The Dayhike That Refused to End
Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2013 2:19 pm
On Tuesday (30 July) I dragged a very athletic student, Josh Marroquin on my second long dayhike of the summer, hoping to follow up on the very successful fishing expedition 3 weeks earlier, and building on the "Do the backpacking trip as a dayhike". The target this time was to climb Spanish Mtn. to get views of Kings Canyon for geomorphology studies I'm doing--ie some "custom" oblique photos better than I can do from Google Earth. Also on the list, of course, was fishing the Geraldine Lakes, particularly the upper one and a nearby unnamed lake. I considered attempting the Spanish jeep trail in my Pathfinder, which, if run to the end, would have shortened the trip considerably, but mixed reports about the degree of difficulty caused me to err on the side of caution and start off from Forest Road 11S07 south of the jeep trail. My rationale was that if I got stopped at the first hard spot I had heard about on the Spanish trail, I'd be farther away from the target than launching from the high point on 11S07. What I didn't realize at the time was that 11S07 is very inaccurately positioned on the JMW topo map and our true kickoff was about 400' lower than that shown on the JWM map (about 7200 versus 7600). In any case, I figured an off trail hike up the skyline (W) ridge of Spanish Mtn. would have great views, so it would be worth a shot. Similar to the previous "dayhike of dreams" the kickoff seemed to go seamlessly, for we left Fresno at 6 am and were hiking at 8 am.
Compared to the previous offtrail "backpack in a dayhike" trip to a great west flank fishing lake nearby, I figured this trip would be physically harder, owing to more elevation gain, but would be easier route finding because of following a skyline ridge. As it turns out the mapping error on the JMW map caused me to make a series of routefinding errors that chained together and cost a lot of time. In a nutshell the 400' difference on the ridge top at the start caused me to "shift" the identity of all the bumps on the ridge downward and westward. This would have not been so bad, had I not tried to sidehill point 9295 in order to save 500' of gain. I didn't realize that my takeoff point for the sidehill traverse was 300-350' lower than I thought and along a different "bump" than the one I thought I was traversing around. I thus wandered into this meadow thinking I had successfully walked around 9295 and arrived at Garlic Meadow. The wooded and rather low angle nature of the surrounding area, further compounded matters. After some ascending through trees following a very long and sinuous walk through the wooded flats--thought I was wandering around E of Garlic Mdw but was not--I rounded the shoulder of the real 9295 to the real Garlic Mdw thinking I was rounding a shoulder of 9368. Of course I mistook 9368 for Spanish Mtn., an error not realized until topping out on 9368. We reached 9368 about at the time I had thought I'd reach Spanish Mtn. After thinking about it for a bit and briefly considering aborting things for some fishing at the Spanish Lakes, we trudged on to the summit of Spanish Mtn. Could I have avoided this error if I had GPS or even a compass? Yes, but part of what makes off trail hiking fun for me is making myself do it with topo only. As it stands, if I had more checking my topo more regularly I should have been able to figure things out properly. Returning to the hike itself, the start was especially grueling off trail, for it was steep, had some moderately thick brush in places, and had an annoying amount of down timber. We reached the summit a bit after 1230 pm. The Spanish Mtn. summit views were not quite as good as I thought because it does not drop off into Kings Canyon directly from the summit. Various trees also block views into the canyon. Nonetheless it is a nice vantage point. For peak baggers who want to do this peak more "conventionally" from Spanish Lakes, it is a class 1 walk up, except for the summit itself, a low-angle pile (ie no exposure) of car sized boulders/blocks that is class 2. The register is in standard aluminum cylinder, although the book is a calendar book, which has caused some confusion among some of the neophytes who have signed in, for they signed on the appropriate page for the date of the year, rather than in sequence. This leads to some signatures that are way "out of sequence". What is