Dewey Lake
Getting to the good stuff
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Despite having to climb out of my tent to drop a deuce at 4:15 I slept great . The rain had stopped sometime during the night but it was still overcast and damp when I awoke for good shortly after 7 AM.
Still not wanting to deal with cooking I pounded down 2 cups of GORP and lazed about, occasionally packing up some gear while waiting for the tent to dry a little bit. Tye and Ward, the two fishermen in the group, were down at the lake trying their luck with moderate success.
At 9:40 Tye, Brad and I left our camp at Rainbow Lake under a very light drizzle, each of us wearing our rain jackets. The rain gear came off after about 10 minutes---which was just long enough for me to start sweating---when it became apparent that we weren’t going to get seriously rained on.
We arrived at Lake at Falls after only 40 minutes of hiking and Big Park Lake, where we decided to take a short break and eat a snack, 20 minutes later. While we sat, Reed and Ward caught up but didn’t stop. Since the sun was now out we pondered stopping at the head of Big Park to perhaps set up the tents to dry them out, but we couldn’t find an open spot that wasn’t a swamp. So we pushed on.
Surprisingly, I was feeling pretty good physically and determined that my difficult day yesterday was due in large part to the stress that came with my broken down vehicle and having to settle for a 7 night trip instead of the planned 9. Of course, we hadn’t been on the trail that long and the vertical gain had been a fairly easy grade. I was sure that once the trail got a little steeper I’d be pissed at myself for not working out more---or at all.
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Not unexpectedly, the trail steepened just beyond Big Park Lake and found myself mumbling under what little breath I had. I was truly pissed that I was breathing heavily and my legs---the same legs that were once able to propel me high enough into the air to dunk---were now letting me down big time. The only saving grace was that I hadn’t felt any pain in my normally sore knees so far. Still, I found myself asking why the hell I as doing this.
Just before noon we stopped just short of Duggan Lake for lunch, with yours truly bringing up the rear, sill in a semi-pissy mood and still breathing hard. Had we hiked another 3 minutes we would have had a eating spot with a view of Duggan instead of more crummy waterfalls. I was also pissed at myself for not knowing where we were despite having my GPS strapped on my sternum strap. Had I taken a look I would have suggested we hiked another 20 minutes up to Impasse Falls and eaten in style. Instead, we discovered a view of Duggan was literally 50 steps and 10 vertical away. Oh well, at least now I had an idea why the hell I was doing this.
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After a few more minutes Brad and I were forced to pull out our cameras when we first viewed Impasse Falls from the shore of Duggan Lake. Now I KNEW for certain why I was here. We easily climbed a few switchbacks and soon found ourselves at the brink of the falls and decided this would be a good place to take another break and wait for Reed who had gotten a late start after lunch. I found it amazing that as the scenery got better, so did my stamina.
Another 40 minutes of hiking found as at the convoluted Twin Outlets Lake. To me, it seemed like there had to be more than two outlets but what do I know? A few more minutes of climbing past more waterfalls and we were at the Dewey Lake outlet,
All five of us took another break and a few pictures while we discussed our options for the night. I wanted to camp on the southern shore of the lake at the foot of Mt. Dewey below a beautiful cirque. The problem with that idea was that to get there would require close to another hour of hiking and climbing over a large knob to approach from the west. The straight ahead route would entail a dangerous crossing of the outlet stream. Also, Brad wasn’t feeling his best today so I led us to another area where I knew there would be enough room for the five of us.
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It didn’t take long for each of us to find spots to put our tents, except for Tye who was intent on catching some fish. He got a few and Ward, who joined him a bit later, did also.
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For the first time since the day before the sun was shining and it looked like we were going to have a beautiful late afternoon and evening. The mosquitoes were still present but there was no need to live in our head nets like we did the year before. Still, I lit up a piece of mosquito coil as I pondered my choices for dinner while rummaging through my fairly massive food bag.
I decided that this would be a good night to try out some backcountry pizza I’d been thinking of since October. It was pretty simple, actually. I pondered making real pizza dough from Bisquick but thought it might be a pain in the ass so I went with a flour tortilla shell for my crust instead. I dehydrated some pizza sauce, onions, green peppers and sliced mushrooms at home, and had pepperoni slices and cheddarjack cheese along for the ride.
The pizza turned out great though I didn’t have near enough the veggies I needed for the 3 pizzas I eventually ate. Lesson learned.
Unfortunately, it looked like pizza night was going to conclude with more rain as the sky began to cloud up around 5:30. We hastily cleaned up our dinner mess and I stowed the cheese in a snow drift just across the small inlet stream that ran near our camp site.
In the meantime, Tye was still wetting his line down at the lake, which by now was turning into a cool and breezy evening. The breeze was good for knocking the mosquitoes down but made the fishing a bit more difficult.
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For one of the few times during the trip we were all able to hang out together on the rocks overlooking the lake, giving Ward grief for not catching fish as large as Tye was getting. Good fun that came to a halt around 8 PM when the first drops of rain started to fall.
Luckily, the rain only lasted for a few minutes and soon we were treated to a double rainbow arching over the cirque were I had wanted to camp.
Tye, Ward and I stayed up a bit later than the ailing Brad and the tender-heeled Reed, whose blisters were now cause for growing concern. Nearly the size of silver dollars, each step he took had to hurt and I secretly began to wonder how he’d do once we got off trail. I knew we’d be within a couple of miles of a trail for the next day and a half so a self-rescue wouldn’t be terribly difficult if it came down to that.
Since it was starting to get a bit cool we decided to turn in for the night but not before Tye directed my attention to the reddish-orange eastern sky. If you didn’t know any better you’d have sworn you were looking at a sunset---without a sun. I’d never seen anything like that before and was, quite frankly, quite perplexed.
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As I laid inside my sleeping bag I finally had the chance to do some thinking about our route and my horrible physical conditioning. The Kid had told me months before that he wanted to see the confluence of Sierra Creek and the Summerville Lake outlet. I was on board with that for sure. Brad and I had talked a little bit about maybe spending two nights up near Flat Rock Lake and doing some day hiking up to Navajo Tarn or beyond. I was up for this as well since there are very few photos of this area online.
I figured we should be able to make it over to the Crystal Lake basin for our fourth night which would put us in prime position to get Tye his side trip to Sierra Creek and put us in good shape to do some dayhiking up to Flat Rock and Navajo Tarn the next day. The only problem with spending an extra day up there was we weren’t sure of the terrain beyond Donelson Lake. The descent from high Pass looked to be a difficult on on Google Earth, but I knew it could be done as hikerjer had been up that way. Still, there was that element of the unknown. If it took longer than planned to get down to Keyser Brown Lake then or If we had a nasty weather day then we might not be able to make it out on time to get Reed and Ward on the road. Well, we could fall off that bridge when we got to it.
In the meantime, I was really looking forward to getting back above the treeline and off the trail tomorrow and was particularly excited for Reed's first real off trail experience. Hopefully there would be a lot of snow up on the plateau.
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