Labor Day Weekend: Humphrey's Loop
Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 4:30 pm
After hiking to Royce Lakes a couple months ago and viewing the distant lakes in upper French Canyon, I've been really itching to go back and visit those lakes. So this past weekend, I started at the North lake trailhead around 6:45 to hike up over Piute Pass. My route involved hiking up over Piute pass, hiking to desolation lake, dropping over Carol Col into the french canyon and then hiking back up piute creek back to the trailhead. 30 miles rt with approx 5,000 gain. Hiking up the canyon to Loch Leven was beautiful. Arriving at loch leven, the eager brookies were rising everywhere. I stood up high on a perch and watched them for a while before moving on.
The wispy clouds and breeze were refreshing atop the pass:
The hike from piute pass over to desolation lake was just that.. very desolate. It was however very cool to hike along in the desolate terrain to find tarns and grassy meadows hidden amongst the rocky terrain. After about 10 miles of hiking, I decided it was about time to set up camp and start fishing and caught some very beautiful fish:
The sunset was spectacular:
However, the following 2 days would be completely different when the high winds came in and made complete havoc. Saturday afternoon proved to be very windy and challenging for fishing. I ended up catching a few fish on the down wind sides of the lakes where the fish food was blowing against the shore, but it was a challenging afternoon. The winds really started to get obnoxiously strong around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, with 2 foot white caps across the whole lake, and I decided it would be best to call it for a day. I got back to camp, suprised my tent was still standing and decided to cook up some dinner. While cooking dinner, a Huge gust came up and slammed into my tent. The tent stakes ripped out of the ground and my tent went flying against a huge boulder. I could barely keep a hold of it, while tying to gather my tent stakes and jam them into the rocky ground. That night, i hardly got any sleep.
I awoke the next morning to rolling dark thundery clouds, with high gusts of 60 mph. I looked outside and snapped this photo:
Just before the rain started splattering into my tent. It was about 5:30 in the morning and I looked at the map, wondering if i should go back the way i came in, or to just drop into the canyon to get out of the rain and wind. I decided it would be better to drop low than to go high the way i came in, so i stuffed all my crap in my backback, jumped out of my tent and stuffed my tent in, then was out of there by 6:15am.
As I dropped into french canyon, i found something peculiarly odd.. Someone walked down the entire trail, completely barefoot. These weren't big feet either.. They looked to be like a child's. I thought they may have been from a lost child, or perhaps indians hunting or something? I was baffled. The fishing in french canyon proved to be tricky with the low water flows, but I managed to catch a few colorful goldens.
I reached Hutchinson meadows around noon and fished my way up piute creek off trail. The fish ranged from 8-12" and would eagerly take my flies. I ran into moosetracks along the creek, would have stopped to say high, buy i didnt know it was her and wanted to respect the groups privacy, so I kept moving along.
Camped at golden trout lake and caught fish in the outlet and the upper lake. Fishing was slow in the lower golden trout lake.
Monday proved to be an incredible day after the windy weekend and I took my time hiking back to the trailhead, catching as many fish as i could along the way. I'm eagerly looking forward to my next adventure this weekend.
The wispy clouds and breeze were refreshing atop the pass:
The hike from piute pass over to desolation lake was just that.. very desolate. It was however very cool to hike along in the desolate terrain to find tarns and grassy meadows hidden amongst the rocky terrain. After about 10 miles of hiking, I decided it was about time to set up camp and start fishing and caught some very beautiful fish:
The sunset was spectacular:
However, the following 2 days would be completely different when the high winds came in and made complete havoc. Saturday afternoon proved to be very windy and challenging for fishing. I ended up catching a few fish on the down wind sides of the lakes where the fish food was blowing against the shore, but it was a challenging afternoon. The winds really started to get obnoxiously strong around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, with 2 foot white caps across the whole lake, and I decided it would be best to call it for a day. I got back to camp, suprised my tent was still standing and decided to cook up some dinner. While cooking dinner, a Huge gust came up and slammed into my tent. The tent stakes ripped out of the ground and my tent went flying against a huge boulder. I could barely keep a hold of it, while tying to gather my tent stakes and jam them into the rocky ground. That night, i hardly got any sleep.
I awoke the next morning to rolling dark thundery clouds, with high gusts of 60 mph. I looked outside and snapped this photo:
Just before the rain started splattering into my tent. It was about 5:30 in the morning and I looked at the map, wondering if i should go back the way i came in, or to just drop into the canyon to get out of the rain and wind. I decided it would be better to drop low than to go high the way i came in, so i stuffed all my crap in my backback, jumped out of my tent and stuffed my tent in, then was out of there by 6:15am.
As I dropped into french canyon, i found something peculiarly odd.. Someone walked down the entire trail, completely barefoot. These weren't big feet either.. They looked to be like a child's. I thought they may have been from a lost child, or perhaps indians hunting or something? I was baffled. The fishing in french canyon proved to be tricky with the low water flows, but I managed to catch a few colorful goldens.
I reached Hutchinson meadows around noon and fished my way up piute creek off trail. The fish ranged from 8-12" and would eagerly take my flies. I ran into moosetracks along the creek, would have stopped to say high, buy i didnt know it was her and wanted to respect the groups privacy, so I kept moving along.
Camped at golden trout lake and caught fish in the outlet and the upper lake. Fishing was slow in the lower golden trout lake.
Monday proved to be an incredible day after the windy weekend and I took my time hiking back to the trailhead, catching as many fish as i could along the way. I'm eagerly looking forward to my next adventure this weekend.