Backpacking the High Sierras

Britney and I Experience Nature

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I’ve been backpacking all my life, since my father first took me around 1993, when I was 10, into Matilija Canyon, the mountains of Ojai, 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles, where I grew up. Backpacking—and a love of nature—is one of the legacies my father left me. Even when I was young, drunk and wild—in my teens and twenties—I’d take a break from the drinking and the anarchy to go into the backcountry with Dad or alone for a few days. Nature has always stood the test of character for me. For one thing Nature is authentic, whether it’s kicking your ass or being soft and kind. It doesn’t lie to you. It doesn’t tell you one thing and believe the opposite. It’s honest, and for me that passes the test.

Britney had always wanted to go but never had until I took her a few months ago in the backcountry around Santa Ynez. That was a fun one-night trip at low altitude, with low elevation gain, crossing the creek about ten million times and camping roughly six miles in for the night. She loved it. Her favorite thing was experiencing the different phases of the night, shifting from foggy and phantasmagorical to clear with pulsing white stars, from the noises of wild animal nightlife to total and transcendent silence.

This, though, was a different beast altogether. Baker Lake Trail in the Eastern High Sierras, in the John Muir Wilderness, near the Inyo Forest, just northeast of Kings Canyon National Park, and some ways southeast of Yosemite. It was “only” a 12-mile hike, two-nights planned, but with roughly 4,500 elevation gain/loss and going from 9,200 feet at the trailhead (already high) to just a shade under 12,000 feet. Late September so we knew temperatures would plummet at night. Baker Lake Trail was a close cousin, geographically-speaking, to the wildly more popular Big Pine Lakes Trail, but only so many hikers were allowed on that trail each day and it was long filled up. So we did Baker Lake instead. Big Pines evidently went up to around the same elevation but the uphill was much more gradual. We’d be kicking ass up an elevator.

The trip didn’t start out well, and I mean before we even reached the trailhead. I’d dropped Britney off at work that morning and I finished packing our gear and then picked her up at work around 5pm so we could leave straight from there. I drove. We took Highway 166 to 14 North to good ole 395 North. The 395 reminded me of peaking Mount Whitney in 2013 with a buddy of mine. I was 30. It kicked my ass. We did it all in one day: Roughly 14 hours, 22 miles roundtrip, around 6,000 feet elevation gain from 8K to 14.5K feet. (Whitney is the tallest peak in the lower 48.) I got hit really bad with altitude sickness. It was the only time I’ve felt legitimately drunk since I got sober in 2010. I fell several times. I was lightheaded. We ran out of water. My head pounded. But I made it to the peak. It was a freakish experience.

We had a six-hour drive and we’d left Los Olivos at 5pm. We got a camping site in Olancha, a tiny town south of Bishop on 395. I won’t get into the details—yes, there are actually things I won’t discuss in my writing, believe it or not (insert chuckle from knowing readers…and Britney’s mom), but the two of us got into a big ole dumb, hardcore, knockdown, drag-out fight in the car on the way. I mean it was bad. By the time we got to the campsite, late, around 11pm, we were totally exhausted. We didn’t bother pitching the tent. We just silently cleared everything out of the back of her 2015 Prius, snuggled into our bags, and passed out. It was a shitty night and a bad sleep.

Things were better in the morning. We had a spectacular view of a pond in the campground which reflected like a mirror perfectly the image of the jagged gray epic peaks to our west (part of Sequoia National Forest). No one was around. A few cars were parked in sites a ways down but it was early and silent out. We stood there a while, marveling at the water reflection and the peaks and the stillness. Cars drove by with a light drone a half mile west of us on 395. We used my Jetboil stove, made tea and coffee, drank water, ate, made up from last night’s fight, gathered all our gear into our packs, and hit the road. Every day, as my mother used to always tell me (and it always meant a lot to me) is a brand-new opportunity to make things different/better. It was a new 24-hour cycle.

By 11am we arrived at the trailhead, which was on South Lake Road which had been off Highway 168 west. We’d gone precipitously uphill, slowly, going from 3,000 feet to 9,200. We felt it. I remembered Whitney. I’d be fine this time.

The trailhead was actually inside a resort of cabins for hikers called Parchers Resort. From here you could hike to South Lake, North Lake, Tyee Lakes, and also our destination: Green Lake and Baker Lake. We parked right off the shoulder of South Lake Road. South Fork Bishop Creek rushed alongside the street. There were a few scattered cars further down from us. The trail area was called Rainbow Pack Station. The trail itself was called Green Lake Trail.

We got all our stuff and our packs out and wiped greasy sunscreen all over ourselves and cursed at the weight of our packs—I’d earlier in the day weighed myself holding each pack: Hers was 21 pounds, mine 26 pounds. But I ended up taking a few extra things for Britney so mine probably ended up being more like 28 pounds. By 11:45am we were on the move, looking around Parchers Resort for the trailhead. We couldn’t find it. We used my downloaded All Trails map but somehow it eluded us. I finally asked the guy my age behind the counter in the lodge. He wasn’t sure. We followed All Trails again and, by luck, and with a random woman’s help, found the trail.

At first it was beautiful and mellow, a mix of flat and slight uphill going through bright yellow flowers, thick wilderness, purple Lupines and the lovely deep shade of forest. The weather was perfect: Sixties, perhaps, but with a cool breeze rolling through. But then we hit the uphill section. I was leading, and going too fast. I always do this. Bad habit since I was young. My legs become mechanical and develop a mind of their own; I just blaze. We’d put on Altitude Sickness patches I’d ordered on Amazon; one little circular patch behind the ear and one above the bellybutton. It’d had something like 4,000 reviews, 4.8 stars. I definitely felt the altitude. The uphill seemed endless and relentless. Zigzagging switchbacks back and forth, back and forth, layered one on top of another for eternity.