striking is the lack of visitation for such an accessible peak. The small book in the cylinder was placed in 1997 and there look to be an average of a half dozen entries per year. From the summit we descended to beautiful Upper Geraldine Lake, the most alpine of all of the lakes in this area. The descent began with some scree, some of it suitable for "scree skiing", followed by low-angle friction slabs. Josh, who is a great athlete in terrific shape, is still getting accustomed to various scrambling aspects: bouldering (probably why he didn't tag the actual peak summit), scree skiing (took initial descent off the ridge very cautiously), and friction walking on slabs. This led to a rather slow 500' descent to the lake and added to the "being behind schedule" aspect that began with my huge route finding errors on the ascent. Partway down, Josh had a big rock roll on his ankle which made going painful for him afterwards. I wasn't 100 percent, either, for, at the beginning of the hike, no more than 300' above the car, I had hit my trailing (right) leg on a log during a low-speed hurdling move causing a deep bruise (charlie horse)to the inside corner of my right quad. This made my right leg rather stiff and made things more precarious for my left knee which has been recovering from an injury sustained on the earlier big dayhike. In any case, I don't know exactly what time we reached the Upper Geraldine, but it must have been 230 pm or so. No rises decorated the lake surface and I did not see a fish cruising until I saw a brookie dart in and out of a sunken log near where I was rigging up. It looked reasonably large---12" I thought at the time. I finished the first retrieve and started jigging off the drop off for fun and the fish came darting out again and smashed the lure but was not well enough hooked for me to bring it in. I encountered little action, however, for quite awhile afterwards. As Josh napped, I then started circling the lake to find the optimal casting spot. Clearly the fish were hanging really deep and this was verified when I found a stupendous drop off into deep blue water. I sank the lure all the way to the bottom lifted off, touched down, lifted off, etc. In this way I caught fish on the last 6 consecutive casts (lost one of them pulling it out of the water). The brookies were not impressive, running 9-9.5". What looked like 11-12" down in the water was in fact 9-9.5" in reality. The fish were medium bodies rather than skinny and big headed, so there may be a higher top end here, but I don't think its that much bigger than what I caught. Finally reaching the sweet spot in the lake to fully explore the fishing potential, I realized that it was now time to go--in fact pushing things a bit late. I think I stopped fishing at about 340 or 345pm. There were still matters of filtering more water (had consumed all of the 3L I began the hike with), cleaning the 5 brookies, and putting them in my usual towels.
I would guess we left the lake no earlier than 4 pm. Logic dictated that we should probably forego anymore lake stops and head straight for the car, but there was this unnamed lake nearby that I figured I'd regret if I didn't inspect it. It is fairly shallow and I didn't see a sign of fish life. I took 5 casts, all of which were retrieves from the bottom of the deepest spot. Nada. Fishless? I'm not sure I'd say that. I didn't see aquatic insects or some of the other signs of a fishless lake. A fairly well beaten use trail to the lake may also be an indicator because folks don't visit a lake like this unless it has fish and the trails in this area are pretty faint to begin with, too.
Now it was well after 4 pm and we headed for Spanish Lakes. We soon found that even the trails shown as "maintained" in this area are hardly that and major parts of the Geraldine to Spanish route simply don't exist, or at least they don't exist where the map shows them. The descent to Big Spanish lake was on slabs and talus and this took Josh quite awhile. We arrived at the lake at about 6 pm and stuck off for Little Spanish. It was becoming clear that we wouldn't reach the car before dark, but I figured, if it's going to be dark anyway, I should at least get a few token casts into Little Spanish: 5 casts. One these retrieves had a large fish latch on, but it came off. I also saw a very chunky rainbow rise (probably in the 12-14" range). There wasn't a lot of activity though (no cruisers seen and two rises).
