South Lake in the wind

[balzaccom]

With M's foot slowly recovering from tendonitis, we decided to push our luck a bit and take a hike out of Bishop via the South Lake trailhead. The weather was windy as heck (up to 70mph over the passes) on Wednesday, but those winds were supposed to die down on Thursday morning. Or not. We picked up our permit for the trail into Dusy Basin at the Mono Lake office with no trouble, and had plenty of choices for a campsite at the Willow CG below South Lake. Everything was perfect. But the next day the wind continued to blow hard. We took it slowly up towards Bishop Pass, hoping the wind would ease off in the afternoon.



But by the time we stopped for lunch at Saddlerock Lake, it was blowing harder than ever. And so after lunch we dropped back down below into Timberline Tarns and looked for a campsite. We figured that we could hide out for the afternoon, and give it a new shot in the morning. The people we had met on the trail coming down from Bishop Pass looked shell-shocked by the experience, and told of really difficult conditions. Some had hiked from Happy Isles or Whitney and said that Bishop Pass was the worst experience of their hike. With a few days worth of food in our bear can, we thought it made sense to wait a day and let the weather improve. We had a nice exploration of the two Timberline Tarns in the afternoon--this is spectacular country. Late in the afternoon we stuck our head up again into Saddlerock Lake and got our hats blown off. That evening the temperature dropped to the low 40s, and with the wind it was chilly. We were in our tent by 7:30, snug in our bags. At least we were prepared with the right gear.



That night the wind howled and gusted, and the temperature dropped to right around freezing. By the next day, the wind was still blowing hard, and clouds were moving in. We did not like the idea of going up over the pass, and so we headed back towards Ruwua and Chocolate Lakes, hoping that they would be more sheltered.



The trail from Long to Ruwau Lake is really steep, and Ruwau is nestled in a dramatic granite bowl at the base of Cloudripper Peak. That was hard work But once we checked it out, we decided to continue on over the use trail to Chocolate Lakes. Our topo map showed a trail. It was optimistic, and made us reconsider what steep means. Straight up and straight down. M's foot was holding up, but barely. Chocolate Lakes are gorgeous. We really liked the middle lake best for camping. We thought about that, but the wind was still knocking us around, and it was still before noon. Maybe Bull Lake would be better.



We ate lunch there in the shelter of some trees on the east side, but the gusts of wind blowing our food around convinced us that it was time to give up. As the great cyclist Eddy Merckx once said, "the hills are hard, but wind is the master." And on this trip, the wind was winning. On the way back down the trail we ran into quite a few groups heading in for the weekend. We were surprised to learn that none if them could tell us what the current weather forecast was. Amazing. I hope they were prepared for temps in the 30s and 30 mph winds...gusts to 50+. We were, and we still felt the conditions were not enough fun for us to continue.



We also met a young guy who was literally running up the trail early in the day up by our campsite. We laughed with him and at him as he jogged by. Later the same day we saw him jogging back down, nearly done with his hike. It turned out he had promised a friend to carry a resupply load up into Dusy Basin. And he was seeing how quickly he could run the route, God bless him. He was still laughing as he jogged off down the trail.

That night we slept back in the van in Willow campground. The wind shivered and shook the aspens all night long, and then next morning we drive into Bishop for a warm cooked breakfast. That settled it. We were going to the cabin, not back up into the wind. The wind blew hard all the way over Sonora Pass, and the deer hunters there must have spent a memorable and cold night waiting for dawn.




The rest of the photos are here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/c7fFMevdGy1sCUZBA

[The Other Tom]

My son and I had a similar experience in that area a few years ago. We also bailed after a day or so....too much wind.

[longri]

So beautiful, but I find the wind kind of takes some of the fun out of it.

I was in the middle of a two week trip last week when the wind kicked up. I barely slept that night with the tent flapping, bending, and rocking. Like a ship at sea in a storm. Cloudless weather, stunning, yet I took the opportunity to exit with a week's food in my pack as I was at a particularly convenient place to do so.

Checking the forecast since I think that I made the right call as the wind has continued. I know my limits; I'm not a hardman. City life is okay for now.

[oldhikerQ]

The wind forced us out one day early on our loop out of Silver Lake/Rush Creek. When we got to 1000 Island Lake on Wednesday, there were whitecaps on the water. Standing by the lake overlook at the JMT intersection, the gusts were knocking us off balance. We bailed on our plan to camp at the upper lake near Glacier Pass and headed back toward the trail head. Found a bit of shelter at a small lake and spent the night. The next day's destination was Clark Lake to allow for fishing. Too windy there as well, so we walked out.

[SSSdave]

Wind has always been an enemy of photographers. Also in the winter as a powder skier that is not afraid to get out while it is snowing, I choose such storm skiing carefully not to be windy, as sitting on a chairlift with 20F temps windchill is miserable regardless of how much clothing and headgear. Thus I learned long ago where to find information regarding winds in order to avoid weather conditions with windy forecasts.