At one point we caught sight, at the cliff’s edge of a switchback, of a lake, and looked at All Trails. It was South Lake. Beautiful. We pushed through thick forest, little fast-rumbling streams, boulders, blossoming flowers of many colors, chirping birds. Eventually we realized together that I was moving far too fast; I’d exhaust myself before we made it two miles. So Britney took the lead and I studiously, fastidiously followed her slow but steady, perfect pace. This was one of my favorite things about backpacking, ironically: Carrying heavy weight uphill. Maybe because of its dull simplicity. It’s so much like life much of the time: One foot in front of the next, again and again and again, trying your best to be in the present moment. Be here now, I kept telling myself internally. I even tried a little backpacker’s trick when going uphill: Look down at the trail and don’t worry about what’s coming next. Let the time pass. You’ll get there.

Britney was terrified of bears. Can’t blame her there, even though the data is clear on the rarity of such an attack. Nevertheless I carried a heavy can of bear spray in my right shorts pocket; earlier, for the first time, I’d used it just to see it in action: The spray is gnarly. It shoots a nasty, large brown spray out aggressively like a shotgun blast. I felt much more in control of a possible and unlikely bear attack. That beast would be blind in seconds. (Not that I wanted to have to use it.)

Eventually—ten years and a couple hours later—we arrived at what we hoped was Green Lake but was in fact Brown Lake. There was a woman totally naked swimming halfway across the water. We searched around for where the trail continued because we’d briefly lost it at the sudden appearance of the lake. The lake was beautiful: Flat and blue-green and serene. It looked cold. Already the weather seemed to have cooled. It felt like it was in the fifties with a cold breeze. High altitude weather. The woman spotted us and, wordlessly—she might have been 50-75 yards away—swam back to shore, stood up and stretched her arms out wide, buck naked, and then started dressing. She was probably cursing us. I’d have been. We’d passed perhaps three people in the whole uphill section we’d done so far. Pretty desolate. (Which I liked but Britney feared.)

We found the trail—which crossed a little creek feeding off the lake—and kept moving. Five minutes later we passed the woman—a college-age girl, it seemed—and she smiled at us, probably hiding her irritation. Up again we went. A green marshy field. Streams sluicing around it. Then we had to cross a marshy swamp. While Britney peed off trail the woman, now dressed, passed us. Then we crossed the swamp. I made a go of it with my boots on and got my right boot full of water up to my socks. Oh well. I tried. Britney—smarter and more patient—slowly, systematically removed her boots and sloshed across in her bare feet, then dried her feet and put her boots back on on the other side.

More uphill. Twists and turns. An area filled with nothing but massive, jagged, entangled Prius-sized boulders. We passed a mid-twenties tall dark-haired fit dude who smiled and informed us he was “on mushrooms.” We grinned and asked him a question—“what part of the schroom trip are you on now?”; answer: The middle—and then kept going. Flat a ways, and then downhill at last, and soon we spotted Green Lake. Thank God. We were dirty, sweaty, a weird mix of hot and cold, and exhausted in more ways than one.

As we climbed down, down down we saw the gorgeous, spectacular green body of water, bowled by jagged, snow-capped mountains all around it. Green fields. Marshy areas. Boulders and rocks. Thick wilderness and trees. We arrived at a perfect camp spot, a spot right along the trail that clearly had been used by many over the decades. We dramatically tore our packs off and sat them down with heavy clanks. We partially unpacked. I began setting the tent up. A woman came from out of nowhere and hiked by us. We chatted with her: She was doing a day-hike, some 13 miles out and back. We soon realized we didn’t want to camp right on the trail so we moved our packs and the tent into the middle of a green open field. We set the tent up and unpacked. Then we realized down the way along a different section of trail was much better, right by the water. So we moved everything there. Lakeside camping. No one was around. It was dead silent.

We’d arrived around 4pm. It’d taken us roughly four hours to get 3 miles. We were hungry, tired and already starting to get cold. We were, according to All Trails, at just over 11,000 feet. Britney arranged our bags and stuff and got us water which we purified while I prepared our freeze-dried Backpacker meals: Chicken and rice for me, pasta for her. Freeze-dried are the way to go: Light and filling. Soon we had our freeze-dried pouches with the tops torn off and the boiled water absorbed. We ate like kings. Then we drank water. I hadn’t had enough. No fires were allowed so we cleaned up, put all the scented stuff and food in the bear-can, and put our packs, tied up tight, by some rocks 100 yards or so away from us, to protect against bears. Then we got into the tent and nestled down.

I’d recently bought a fancy down sleeping bag, super light, good to 15 degrees cold. Britney’s was another I’d gotten on sale six months ago, good for 20 degrees. It was after dinner that I started feeling queasy. My stomach roiled; I felt nauseous. And my head was pounding; it’d been like this for the past couple hours. The altitude, I knew. Less oxygen. Going uphill my heart had been pounding overtime, trying to get that extra oxygen to my brain. I could feel the pulse in my temple like a little snake moving around just under the skin. I always bring a medical first aid kit and I popped some Ibuprofen from that. It did not help.

I also was reminded quickly that I was 40…not 21. For decades I’d mostly slept on the hard ground in the tent, no pad. Britney, again smarter and wiser, brought my old pad. But idiot that I am, I had no pad. I could feel the earth just underneath the slim tent fabric brutally cold against my body, even with my shirt and jacket on inside of my fancy new down bag. Britney was a little cold too, but she was okay.