At about 6,400" elevation, the Loon Lake area is just on the border of the high alpine above-treeline type Sierra backcountry that is so fun to explore. There are trails leading into the wilderness areas, up to the nearby peaks, around the lake, swimming (brrrrrrr!), biking (or 4WD jeeping, but we don't have anything like this) on the world-famous Rubicon Trail that starts here, and plenty of enjoyable plain 'ol hanging out around the campfire. Thanks to the large amounts of late-season snow we got this year in the mountains, this was amazingly the first weekend these campgrounds were open! There was no snow on the ground at lake level, but plenty up higher and on north-facing slopes.
One of the noteworthy activities was a nice hike up to Tells Peak (8,872'). Here's some annotated photos from that adventure. And yes, it was a little more of an adventure than we had planned...
Here's our group about to head out from the campsite. It's about a 15 mile loop, we think. Maps are inconclusive. Enormous flag courtesy of the Wequasset Resort, via Mr. Dad. Thanks!
Hiking through a marsh early on. It was clear a lot of ground was seeing sun for the first time this year, and was still very swampy in the meadows from snowmelt.
We stopped for lunch at Forni Lake, about 900' vertical shy of the summit. Here's Adam and Scuba doing a Spaceman. In case you were wondering, a "Spaceman" involves filling a plastic astronaut with 3 1/3 beers and consuming it as quickly as possible. In case you are wondering about more things now, yes, they toted 8 beers into the backcountry to perform this ritual. In case you are still wondering, yes, they started regretting both the fact that they inadvertently were using 6% abv "Simpler Times Lager" and that they were at 8,000' feet soon after starting. But amusing, and well documented.
Reached the ridge! Lots of snow still on the North side. Looking SE toward Mt. McConnell.
Dustin, Rufus, and Taylor.
Alex contemplates the map, as we start to realize the trail down may or may not exist, and also may be buried under several feet of snow for the next few miles.
Group on the ridge.
Hiking up to the summit.
Conveniently Adam's dog Jameson bonked right about at the halfway point. Good timing, Jameson. But it was nice to know that dogs other than Banjo wimp out on hiking trips.
The views from the top.
The way down. Got to glissade the first few hundred yards, which is always a blast! Glad I brought the gaiters. Note - the footprints were ours, we saw exactly zero other people on our hike...
Which may explain why the trail was so hard to find on the way down, leading to some semi-stressful routefinding (or routelosing) and the eventual decision to "bushwhack" over the open granite and scrub towards our destination to where we knew we'd eventually cross a real trail. This cut off some distance but bushwhacking always is much slower going than you think. Fortunately over half of this part of the hike was exciting hiking over open granite, much more interesting than numbly following a trail. The downside came once we got low enough to have to fight our way through thick scrubby bushes for a couple miles after an already-long day. Suffice to say the pictures became sparse during this tenuous period but we all made it back in one piece, more or less. Jameson the dog wasn't all that good at walking the next day, but I'm told he made a full recovery.
Aside from hare-brained wilderness bushwhacking adventures, we played lots of campground games, including:
Jungle Speed, our new favorite quick board/card game (it's great, you should totally get it)
and Bags! We had a full 15-person double-elimination bags tournament! Kate almost won (2nd place, I think?)
Rufus and Banjo hope you had a good 4th too!
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