In this Internet era there is much one can do to understand probable wind conditions. The best web site to become familiar with is windy dot com. What it has the the below sites do not is over 24/7, wind speeds at different altitudes and maps showing forecast cloud areas. Also weatherunderground dot com has wind graphs on their 10 day forecasts. And the NWS has graphs to for any map location if one has drilled down and figured out how to bring it up:

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.p ... =graphical

On this last trip into 20 Lakes Basin I chose 3 days where forecast graphs showed calmest mornings. After that during the period bz experienced a big slow moving trough with rains far to the north was forecast to push through the northwest while we would just be cool and windy. On my trip, afternoons were breezy but then I don't expect any afternoons to have calm unless it is thunderstorm weather. And look what I had on Friday morning:

http://www.davidsenesac.com/2018_Trip_C ... .html#sep7

[longri]

In this Internet era there is much one can do to understand probable wind conditions. The best web site to become familiar with is windy dot com. What it has the the below sites do not is over 24/7, wind speeds at different altitudes and maps showing forecast cloud areas. Also weatherunderground dot com has wind graphs on their 10 day forecasts. And the NWS has graphs to for any map location if one has drilled down and figured out how to bring it up...

You can get quite a bit of advance warning if you have internet access. But what do you do when you're in the backcountry for more than 5-7 days? The forecasts aren't reliable enough beyond that time span.

I sometimes ask the folks carrying InReach devices if they have a current forecast. But the forecasts that Garmin pipes to those devices aren't very rich in detail.

[ryanerb]

I sometimes ask the folks carrying InReach devices if they have a current forecast. But the forecasts that Garmin pipes to those devices aren't very rich in detail.

I would guess the best plan with an inreach would be to text someone who has computer access and have them translate / fwd a reliable forecast... at least I think this would be a good idea...

[longri]

I sometimes ask the folks carrying InReach devices if they have a current forecast. But the forecasts that Garmin pipes to those devices aren't very rich in detail.

I would guess the best plan with an inreach would be to text someone who has computer access and have them translate / fwd a reliable forecast... at least I think this would be a good idea...

Yeah, I thought about that. But the texts are limited to 160 characters. A typical NWS forecast is over 1000 characters. If you include the forecast discussion it more than doubles in size. That would be a lot of texts so it may not be practical to just forward the forecast. You'd have to impose upon someone to not only send you the forecast but also carefully digest it into a smaller format that still contained the key information.

[ryanerb]

I sometimes ask the folks carrying InReach devices if they have a current forecast. But the forecasts that Garmin pipes to those devices aren't very rich in detail.

I would guess the best plan with an inreach would be to text someone who has computer access and have them translate / fwd a reliable forecast... at least I think this would be a good idea...

Yeah, I thought about that. But the texts are limited to 160 characters. A typical NWS forecast is over 1000 characters. If you include the forecast discussion it more than doubles in size. That would be a lot of texts so it may not be practical to just forward the forecast. You'd have to impose upon someone to not only send you the forecast but also carefully digest it into a smaller format that still contained the key information.

Yeah, just find one of your buddies that is good with backpacking and have them translate the forecast into a short format with only key details, etc. I was up there the week before the 'wind event' and it was great. Weather definitely goes in cycles! Windy one week, not the next, etc.

[SSSdave]

In this Internet era there is much one can do to understand probable wind conditions. The best web site to become familiar with is windy dot com. What it has the the below sites do not is over 24/7, wind speeds at different altitudes and maps showing forecast cloud areas. Also weatherunderground dot com has wind graphs on their 10 day forecasts. And the NWS has graphs to for any map location if one has drilled down and figured out how to bring it up...

You can get quite a bit of advance warning if you have internet access. But what do you do when you're in the backcountry for more than 5-7 days? The forecasts aren't reliable enough beyond that time span. I sometimes ask the folks carrying InReach devices if they have a current forecast. But the forecasts that Garmin pipes to those devices aren't very rich in detail.

Sierra Nevada summer weather forecast reliability depends on a list of factors that varies. Generally summer forecasts during fair weather periods are more reliable than summer weather forecasts during monsoon events that is more reliable than winter forecasts when the jet stream moves south becoming active at our latitude. At any time of year forecast reliability falls off with increasing days. For longer trips one should be gear prepared for whatever nature throws at us. For sub week long trips, wind forecasts can be quite valuable, especially for photographers and anyone targeting activities in wind prone areas above timberline. As we move into October the reliability of forecasts reduces while consequences of being caught in cold and or stormy weather increases. In my case in October as I don't backpack but rather road trip day hike working fall leaf areas, I choose to set dates when early snowstorms occur as dustings of snow increase aesthetics. I pay close attention to forecast temperatures as that indicates what will be white as well as where one might drive without getting stuck.

During our 9-day Humphreys Basin trip in early August my assessment of weather information winds was reasonably accurate enough during the full period that showed we would not have smoky hazy skies during most of our mornings when that was most important for my photography plans. It also showed a few days of afternoon thunderstorms followed by fair weather sunny days.