High Sierra Topix

(Scrolling issue fixed--thanks Eric!)

I did a quick overnighter in Desolation Wilderness on Saturday starting at the Meeks Bay Trailhead. Beta was a bit hard to come by for this trail so I wanted to get a firsthand look at the conditions as my wife and dog will be accompanying me to the area in a couple weeks. Mostly, I wanted to see if the logs at the Meeks Creek crossing were still up (spoiler: they are:).

I started hiking around 9:30am. The fire road at the start of the trail had some pretty nasty pockets of mud, but people have blazed a trail paralleling it on the uphill side, making the especially muddy parts easy to get around. It was a beautiful day to be in the mountains and many people were on the trail enjoying the weather and scenery.

The meadow that Meeks Creek flows through was, unsurprisingly, very flooded. Once the trail starts to climb away from the fire road, it becomes more shaded and is home to a ton of snow plants. The trail winds back towards the creek which is definitely running full and raging through the steep parts, but spread out and calm (and flooded) in the flat parts.

I got to the creek crossing around 11am and was pleased to see the logs were still in place. Even if they hadn't been, the crossing would have been very manageable.
From the creek crossing to Lake Genevieve, there were some minor patches of snow and a ton of tree carnage from the winter. I got to Genevieve around noon, fished for a little bit (no bites), then proceeded to Crag Lake. Once at Crag Lake, the snow patches started showing up in greater numbers, and just a short ways past Crag, there was more snow than I cared to deal with, and the creek running into Crag was running very heavy and would have been a formidable crossing. So I turned back and made camp on the southeast side of Crag (the woods on the south side of Crag were very flooded). Crag itself still had some sheets of ice on it. I'm guessing Shadow, Hidden and Stony Ridge are all still iced over. I spent the rest of the day fishing, reading, and enjoying the thousands of mini cascades melting on the north facing slope across the lake from my campsite. Though I did see a good number of fish, I was only able to bring in two right around sunset--one brown and one brookie--both good sized (~14").
Mosquitos didn't bother me too much, though I did end up with a couple bites. I'd probably say a 1-2 at the lakes, probably a 2-3 in the meadows, especially early and late in day.

Woke up around 6am (slept great!), fished both Crag and Genevieve for a bit but no bites. Left the Genevieve outlet around 8:30 and was back at the trailhead at 10am. Grabbed a disappointing breakfast burrito at The Dam Cafe in Tahoe City and enjoyed the view from the two bridges before getting stuck in the expected hot weather and awful traffic on my way back to the bay. Makes me wonder why I even bother coming back:) Feel free to PM me if you have specific questions.

-tweeds

thanks for the post, nice to see some water flowing through there!

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Great report, and good job on getting fish out of Crag!

Nice report. Its great to see some of the lakes of Deso thawing out and serving up some fishing action. Crag tends to be a somewhat finicky place even in the best of times, so a nice brown and brookie is a good visit. I've never caught a brookie out of Crag (only browns) although I'm not surprised brookies are in there.

I fished on and off throughout the day from about noon to about 8:15 pm. I alternated between fly fishing (which I'm still learning) and spin casting. The water was extremely clear and I routinely saw some decent sized fish follow my lure in or swim up and inspect my fly only to turn it's nose up at it and swim away. It was a bit frustrating. I had one bite on a fly around 3pm (which I missed), and then I caught the two fish between 7:30 and 8pm on my spin rod. Those were the only three bites I had all day. I'm pretty sure I slept better knowing that I avoided the skunk though:).

I wish I had gotten a pic of the brown (my first brown), but I had fished for so long that I was pretty shocked when I got the bite--so in all my excitement upon landing it, I forgot to get the camera out.

I spent around 5 weeks living out of my pup tent @ the Meeks FS campground after college graduation. I was ostensibly supposed to be studying for the CPA exam before starting a job in the City that coming fall. However, I was constantly distracted - gee, I wonder why? I would set up my chair & towel on the beach and either stare across the lake @ NV, or start on some easy reading candy book.

Sometimes I'd hike up to the rim trail for a few overnight fishing trips, other days I'd go for a jog up the fire trail, get really hot & sweaty, and then jump in the lake upon my return. Tahoe was always my magic place; it's a long way from SoCal, so a lot of my focus has turned south. (I can get to Mt Whitney in under 4 hours.) Still, we've always got Tahoe in the mix for a visit at least every other year.

This year I think we're going to blast up the 99, cross over Carson pass up to Reno, cross back down @ Truckee, cruise the shore, and then meander down the 395 to Tuolumne. At this point, I think we're looking @ late August rather than our usual June trip. It's so nice to see the lake full again - we had a quick fly-in last Oct, and it was shocking how low the level was.

Yeah, the whole Tahoe region is just such a playground and when one gets up early enough in the morning, its a very reasonable drive from the bay area. I've had many a fantasies about moving up there full time, but it's always been a tough sell on my wife:). I'm trying to squeeze in as much time as I can up there this summer as it looks like we'll be moving to southern California next year, where I too will be making good use of the 395 and making the southern Sierra my new excursion locale.