mystery of Burro Lake
Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 9:44 pm
Playing with Google Earth, I visited what has been a long mystery location on the topo map for me. Always wondered what that difficult to access metamorphic geology basin east of Excelsior Mountain where Burro Lake resides looked like and now in 3D like what I saw. I've been up in the Green Creek and Upper Virginia Creek areas several times over the past decades and have an attraction to the its colorful rock. I normally keep such places as this to myself like fishermen that have found an offtrail lake with big goldens. However given its challenges, it might serve some amusement here on this board.
Thus also brought up the more detailed Google satellite map of the same area to study it some more and with my topo figure out what might be the best strategy to reach it with a full backpack. I would imagine some climbers without much map sense have clawed there way up the outlet stream but that appears foolishly painful. Next I searched for "burro lake" AND lundy on the web and received little in useful hits. A peakbagger took a photo down on the lake from the Black Mountain area and some 20 something had to be rescued by a SAR team after thinking he could day hike from Lundy to Virginia canyons haha. And a botanist found some rare plant up in that zone.
So I'd bet no one on this board has been there nor know anyone that has even though it is a rather trivial distance as the chipmunk scampers from the roadend going up to Lundy Falls. Sort of like being down about the Merced River in Yosemite Valley looking up at Half Dome and saying the Diving Board bench is not far away. I'd expect some fishermen climbers have gone up there and reported they indeed only saw stunted big-headed brookies haha so that ended that. And peak baggers climbing to the top of Excelsior Mountain or Black Mountain have other obvious ways to reach those summits. So now that I've done a bit of 2009 web homework, I see a nice 3-day backpack there about early to mid August.
The trouble with Google Earth and satellite maps (for me) is there are quite a bit more such interesting places to visit than I imagined just a few years ago. At least back then many such places by topo alone were too much the mystery to know for sure.
David
Thus also brought up the more detailed Google satellite map of the same area to study it some more and with my topo figure out what might be the best strategy to reach it with a full backpack. I would imagine some climbers without much map sense have clawed there way up the outlet stream but that appears foolishly painful. Next I searched for "burro lake" AND lundy on the web and received little in useful hits. A peakbagger took a photo down on the lake from the Black Mountain area and some 20 something had to be rescued by a SAR team after thinking he could day hike from Lundy to Virginia canyons haha. And a botanist found some rare plant up in that zone.
So I'd bet no one on this board has been there nor know anyone that has even though it is a rather trivial distance as the chipmunk scampers from the roadend going up to Lundy Falls. Sort of like being down about the Merced River in Yosemite Valley looking up at Half Dome and saying the Diving Board bench is not far away. I'd expect some fishermen climbers have gone up there and reported they indeed only saw stunted big-headed brookies haha so that ended that. And peak baggers climbing to the top of Excelsior Mountain or Black Mountain have other obvious ways to reach those summits. So now that I've done a bit of 2009 web homework, I see a nice 3-day backpack there about early to mid August.
The trouble with Google Earth and satellite maps (for me) is there are quite a bit more such interesting places to visit than I imagined just a few years ago. At least back then many such places by topo alone were too much the mystery to know for sure.
David