I have been sick (again). I have not been hiking in a few weeks. Finally this weekend I felt like 100% again so I thought it would be good to take Journey on one last backpacking trip before summer. I thought about going to Eastern Sierra but I just did not feel like making the long drive over there and Journey hates long car rides so it would not be good for her either. How about something closer to home? How about the Desolation Wilderness?
It was supposed to be windy all day Saturday. That would keep the mosquitoes away. Sunday would be a different story. We arrived at Mosquito City (aka Wrights Lake) just before 9AM. The wind had not started yet but there were no mosquitoes so that was good. The recreation area is not open yet (which was very surprising) so we had to park before the gate which adds a half mile or so to the hike. The parking lot was already almost full.
We started our hike. The wind started right on time at 9AM. My pack was very heavy. It was 40 pounds because I was carrying all Journey’s stuff as well. I need to buy her a new pack but I have not done it yet so I figured I would just carry all her stuff this time. I am sure she was happy about that. Me, not so much.
About halfway you have to cross Silver Creek. I was a bit shocked how much water was flowing in the creek. It was deep and up to Journey’s belly. She was leery but she did well crossing it.
The total hike is 8 miles one way with 1500 ft. elevation gain. That is not so bad except almost all the gain is in the last two miles before the pass. This was a very tough climb. I was absolutely beat. Heavy pack, no exercise in weeks, you get the picture. Journey seemed to do well but if she was carrying a pack she would have struggled.
When we got to the top of Rockbound Pass it was extremely windy. It was almost blowing us off our feet. We quickly continued off the pass and encountered a lot of snow on the north side. Journey was ecstatic about the snow, running back and forth down the steep slope while I carefully tried to make my way down without slipping and falling. Journey has built in spikes on her feet. Ha ha.
It was very windy at Lake Lois where we planned to camp. There was one group camped at a spot just before the lake and they may have been out of the wind for the most part but there was no other place. We crossed the outlet stream to the spot I camped at last time. It was very windy here but there was nothing else so I set up camp here. Once I got the tent set up I was happy with how it was handling the wind. The gusts were 50mph and they were constant. The tent was being blown to pieces but it was holding up.
I could not cook my dinner because the wind blew out my stove immediately. I tried to block it from the wind with big rocks but that did not work. The only way I could cook is from the tent vestibule which was out of the wind so Journey and I sat in the tent while I made dinner in the vestibule. Journey thoroughly enjoyed the dehydrated meal that mom made for her. After dinner we had 1.5 hours before we had to go on our evening hike. Sitting outside in the wind was out of the question so we laid down in the tent. I forgot my kindle (stupid) so all I could do is listen to the wind batter my tent to bits for 1.5 hours. It was crazy.
In the evening we hiked down to Lake Schmidell. It is only a half mile but a big 500 ft. descent. Coming back up afterwards was tough because I was so tired. There was not much wind down at Lake Schmidell but there were mosquitoes. My goal on this trip was to photograph the two waterfalls at Lake Schmidell and Lake Lois as they were all covered in snow the last time I was here. They are not great waterfalls but I thought the one at Schmidell would be a lot better (pictured here). You could not get up close to it and there were a lot of trees blocking the view. Well, I managed and did the best I could.
When we got back up to our camp at Lake Lois the wind had died down. It was still quite windy but it was not crazy wind. We got into bed and (tried) to go to sleep.
