-7/4 Trip Report

[Styk33]

I had planned to hike up to Forni Lake on 7/2, camp there, and then see if the conditions allowed to head over to Highland Lake on 7/3 and the hike all the way back to the trailhead on 7/4. I was pressed for time on 7/2, as I had a BBQ to attend to and then pick up my backpacking partner. We didn't make it to the Van Vleck Trailhead until 7pm. Which meant we would be doing some night hiking. That typically isn't a problem, but my post trip analysis says it was. I did something bad that I spent probably 20 minutes talking about to my hiking partner, rely on GPS. My phone was in my hip-belt pocket and my map was on top of my pack with my compass. Instead of pulling out my map when we came to a split in the trail, I grabbed my phone's gps and looked at that. Since my route was sketched out on my map, but not on my GPS, we took a slightly different route, as the sun had set were hiking by headlamps now. The trails were flooded for a hundred feet or so in several sections, which created a problem at night, since we couldn't see exactly were we needed to go, since all we saw was water the size of a football field. Still too lazy to pull out my map and compass I followed the GPS trail, that I thought we should be on. After some bush hopping and roaming around the thick trees, we finally came back to the trail, but not the correct trail (which I didn't realize at the time), since I was looking at a little iphone screen. We followed it along as it came to a water crossing, which is what I remember from when I planned the route. We crossed it without much trouble (downed logs in a few locations) and continued on. We lost the trail due to snow (around 6,500') and just kept the sound of the river near us. Around 945pm we heard a bunch of frogs and looking at my GPS it showed that we were at the lake. We crossed the outlet of the lake and walked around debated on how much frog we wanted to hear when we slept. We found a great five star camping spot (sheltered by one large fallen tree on one side and then large rocks on each of the other three sides). 10pm we setup our tent, had a snack, hung our food and went to sleep.

We woke up and enjoyed some breakfast, packed up camp and headed up and around the side of the mountain to get to Highland Lake. This is the beginning of the big problem. As always, I pulled out my map and compass and we just headed out, but my starting location was different than what I was looking at on the map (I didn't know this at the time). The terrain wasn't as snow covered as I expected, but the topo was similar enough that we continued on. We went around the one side of the mountain and saw a good sized lake, but it looked like it was around four miles out, and not a mile, like it should be. I stood on rock ledge for almost an hour looking around at peaks and the terrain trying to figure out what I was looking at. I eventually came to the conclusion that we didn't stay at Forni Lake, but at a large pond that was around a mile north of Forni Lake. From that moment on I could not wrap my head around where exactly we were and just kept noting how to get back to "our pond" as we hiked. We decided to just hike around and enjoy ourselves on the side of the mountain we were on. We heard a good waterfall/river flowing around a rise on the mountain and decided that might be a place to check out or possibly camp at. We hiked through waist high manzanita for a few hours to get there, only to see large boulders above us, as we were cliffed out on the manzanite route. Since we had gone this far, the boulders weren't tremendously bad, but did require a bit of scrambling, we continued on. After around an hour of working our way up the boulders, we crawled through more manzanita and made it to good solid dirt! We worked our way around and down to a nice view of the lake we found. Based on what I figured, it was actually Forni Lake. This was after hiking nearly up to Tells Peak (which I confirmed when I got there) to see Rubicon Lake in the distance. I went back down and relaxed a bit and my hiking partner and I debated staying at Forni for the night and heading back the way we had planned, the next day. Since both of us were struggling wrapping our heads around how we ended up at Forni from "our pond", we decided to go back to what we know and camp at "our pond". We hiked along for an hour or so down the mountain and then my hiking partner was having some serious back issues, so it was very, very slow going for the last hour or so. We arrived at "our pond", setup camp, ate dinner, hung our food and went to sleep.

The next morning we packed up camp and started heading back down to the trailhead with the creek near us, knowing we would cross the Highland Trail a few miles in. We did just that and found the actual trail and stayed on the trail, which doubled as a creek for hundreds of feet at a time. Both of us chuckled at the fact that it is almost impossible to get lost on this fairly well used trail in daylight.

It was a great three days, I donated a bit of blood to some manzanita bushes, followed some bear droppings and tracks that were around a day old and saw many fresh deer tracks in the snow. Bummed we didn't get to do the route we planned, and question if the route was even doable, based on the large amounts of snow on anything north facing (above 7,000'). On the final day, within a mile from the trailhead we finally saw other humans. One guy, Peter was heading up to Forni Lake and I am not sure if he made it up there, due to the large amount of snow I saw. I plan to swing by and talk to him next week (he only lives a few miles from me outside of Sacramento) to see if the trail was passable to Forni, as I did not go over to look at the actual trail coming up the mountain when we were at Forni Lake.

I learned to stick with what I know, map reading, and leave the GPS with the folks that are adrenaline junkies.

[ERIC]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. First post trip reports are the best! Thanks for posting! And welcome to HST!

[balzaccom]

Great report! Your experiences are not that unusual in early season hiking: drowned trails, snow-covered trails, and bushwhacking.

Welcome to the nut house.

[Vaca Russ]

"Our Pond" ????? You mean this lake?

Pond.JPG

I think you meant "Joe Boocks Lake". The real name is "Huth".

I visited this lake a while back over a 4th of July weekend.

Please see my report here:

http://www.highsierratopix.com/communit ... 9974&hilit

You must have really done some bushwhacking to find that lake!!

Thanks for the report,

-Russ

[Styk33]

"Our Pond" ????? You mean this lake?

Pond.JPG

-Russ

Russ,

No that lake was the view near Tell's peak, as I tried to figure out where in the world I was. My backpacking partner had their phone die on them, so the only pics I have are the few they sent over the night we returned.