High Sierra Topix

<r>Did a two nighter with my 13 year old son out of Courtright Reservoir into the Dinkey Lakes Wilderness on June 4, 2021. This area has been on my hit list for a few years. <br/>
We made the long drive from the Bay Area to Courtright to fish at the reservoir and car camp the night before starting our two nights in the wilderness. <br/>
Courtright Reservoir is very picturesque due to the number of domes surrounding it. <br/>


We had planned to car camp at the PG&E Trapper Springs campground but it had not yet opened for the summer so we camped at the Marmot Rock CG. Only about a third of campsites were used and there not many people around. I managed to catch a nice rainbow before dinner from the shore on the east side of the dam.<br/>


We camped next to a group of three guys from Visalia who have been fishing in this area for years. They came over to introduce themselves and to invite us for a taco dinner! The tacos and conservation were excellent and it was great that we didn’t need to fire up our bbq. <br/>

We started out on trail heading to Cliff Lake in the morning and the hike was pretty easy. We hiked through an area burned by the Bullfrog fire from last summer.<br/>


We made it to Cliff Lake by mid afternoon and set up camp and managed to catch some brook trout which we ate for dinner. I cooked them for the first time on my jet boil wrapped in foil for about 6 minutes. Very tasty!<br/>



Sights of the lake<br/>



The next day we took a day hike from Cliff Lake to Rock Lake, Second Dinkey Lake and Island Lake. <br/>
The fishing at Rock Lake was outstanding. Caught many brookies.<br/>




We didn’t see any fish at the Second Dinkey Lake. We tried fishing for a while at Island Lake but didn’t get any bites. Island Lake is a very pretty lake. <br/>




I hiked a ridge to the east of Island Lake which had some nice views to the north and east.<br/>


Here are South Lake and the First Dinkey Lake from the ridge.<br/>


We stopped to fish again at Rock Lake on the way back and caught quite a few again.<br/>



We dragged some big logs about a half mile to our campsite as we hiked back because there wasn’t much wood to be had near Cliff Lake. <br/>
We caught more brook trout at Cliff Lake and again ate a couple for dinner. We had a nice campfire that night. <br/>


We hiked out in the morning and made it back home by about 8 pm. <br/>
Mosquitos were not too bad the entire trip. Probably a 2 out of 5 rating.<br/>
Great trip to an area that I had never been to. Would like to go back to fish at Courtright from a boat one day.<br/>

Great report. Looks like your son has the touch of a trout fisherman!

We did a very similar trip a couple of years ago---with similar fishing results. Sad to see that burn area...

Very nice report. I've been through the area a few times and really enjoyed it, thanks for the memories.

What a wonderful trip with your son. Actually, when you think of it, Dinkey Lakes Wilderness isn't so terribly far from the Bay Area. Because it's on the west flank of the Sierra it's a shorter drive than going over to the east side.

These are the things that your son will never forget. Great tr, thanks for sharing

Thanks for sharing your experience. Looks like you had a great fishing trip. It was sad to see the damage from the Bullfrog Fire, but thanks for sharing it.

Great report! Looking forward to making a similar trip once my son gets a bit older. I've camped at Courtright over at Voyager Rock many times and looking to explore the area more.

I'm going to be leading a group up there in the next couple of week, and have a question for you: over the past 5 years the last section of trail from Second Dinkey up to Island Lake has become terribly, terribly degraded. However, while we were there last year, I actually ran into the District's Head Ranger, and had a long talk with him in which he noted that he'd heard complaints but had no idea how bad that section of trail had actually become. He indicated that fixing it was clearly a priority.

Obviously, there's been a lot going on up there in the past year (tragically), and when I spoke to the rangers this morning, nobody's been able to tell me whether they got a trail crew out there to fix that trail. In lieu of running out there for an afternoon myself, can you tell me if the last climb up to Island has been repaired, or if it's still a mess?

Nhrpolitic13,
I had never before been on the trail to island lake but in my opinion I would say that the trail had not been maintained or repaired. That being said we did not find that section to be dangerous and that section is very short, less than 5 minutes of hiking.

Thanks!