RyanP
Member
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2015
- Messages
- 783
It's been a frustrating year for me so far in terms of outdoor hobbies, mostly due to a few minor injuries. Last week I decided I needed to go on a little adventure (my first solo backpacking trip in like 5 years). I only had 2 days (one night), but I wanted to push myself and get a real wilderness experience in my limited time.
I don't typically like to spell out specific details about my routes on the public forum, so let's just say that I wanted to go somewhere warm, a place where the beer flows like wine, where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano...
I started at a trailhead near the ski resort, and followed the easy and beautiful trail for 3 miles. I was surprised at the amount of Fall colors this early in the season (this was on the Friday/Saturday of Labor Day weekend).
About 3 miles in, I left the trail and crossed the stream. The stream crossing was very easy this time of year (especially in such a dry year), but the other time I crossed this stream in early July, it was much more challenging. On the other side I bushwhacked a little bit until I found the old use trail that would lead me up my drainage. It was wonderful hiking through the dense aspens.
Travel was beautiful and relatively easy in the early/low-elevation section. I was disappointed not to see any bears though, given the name of the creek.
Eventually I got to the waterfall, which is known to be the crux of the route, and the fun cruising instantly came to an end. There are several trip reports and descriptions of this online, and most say you just have to find a way around the cliffs on the right side of the waterfall. Those reports all mention Class 3 scrambling with bushwhacking and route finding. However, I had read one report claiming that it can be kept nontechnical if you stay on the left side of the waterfall and go up the hill a ways (not visible in the below photo). On the ascent, I tried this approach on the left, and I can verify that it is indeed non-technical. It involved tedious and slow travel over talus, through willows, and annoying/slow bushwhacking in general, and ended up taking me longer than I expected.
After going up the hill to the left of the falls, I needed to bushwhack back to the creek (above the falls). It was an annoying and slow-going bushwhack, but at least the scenery was nice.
I then made an easy creek crossing and found the use trail again. On this trip I saw a bunch of beautiful little cascades that very few people see, which was super cool.
I followed the use trail for a little ways but lost it at some point and was again bushwhacking. I was running behind schedule and didn't have a ton of daylight left, so when I eventually stumbled on a half-decent spot to camp, I took it. This was probably about 2/3 of the way up the basin. I didn't know if my neo-air pad would survive the night, as I slept on a bunch of brush and there were definitely some problematic twigs. However, the pad continued to impress and I'm happy to say that I've still never popped a Thermarest pad after all these years. I can't believe how durable they have been for me.
I didn't feel like setting up my duomid, so I just slept in my bivy under the stars. I was a little worried about condensation, and in the morning I was indeed getting cold and my sleeping bag was very wet with condensation. How many times is this going to happen to me before I stop doing this?!? I guess I can only sleep that way in the desert. In any case, it helped me get up early (I think I warmed up when I got out of my sleeping bag), and I was out of bed a little before sunrise.
I tried to find and follow the use trail as I continued up the basin, but lost it many times and ended up bushwhacking more over steep terrain. The basin eventually started opening up and becoming more spectacular, but at the time I was feeling beat and thought that it wasn't worth the effort it took to get there. A few days later, when looking back at the photos, I couldn't believe I felt that way and I've been planning my next big adventure ever since.
I climbed to a little hill between the lakes, and then down to the largest and nicest of the lakes, where I took a long break to eat lunch, swim, and let my sleeping bag and other gear dry out. From this vantage point you can see a few of of the most famous and popular peaks in the state, but few people see them from this perspective and it feels very wild and pristine back there.
There is tons of talus in the upper part of this basin, but it is surprisingly stable. I heard rockfall multiple times when I was hanging out at the lake though, probably from people climbing the famous high peak (from the other side), which is known to have loose rock.
On the way back, I hiked over to the lowest of the lakes and descended the creek from there. At first, it was much nicer and more mellow of terrain, and I was loving life.
After a few minutes of blissful grass-walking, I was back to bushwhacking through steep terrain, and I started hating life again. Before the trip, I had the impression that the upper part of the basin would be fairly easy, but I thought both my ascent and descent (via different routes) were pretty tough and not very fun or pleasant. Maybe I'm just getting too old and out-of-shape for this kind of trip. The terrain eventually flattened out and I found the use trail again, and made good time to the falls.
This time I decided to try descending the "standard" way on the right side of the falls (looking up-canyon). This ended up being a mistake, as it did indeed require Class 3 scrambling and dense bushwhacking (at least as far as I could tell). The left side (on my ascent) was slow and tedious, but the right side was equally slow and quite a bit more sketchy. I kept working my way down the steep slopes and getting cliffed out (visibility wasn't very good from above, so it was hard to spot the best route), then having to climb back up and traverse over until I got to some thick brush that I could bushwhack down. Below is a photo looking back over to the falls from the lower part of my descent route. If you do this trip, I recommend identifying the line of trees running diagonally (parallel to the waterfall) to the left of the falls (there is a bunch of brush between the falls and the line of trees, and to the left of the trees are cliffs), and walking up the slope to the left of those trees. Once you get above the falls, you just make your way back to the creek, cross it, and find the use trail again. It's a tedious off-trail section, but trust me it beats trying to go up the right side of the falls.
On the way out I again loved the lower off-trail section:
I saw about 3-4 groups total during my first and last hour of the trip (when I was hiking the popular trail for 3 miles), but saw zero people the rest of the time--and this was during a beautiful Labor Day weekend. I thought the trip wasn't worth all the effort while I was doing it, but now I smile when I think back on it and I can't wait for the next one. Classic Type 2 fun I guess.
