TR: Lake Bagging and Fishing around the Middle Fork Kings – 6/19 to 6/26 2021

[johnz]

Hello again fellow hikers! Two years ago I went with Jerzy and Joe on a splendid trip around the Cartridge Creek Basin.
http://highsierratopix.com/community/vi ... =1&t=20315
Almost as soon as I got home, I started planning another trip for the summer of 2020. Something happened…. and well … it got postponed until this year.

I flew into Las Vegas Friday morning 6/18. Jerzy and Joe came in the night before – neither had ever been to Vegas. I think this pretty much sums up their culture shock: After they picked me up at the airport around 8am, we stopped at a gas station before heading out of town. A fellow who was with his family, walked up and asked if there were any places nearby serving coffee. Simultaneously, a drunk woman walked up and asked if there were any places nearby where she could slam down some more vodka.

The drive out of Vegas was hot hot hot. We stopped by Badwater Basin in Death Valley where it was 120. Since our permit for South Lake was for the next day, we spent the night in Bishop (Eastside Bivy highly recommended). That afternoon, we walked along the Owens River.

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Saturday morning we got to South Lake TH and starting hiking at 8. As we hiked past the various lakes, we saw lots of trout. This was exciting to Jerzy and I as we brought our fishing gear and concerning to Joe, who is a vegetarian and probably didn’t want this trip to turn into a fishing expedition.

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Got to Bishop Pass around 11.

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The walk down to LeConte felt long and hot. As we gazed across the canyon, we could tell we should have left our ice axes at home.

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Once we got on the JMT, we started heading south and ran into a conga line of PCT hikers. It was funny how they all looked the same: Short shorts, casual sunglasses, and ankle gaiters. We stopped and chatted with a few of them. One guy had been only hiking 30 days. With a couple of rest days thrown in the middle, he was averaging about 30 miles per hiking day. Wow.

Once we got to Palisade Creek, we left the JMT, forded the creek and camped beside the Simpson Meadow trail. It was a large camp with a big tool shed that is probably used by trail crews. Nearby, Joe found some weathered artifacts, including an old timey Coors can. When did beer cans look like this? 1960s?

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After we made camp, I walked to the river and took a bath.

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The next morning we were on the trail by 7. As we made our way downstream, the gradient steepened and the middle fork crashed beside us.

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Parts of the trail here are overgrown, but it is mostly in good condition.

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to be continued...

[johnz]

Soon, we approached the hanging valley to the west of Observation Peak.

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A little before the trail crosses “Observation Creek,” we left the trail and started heading uphill.

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Do you like sketchy class 4 climbing? Do you like bushwhacking uphill against a sea of Manzanita? If so, then welcome to Observation Creek: A Paradise of Runout Slabs and Veggie Belays!

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After two hours of bushwhacklimbing, we arrived in the hanging valley and had ourselves a drink of water.

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The valley had lots of recent bear activity.

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to be continued...

[johnz]

We followed the main creek for a while before heading up the south fork that drains Island Bird Lake. Island Bird is the middle of three lakes. Instead of following the stream up to the first lake and then Island Bird, we opted to go further south and then hike directly up to Island Bird Lake. First, we carefully climbed one by one up through a loose chute. Then we trudged up a slope that kept looking like it was about to end but then kept on going. It was similar to the feeling we had when going up to the hanging valley earlier in the day, and we would have been quite discouraged were it not for the inspiring views to the west.

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Finally, we crested the slope and beheld the marvelous lake.

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The lake seemed fishless, but there were lots of blue dragonflies buzzing above the water. Curiously, we also found a fire ring.

As the sun set, we walked back to the top of the slope from whence we came and soaked in the majestic views of the Palisades, LeConte Canyon, and the Black Divide.

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to be continued...

[SSSdave]

chinquapin

[johnz]

chinquapin

Not sure what this means. Did I mislabel a bush? If so, please enlighten!

[johnz]

In the morning, we curved around the lake, heading in a south/southeast direction.

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As we ascended the northern slopes of Peak 11151, the other two lakes next to Island Bird came into view.

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Eventually, we reached a ridge, just below Peak 11151.

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I peered over to the other side.

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The south side of Peak 11151 is very steep and we had to descend along its narrow east ridge a ways before we could head south to the mysterious lake.

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Jerzy and I had tried to reach this lake from Dumbbell Basin via a steep couloir below Peak 11988 two years ago, but were thwarted by hard snow. After two and a half days of hard hiking, we finally made it! For a while, I just sat there, by the lake, taking in the immense amphitheater of rock that surrounded us.

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We were all relieved to be able to get off the ridge without setting off one of the huge boulders we had to slither past. In the picture below, as you trace the ridge line from left to right, you will see that it dips three times. We reached the ridge from the other side near the first dip and left the ridge near the second dip.

