High elevations, clean air, beautiful vistas...

This weekend, I took a trip to the High Sierra's with my brother John.

Day 1 (Friday):
We got an early start on Friday afternoon but got stuck in traffic trying to get out of OC and it took us about 8 hours to get to the Onion Valley campground. We finally pulled in around 9:30 and found that the walk-in camp site I had reserved was actually set back about 100ft from the road and we would have to unload our equipment and then park down below the campground. On top of that, it was dark and we couldn't actually see the trail that led to the site. We checked around and found another site that was available and had a parking space. I notified the camp host and we were set. We pitched the tent, put our food in the bear box and started a fire in the put. An hour or 2 and a couple of beers later we crashed out for the night.

Day 2 (Saturday):
I woke up around 6:30 with a splitting headache. (If you don't drink a lot or spend a lot of time at higher elevations be careful) I took some Ibuprofen to clear my head which made my head better but messed up my stomach. When John stirred a short while later we decided to head to town (15 miles away and 6000ft below) to get some pepto and some coffee. By the time we got back to camp, I was feeling much better. We filled my hydration pack (Thanks Terri!) threw some tackle and some cliff bars into a backpack, grabbed our fishing poles and headed up the mountain.
I had forgotten how steep that mountain really is. The climb in is grueling and you really get to push yourself. It's only about 2.5 miles to the lake basins but there is about a 2000' elevation gain so there are a lot of switchbacks and a lot of rest stops, each one with a great view of it's own. We were also fortunate to have a nice breeze blowing all day to keep us cool on the way up. we paused at Little Pothole lake and John dropped his first fly. He pulled 2 small trout in about 5 minutes and got some kids very excited about fishing later. We continued on through the last major climb of the trek and made another stop at Gilbert. I was just trying to catch my breath as John dropped his line in again. Another fish caught and released but this was not our destination. We continued on passed Flower and over a ridge to Matlock Lake and Slim Lake. It has been roughly 15 years since either of us had been there but it felt like it was just yesterday. It's amazing how some memories imprint so deeply in our minds. We worked out way passed Matlock lake to Slim and the creeks running out and sat down to eat lunch and prepare my gear to do some fishing.
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This is where we ran into a couple of people working for the Dept of Fish and Game that were exterminating all of the fish in the Bench/Slim/Matlock lake system. Apparently there is a fungus that is killing the native frog species in the area so they are killing all the fish to protect the frogs. (Didn't make that much sense to me either) To their credit, however, the fish in those lakes are not natives of the area. They were introduced in the 30s and have been established there ever since. It seems to me that if the frogs and fish lived together that long and some fungus is now killing the frogs killing the fish will only result in a lot of dead fish and probably has little chance of saving the frogs. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a hippie tree hugger and want to preserve nature wherever possible but it seems that the efforts in this case, while wee-intentioned, are misguided.
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So after we found that we couldn't fish the lakes we wanted, we made our way back to Flower lake and really got into some fishing. We fished flower for an hour or 2 and then started to work our way slowly back down the mountain, fishing as we went. We both pulled out a number of fish, all of them were fairly small but we had a lot of fun. I also spotted one fish about 20' off shore that was probably 2' long and 4-5lb, by far the largest fish I have ever seen in an alpine lake. This thing looked big enough to be a salmon! Unfortunately he had no interest in my fly and just continued slowly swimming around the lake.
The trip down, while hard on the knees is much easier and much faster than the trip up. we continued dropping our lines in the lakes and creeks until we got past Little Pothole and then took our time the rest of the way down so we could take in the view and enjoy the hike.
When we reached the campground John cooked up a couple of the fish he caught and I had a couple of hot dogs. Then, as I was thinking I wanted to make the trip home that night instead of Sunday as we had planned, John asked me if I wanted to head back that night which pretty much sealed the deal for me.
We packed up and hit the road by 5:30. We stopped off at the High Sierra Cafe to grab a bite, not so much because we were hungry as for sentimental reasons. We used to stop there when our grandfather would take us backpacking. We pulled in at home by about 11:30, wound down with a couple of beers, got cleaned up and went to bed. You can't ask for a much more complete day than that!