Day 5: Blackcap Basin

I wish we could have spent more than one day in Blackcap Basin.  It's quite large, and there is a lot of it that we didn't have time to explore.  We focused on just the southernmost corner of the basin on this layover day.


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We got a lazy start in the morning, and were disappointed to wake up and see a pall of smoke had descended on the mountains while we were sleeping.  Eventually, the breeze did clear it out a bit, but it made the morning hazy and a bit smelly.

Libby in camp on the smoky morning.

Our dayhike was through an alpine wonderland of meadows, rocks, sand, and the occasional stand of limber or whitebark pine.  Most of the time, Finger Peak picturesquely framed our views.

Pearl Lake

We visited Pearl Lake, which is quite large and easy fishing for decent back-country rainbows, then hiked up a cross-country trail to Chapel Lake.  Chapel Lake was surrounded by little frogs, so we stopped to check those out for awhile before moving on across broken faultlines to Cathedral Lake.

Chapel Lake

Each lake brought us progressively closer to the foot of a spur of Finger Peak.  When we finally got there, we were right up against the mountain.  Cathedral Lake is right in the cirque of the divide and is beautifully deep and clear.  The country around it is quite broken, but it has sandy beaches, springy meadows as well as talus along its rim.

Cathedral Lake

We spent awhile fishing for rainbows there before heading off and away from the divide and down the outlet stream to Midway Lake.  Midway is in a shallow glacial scoop, so it's a less spectacular lake than Cathedral.  We then headed up a low rise to the south and looked down into Crown Basin.  While we were up on the ridge, we also found a cool marmot skull!

Crown Basin

From there, it was simply a matter of walking back to camp via Pearl Lake, again.  Libby and I fished our way along the east side of the lake that evening for dinner.  We then had a lazy evening watching the sunset.  I regret that a bit because I forgot that we had talked about making the short walk up to Regiment and Battalion Lakes.

More pictures at Flickr.

Day 4: Blackcap Traverse

On our fourth day, we hiked from Guest Lake to Blackcap Basin via a high traverse.  Secor has a route that stays at about 10,400', but we worked our way quite a bit higher.  In fact, we ended up climbing the mountain, dropping our packs maybe 500' below the summit.  Still, Secor's route is class two, and we stayed class one the whole time.


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One surprising feature of the traverse was that we would come across the occasional little meadow along the creeks hanging off the side of the mountain.  We took lunch in one that was right at the origin of the trickling stream seeping out of the rocks.

Libby in high meadow

From that meadow, we straight up the mountain after grabbing some cool water straight from the source.  Without packs, the walk up the will was fine, and the view from the top was rewarding.  We could see from the peaks around Whitney in the south to Ritter and Banner in the north (and beyond).

Ritter and Banner

After leaving the summit, we picked up our packs and headed for Blackcap Basin.  After traversing a few ridges, we headed straight down to Lightning Corral Meadow.  It was great cross-country hiking across dry grassy swards and granite ledges.  The meadow itself was very lovely.

Lightning Corral Meadow

From the meadow, we hiked up to Division Lake to camp for the night.  The path from the lake was interesting.  There were lots of shallow fault lines running across our route, a couple of which were filled with slow flowing creeks.  The view from our camp at Division Lake that night was very lovely.

Finger Peak from the shore of Division Lake

It was a very nice day, and you can see more pictures at Flickr.

Day 3: Bench Valley Dayhike

The third day of our trip was dedicated to exploring Bench Valley.  The goal was to drink in the sights, and it turned out to be a lovely place to do that.



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 That morning, we took our time in camp and then headed out through the moraines north of Guest Lake.  A Sooty Grouse was booming in Guest Lake's valley, but we never made an effort to find him.  It was amazing, though, to hear him as we hiked through the basin.  You could hear him for at least a mile, and he sounded about the same distance away all the time.

These lakes are all very nice to look at, their sparkling blue waters framed by high altitude meadows spotted with vividly colored alpine wildflowers, fringed by whitebark, lodgepole, and limber pine forest, and rimmed by white granite cliffs, boulders, and the peaks of the Le Conte Divide.

Libby at Horsehead Lake

The lakes have fanciful cowboy names like Horsehead, Filly, Wah Hoo, and Six Shooter.  I carried my fishing pole and found fish in all of them easy to catch.  Most of them had Eastern Brook, but a few of them had Rainbows.  I found Rainbows in one of the Twin Buck Lakes and Bullet Lake.  I thought I saw Rainbows cruising amongst the Brookies in Schoolmarm, but didn't catch any.  The rest of the lakes I fished had small Brook trout.

Libby took some time practicing her casting, as well.  This is at Six Shooter Lake.

One highlight we were anticipating was checking out Schoolmarm Lake.  You know, since Libby is kind of a schoolmarm, herself.  So we took a picture of her doing her best schoolmarmy pose on the banks of the lake.  What do you think?

Schoolmarming at Schoolmarm

It's worth mentioning we wandered through a little meadow between Filly and Twin Buck Lakes that was absolutely choc-a-bloc with frogs.  I mean, it was hard to walk without stepping on them!  They were tiny little dark frogs, just newly not tadpoles.

From Schoolmarm, we looped east and up into the lakes draining into it.  We made it up to Bullet Lake, and then climbed the low ridge south of that lake for a view further up the drainage toward the divide, and then again back south at Filly and Horsehead Lake.  It was the rightmost notch in the picture below.

Bullet Lake and an unnamed peaklet

From the notch, we dropped down a steep fault full of mint, paintbrushes, bees, and butterflies.  It smelled fantastic, and was pretty cool.  The hike back to Guest Lake was lovely, and I stopped at Colt Lake to pick up some dinner on the way back.  That afternoon we went for a swim at the interface of the meadow and moraine at the base of Blackcap Peak, which invited us to jump straight into deep water.  It was deceptively deep because of how clear it was, and it was unnerving to drop deep into the cold blue and not be able to feel anything beneath your feet at the deepest point.  Of course, after getting out of the water we shivered like mad until we had sufficiently air dried.  No warm granite slabs above 10,000' like there were at 8,000' two nights before.

That evening after dinner, we hiked up to a little knob above our camp and sat and watched the sun set over the low mountains to the west while mosquitoes whined around outside of our head nets, and bit Libby through her socks.

Dogtooth Peak (far right) and the mountains of the Dinkey Lakes Wilderness area

There are more pictures on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/sets/72157634834858133/with/9390813630/