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After we had some time to recover, we took a group picture beside the lake.

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Conversation turned to what we should call the lake.

At this point, I want to give a shout out to Alpinemike and Roguephotonic. I spent a number of enjoyable evenings reading their epic trip reports. The photos they took of this area are an inspiration to me. With all due respect to them and anybody else who may have been here already, we just needed a less ambiguous and cumbersome name to use in conversation than "lake 10500 above Cartridge Creek" or "lake in basin west of Dumbbell."

We had come to the lake from Island Bird. On the way, Jerzy and Joe had a conversation about something one of them read about Ladybird Johnson. And since Ladybird is one of my favorite movies, we thought a fitting name would be Ladybird Lake.

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.0028132 ... 776!8i3888

With the lake bagging part of the trip behind us, my mind turned to the Middle Fork Kings and the bounty it promised. But first, we had to get off the mountain.

to be continued...

[johnz]

The descent down to Cartridge Creek is non-technical, but long. It is somewhat hard on the knees and there is some bush and talus to contend with.

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On the plus side, you get some truly fantastic views of triple falls – 2/3 of the way down the falls are directly facing you and at eye level. Looking at the map, I don’t think you can get such a view from anywhere else.

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It took 2-3 hours to descend the 3000 feet. A few hundred feet above Cartridge Creek, we started to contour west, looking for the old JMT trail.

We had come down Cartridge Creek two years ago and managed to find the trail eventually, so I was hopeful that it would be easier this time. Nope. If anything, trying to find it a second time made me realize just how amazing Joe is at picking up subtle clues from our surroundings. As he explained later, he was just trying to follow the bears, knowing that they would eventually lead to the old trail. This amazed me, because I couldn’t see anything around me that indicated bear – to be honest, my powers of detection are basically limited to looking for poop. But Joe – who spent much of his childhood in the woods of eastern Kentucky -- would notice some broken branches, a subtle dent in the dirt, or some vegetation that looked like it was pushed to lean in a particular direction, and would be able to piece together the path the bear took.

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Eventually, Joe found the trail again. We got to the confluence of Cartridge Creek and Middle Fork Kings, and set up camp. I took a refreshing and much needed bath in a pool right by the trail bridge.

The next morning, we woke refreshed, excited to explore the middle fork. We forded the river a little upstream from camp.

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We started walking along the river, heading downstream toward the southern base of Mount Woodworth. The initial stretch of the hike is beautiful open country on top of a cliff overlooking the river.

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to be continued...

[oddtiger]

That's quite some effort for lake bagging! Superb view!

[johnz]

That's quite some effort for lake bagging! Superb view!

Thanks oddtiger. Yes it was quite the effort, quixotic some might say. But the sense of adventure and, as you mention, the superb views are worth it!

[johnz]

Later, our walk along the river alternated between forest and exposed portions of the river bed.

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Every once in a while we would cross a stream and it would be teeming with little fish. The desire to just relax and fish was getting stronger, and our resolve to push forward began to wane.

Part of the reason we were even on the north side of the river was because we wanted to explore the rock feature that juts out of the south face of Woodworth between 8000 and 9000 feet. The south face funnels meltwater into a stream that seems to have cut an impressive slot into the feature.

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But the day was getting hot, the underbrush was getting thicker, and we had no idea how difficult it would be to access that area. At the point where we would need to turn away from the river and go north to get to the rock feature, we decided to sit down at the riverbank and contemplate our next step.

We happened to be sitting below a tree where little caterpillars were lowering themselves on lines of silk. Jerzy was the first to notice it – a little trout swam out from below a rock to inspect a caterpillar dangling about a foot above it.

I grabbed my fishing line and, without bothering with a rod, unspooled the line which was preattached with a fly into the water. I felt a tug and pulled the line, but it came loose. The fish scurried back under the rock. Then Jerzy give it a try, placing the end of the line in front of the rock. The fish bit again and this time it stuck!

We ate it on the spot, boiled and seasoned with some lemon pepper.

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And that was it. Any remaining desire for type II fun disappeared. We crossed back to the south side of the middle fork, and started heading for Simpson Meadow.

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There was a party camped at the established site, which was a blessing in disguise. We found a wonderful site on a sandbar just upstream. On one side was the main channel of the river, while on the other side a smaller channel flowed by at a much slower pace, creating a series of pools. We caught a dozen small trout that afternoon in those pools. Afterwards, we slept well in the soft sand.

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In the morning, I woke up early, before everyone else, walked into the cold water of the main channel and cast. I got a few bites, none stuck. It hardly mattered.

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“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.”