We departed Little Spanish at 630 pm or a bit before. We planned to follow the trail to the Spanish jeep trail, then decide what to do. We reached the jeep trail end at about 705 pm. I figured it would take two hours off trail to reach the car. If we headed off trail back to the car we'd be an hour from the car when it got dark. I remember vividly how difficult it was to navigate off trail in the dark from a dayhike in 2011 that intercepted the Topix fishing crew at the Chain Lakes (then went off trail to Spotted Lakes). And the off trail hiking coming from Spotted Lakes to the trail was childs play compared to the rough off trail down to my car at 11S07. Considering the navigational problems (really bad trajectory could even end up heading into Kings Canyon) and the possibility of injury in the dark (huge number of tripping hazards), we figured the best move would be to hike out to 11S07 on the jeep trail. That way, when darkness fell we'd be on the jeep trail and could find our way out. The 5-mile jeep trail seemed endless. We were walking by flashlight the last hour or less on it, followed by an additional hour walking up 11S07. After the never ending jeep trail, the last bit of road walking also seemed without end. We reached my car at exactly 10 pm and Fresno at a bit before midnight. The hiking distance looks to be about 16-17 miles, of which half of the distance was off trail, with 5200' or more of elevation gain.
Compared to the previous offtrail "backpack in a dayhike" trip to a great west flank fishing lake nearby, I figured this trip would be physically harder, owing to more elevation gain, but would be easier route finding because of following a skyline ridge. As it turns out the mapping error on the JMW map caused me to make a series of routefinding errors that chained together and cost a lot of time. In a nutshell the 400' difference on the ridge top at the start caused me to "shift" the identity of all the bumps on the ridge downward and westward. This would have not been so bad, had I not tried to sidehill point 9295 in order to save 500' of gain. I didn't realize that my takeoff point for the sidehill traverse was 300-350' lower than I thought and along a different "bump" than the one I thought I was traversing around. I thus wandered into this meadow thinking I had successfully walked around 9295 and arrived at Garlic Meadow. The wooded and rather low angle nature of the surrounding area, further compounded matters. After some ascending through trees following a very long and sinuous walk through the wooded flats--thought I was wandering around E of Garlic Mdw but was not--I rounded the shoulder of the real 9295 to the real Garlic Mdw thinking I was rounding a shoulder of 9368. Of course I mistook 9368 for Spanish Mtn., an error not realized until topping out on 9368. We reached 9368 about at the time I had thought I'd reach Spanish Mtn. After thinking about it for a bit and briefly considering aborting things for some fishing at the Spanish Lakes, we trudged on to the summit of Spanish Mtn. Could I have avoided this error if I had GPS or even a compass? Yes, but part of what makes off trail hiking fun for me is making myself do it with topo only. As it stands, if I had more checking my topo more regularly I should have been able to figure things out properly. Returning to the hike itself, the start was especially grueling off trail, for it was steep, had some moderately thick brush in places, and had an annoying amount of down timber. We reached the summit a bit after 1230 pm. The Spanish Mtn. summit views were not quite as good as I thought because it does not drop off into Kings Canyon directly from the summit. Various trees also block views into the canyon. Nonetheless it is a nice vantage point. For peak baggers who want to do this peak more "conventionally" from Spanish Lakes, it is a class 1 walk up, except for the summit itself, a low-angle pile (ie no exposure) of car sized boulders/blocks that is class 2. The register is in standard aluminum cylinder, although the book is a calendar book, which has caused some confusion among some of the neophytes who have signed in, for they signed on the appropriate page for the date of the year, rather than in sequence. This leads to some signatures that are way "out of sequence". What is striking is the lack of visitation for such an accessible peak. The small book in the cylinder was placed in 1997 and there look to be an average of a half dozen entries per year. From the summit we descended to beautiful Upper Geraldine Lake, the most alpine of all of the lakes in this area. The descent began with some scree, some of it suitable for "scree skiing", followed by low-angle friction slabs. Josh, who is a great athlete in terrific shape, is still getting accustomed to various scrambling aspects: bouldering (probably why he didn't tag the actual peak summit), scree skiing (took initial descent off the ridge very cautiously), and friction walking on slabs. This led to a rather slow 500' descent to the lake and added to the "being behind schedule" aspect that began with my