R03/R04 TR: Red, White, (and Blue) Loop. July 3-6, 2020

[Wandering Daisy]

Last time I camped at Laurel Lake it had tons of underfed fish. I caught a fish every cast! Good eating but not big. It really would benefit from some more fishing. Although illegal, I often wonder if I would actually do the fishery some good by catching 100 fish and throwing them in the bushes.

[SNOOOOW]

Great report. Another trip of an area I have mostly not visited. Thanks for all the photos, makes it so much more fun for me when I follow along on the map with your story and photos. Mono creek is always terrible in my experience, tons of flies and horse crap everywhere. I did have my only backcountry fire ever years ago while passing east through there from the JMT which kept the mosquitoes at bay sort of. Thanks again.

[Flamingo]

@Wandering Daisy Yes, so many fish in Laurel Lake. While we were there, my friend picked up a grasshopper with his hands and tossed it into the water; a dozen hungry fish raced to the surface to eat it. I imagine fishing here must be easy.

[windknot]

Great report of a nifty route! I like the photos, and having never been in this area the change in geology is especially striking to me.

WD, my personal favorite failed attempt at culling stunted brookie overpopulation in high lakes is CDFW's efforts to introduce fish-eating brown trout into some lakes with lots of small brook trout close to trailheads along the Eastern Sierra. I should say, it was a mostly failed attempt. The lakes still have tons of small brookies, but now they have a few huge browns swimming lazily around like sharks too. They ignore the vast majority of fishermen's lures (and for good reason -- they've got a veritable buffet floating around them at all times) but every once in a while someone gets lucky.

[jrad]

[[At 4pm I started up the Hopkins trail. The route was easy to follow and the grade was gentle. I settled into a meditative cadence of breathing and walking, and soon found myself in a grassy meadow above 10,000’. I followed a use trail towards the tarn (10,872’), but this trail led me into a canyon choked with cottonwood.
[/quote]

Hi!

I much enjoyed your descriptions and photos since I've crossed that area a few times and plan a trip there in 2 weeks. However, I must say I was dumbstruck to see you refer to "choked with Cottonwood" anything above 8000 foot elevation.

You got the right family of plants (Salicaceae) but mistook Willow for Cottonwood. Willows are small to medium height shrubby plants found absolutely everywhere in the High Sierra and indeed choke many, many routes. Where there's reliable water, there WILL be Willows. I avoid them if possible since they almost always hide serious hazards (hidden holes between large rocks, being the worst) besides just being a pain to push through.

Cottonwoods in the lowlands (like all over Owens Valley) and Aspens (same Populus genus and found from low to very high elevation) are wonderful trees that lend their glories to Fall (willows are much duller bit still nice). Cottonwoods and Aspens, I don't think, are ever described as choking anything, unlike willows (Salix genus), which pretty much are defined as choking the landscape.

FYI, Aspirin is derived from and named for salicylic acid which derives its name directly from Salicaceae. Humans from time immemorial have known to alleviate many pains by chewing on willow or related leaves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salicaceae

Also, "Ross Finch" popped out, I'm afraid, as well (Rosy, not Ross). But that is no big deal. But not knowing what a Cottonwood is is something to amend.

By the way, I started to send this as a private message so you could quietly edit your report BUT thought, "Other people might be confused by this distinction and it is a very important one." And the wiki articles are very informative ... for what it's worth.

[tahoefoothills]

This was a very nice report with accompanying photos. A friend of mine and I did a slight variation of this route in July 2021. We did not summit Red Slate Mountain and did not double back over Hopkins Pass. Instead, we exited over Mono Pass. Thank you for taking the time to share your report.

[Harlen]

Great short/long trip Flamingo. Amazing places, and nice photos of it all. Cheers, Ian

p.s. jrad, FYI some pretty high Sierra areas (8,800' Ranger Meadow comes immediately to mind) are indeed "choked with Cottonwood." I have the scars to prove it! And the Aspens that populate many avalanche paths are indeed a path-choking nightmare at times. Eric and I just experienced this on our last trip over Cartridge Pass.

[Flamingo]

Hello @jrad -- thanks for the notes on my TR. You may be correct about the cottonwoods-versus-willows. My main memory is the grief of bushwacking through it, and the scars on my legs, LOL. Anyway, it appears I don't have edit access to the original post; the current HST system seems to disable edits after 24(?) hours. Your comments are useful for future searches, especially the Rosy Finch spelling mistake. Cheers!

[grampy]

Regarding the "Ross Finch" reference - though ROSY Finch is clearly the correct name, I have seen some maps (Google Maps being a current example) that misspelled it as Ross Finch ... for example:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/VjYbHJUHof9CSjWz5?g_st=ic

I seem to recall that Open Street Maps (upon which the Gaia GPS map app and some others are based), included this error just a few years ago, until someone corrected it.

And yes, I also enjoyed Flamingo's TR when it first got posted. Thanks again for this.