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| Hiking | 13.40 Miles |
3,211 AEG |
| | Hiking | 13.40 Miles | 7 Hrs 3 Mns | | 2.18 mph |
| 3,211 ft AEG | 54 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | This has been on my radar for years. I’ve read about the hike and viewed the likely route from a distance, but didn’t actually do the hike until today.
There was a heat wave covering much of California today and it was noticeable even at 11,000 feet. I don’t think I’ve ever been as warm at that elevation as I was today. There was also no wind all day, which is very rare.
While hiking up the Crystal Lake trail I stopped to take photos of the glassy Lake George below. A couple hikers coming up behind me stopped to chat. They told me that they had done the same hike yesterday that I was doing. Today they were just heading up to the crest to do some rock climbing. They continued on ahead of me while I shot photos. Shortly after passing the red cinder cone section I passed them and that was the last I saw of them.
During my ascent up the Mammoth Crest it was quite warm. I sweat way more than I wanted to. Even as I approach the first 11,200 foot high spot I was thinking, is the heat going to turn me around today?
As I headed down the steep descent to Deer Lakes, My mind was made up, I would rather go to Duck Lake than head back up this nasty section. I stopped at a campsite that I had been to before. There is lots of shade here and several logs to sit on. I ate lunch and rested before the next big climb.
The trek between the campsite and the climb over the pass is not a forest service maintained trail and at times, the trail disappeared altogether. Route finding wasn’t too difficult though. The trail finally reached the top of a small ridge and I was right next to the highest of the Deer Lakes.
I looked for the best route up the steep rocky slope and chose wrong. As I scrambled up the rocks I could see what looked like a trail about 20 yards to my right. I scrambled my way to that section and there it was, a steep well defined trail up. I’ll keep that in mind for next time.
After cresting the pass I saw a basin ahead of me and a trail on the far side. I headed that way and after descending a while, lost the trail. Route finding wasn’t too difficult. Eventually I reached another use trail and soon I had a spectacular view of Duck Lake and Pika Lake. After shooting some photos I reached the Duck Pass Trail.
Once over Duck Pass, I made good time. It was mostly downhill from here. After passing Barney Lake I reached a spot on the trail where a couple months ago I saw a peculiar animal that I had never seen before. I didn’t get a photo of it, but after doing an internet search, I identified it as a brown tailed weasel. I looked for it again at this spot today but no luck. After 30+ years of hiking and only seeing one of these weasel, I figured that I would never see one again. About a half mile down the trail, I saw another weasel. Again, no photo. It just darted across the trail in front of me.
I continued a fairly good pace all the way to Emerald Lake. Emerald Lake didn’t look too good. It’s rare for high sierra lakes to have algae in them, but there was a lot of it in Emerald Lake.
The hike to Barrett Lake was the most boring part of the whole trek. Barrett Lake was not that pretty and was a good 20 feet low on water. Fortunately, Lake George is very close and I was energized when I got my first view of Lake George. Once at lake level, I was on the most crowded section of trail of the entire hike with lots of fishermen coming and going. Oh well. I’m just about done.
When I reached my 4Runner, I looked at my GPS and the triplog said that I had hike 13.81 miles. That’s a bit more than my estimate. One hiking book that I have says that the hike is 15 miles. The quirky thing about my GPS is that when I download the track log to my computer, the track log says that mileage is usually less than the triplog says. In this case, the track log said that I only hiked 13.4 miles. Whatever the distance, it was a spectacular hike. |
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Autumn Foliage Observation Light
Fall is very lake here in the Mammoth Lakes area. There were some aspens and willows by Lake George that had turned, but I didn't take a trail that I expected to see much fall foliage. |
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