huge route finding errors on the ascent. Partway down, Josh had a big rock roll on his ankle which made going painful for him afterwards. I wasn't 100 percent, either, for, at the beginning of the hike, no more than 300' above the car, I had hit my trailing (right) leg on a log during a low-speed hurdling move causing a deep bruise (charlie horse)to the inside corner of my right quad. This made my right leg rather stiff and made things more precarious for my left knee which has been recovering from an injury sustained on the earlier big dayhike. In any case, I don't know exactly what time we reached the Upper Geraldine, but it must have been 230 pm or so. No rises decorated the lake surface and I did not see a fish cruising until I saw a brookie dart in and out of a sunken log near where I was rigging up. It looked reasonably large---12" I thought at the time. I finished the first retrieve and started jigging off the drop off for fun and the fish came darting out again and smashed the lure but was not well enough hooked for me to bring it in. I encountered little action, however, for quite awhile afterwards. As Josh napped, I then started circling the lake to find the optimal casting spot. Clearly the fish were hanging really deep and this was verified when I found a stupendous drop off into deep blue water. I sank the lure all the way to the bottom lifted off, touched down, lifted off, etc. In this way I caught fish on the last 6 consecutive casts (lost one of them pulling it out of the water). The brookies were not impressive, running 9-9.5". What looked like 11-12" down in the water was in fact 9-9.5" in reality. The fish were medium bodies rather than skinny and big headed, so there may be a higher top end here, but I don't think its that much bigger than what I caught. Finally reaching the sweet spot in the lake to fully explore the fishing potential, I realized that it was now time to go--in fact pushing things a bit late. I think I stopped fishing at about 340 or 345pm. There were still matters of filtering more water (had consumed all of the 3L I began the hike with), cleaning the 5 brookies, and putting them in my usual towels.
I would guess we left the lake no earlier than 4 pm. Logic dictated that we should probably forego anymore lake stops and head straight for the car, but there was this unnamed lake nearby that I figured I'd regret if I didn't inspect it. It is fairly shallow and I didn't see a sign of fish life. I took 5 casts, all of which were retrieves from the bottom of the deepest spot. Nada. Fishless? I'm not sure I'd say that. I didn't see aquatic insects or some of the other signs of a fishless lake. A fairly well beaten use trail to the lake may also be an indicator because folks don't visit a lake like this unless it has fish and the trails in this area are pretty faint to begin with, too.
Now it was well after 4 pm and we headed for Spanish Lakes. We soon found that even the trails shown as "maintained" in this area are hardly that and major parts of the Geraldine to Spanish route simply don't exist, or at least they don't exist where the map shows them. The descent to Big Spanish lake was on slabs and talus and this took Josh quite awhile. We arrived at the lake at about 6 pm and stuck off for Little Spanish. It was becoming clear that we wouldn't reach the car before dark, but I figured, if it's going to be dark anyway, I should at least get a few token casts into Little Spanish: 5 casts. One these retrieves had a large fish latch on, but it came off. I also saw a very chunky rainbow rise (probably in the 12-14" range). There wasn't a lot of activity though (no cruisers seen and two rises).
We departed Little Spanish at 630 pm or a bit before. We planned to follow the trail to the Spanish jeep trail, then decide what to do. We reached the jeep trail end at about 705 pm. I figured it would take two hours off trail to reach the car. If we headed off trail back to the car we'd be an hour from the car when it got dark. I remember vividly how difficult it was to navigate off trail in the dark from a dayhike in 2011 that intercepted the Topix fishing crew at the Chain Lakes (then went off trail to Spotted Lakes). And the off trail hiking coming from Spotted Lakes to the trail was childs play compared to the rough off trail down to my car at 11S07. Considering the navigational problems (really bad trajectory could even end up heading into Kings Canyon) and the possibility of injury in the dark (huge number of tripping hazards), we figured the best move would be to hike out to 11S07 on the jeep trail. That way, when darkness fell we'd be on the jeep trail and could find our way out. The 5-mile jeep trail seemed endless. We were walking by flashlight the last hour or less on it, followed by an additional hour walking up 11S07. After the never ending jeep trail, the last bit of road walking also seemed without end. We reached my car at exactly 10 pm and Fresno at a bit before midnight. The hiking distance looks to be about 16-17 miles, of which half of the distance was off trail, with 5200' or more of elevation gain.