Day 13- Through My Backyard

April 29, 2017

Segment: Long Lake to Luther Mountain, 10.5 miles.

Weather: Low 20 degrees, high 45 degrees, mostly sunny.

The birds this morning are incredible! I don’t know what they are eating up here in this snow covered landscape, but there are a lot of them, many varieties, and they are happy and singing. The woods are alive with the sound of music!

I am finally getting out of bed and the tent at 9am. It was a cold, damp night. With warmer temperatures, this has become an increasing problem. My boots and their inserts (which I sleep in) are always very damp, even if I don’t exert myself. What was working when it was colder is not working now. This seems counterintuitive, but a little damp makes a bigger difference than a lot of cold.

At least now it was hot! When the sun rose above the trees and hit my tent, it was hot! Moving my stuff across the outlet (in case it melted) to dry and to eat breakfast and it was still hot. I kept moving in and out of the shade to escape the reflection off the snow.

Tree swallow at the top of a snag next to Long Lake

Hearing birds is good, and seeing birds is great!

I did not go much farther before encountering a long set of tracks that crossed the lake and entered the woods.

Bear!

Somebody is awake too early in the season!

The next several hours were spent cruising through the woods on the gently rolling hills at the 6000 foot elevation. This is what I have been waiting for. This is my backyard. Even though I have not hiked through every square foot of Sky Lakes Wilderness, the mountains, the lakes, the terrain are all familiar.

Not glamorous, but as familiar as my backyard

After briefly touching the PCT, I took back off on a route that would take me by familiar friends—Deer Lake, Lake Notasha, and Heavenly Twin Lakes. All these lakes I had visited many times and even camped by. Now they took on a sterile, almost deserted, feeling under all the snow. I ate lunch by the running outlet from north Heavenly Twin Lake.

Looking north 2 miles to my destination—Luther Mountain.

In the summer, I will hike the Sky Lakes trail north to Trapper Lake and Lake Margurette, then climb the huge boulders to the top of the bluff. There I have a “secret” tent spot that gives me a great view and sunrise. Because of the snow, I knew it would be foolish to attempt that climb, so I was headed in between trails to approach the bluff from the south on what appeared on my map to be a decent slope.

As I said, I am not acquainted with every detail in these parts, and did I learn something new! Years ago, I stopped using the looping, gently ascending Divide Trail to get to the bluff, using the much shorter boulder field instead. Now I found out the dirty little secrets that trail was hiding! Like a 60-70 degree slope between outcroppings. Thankfully it was only about 40 feet with no dangerous dropoff below it, but it was a ton of difficult sidestepping!

I then tried to below the PCT on its ridge and above the ascending Divide Trail. After a while I discovered there was a third ridge hidden in the middle that was too detailed for the topo map to show. You can see at the end of my track for today that I went back and forth trying to find a way down.

Margurette in front of Trapper lakes. Saddle Mountain, Cherry Peak, and Pelican Butte are in the background from left to right.

This spot is the crown jewel of the entire trip. I wanted pictures like this so I can come back this summer with the same camera in the same spot and take more pictures. With only a little over 2 hours left until sundown, I decided to camp here, enjoy the place, and spend some more time just being in God’s presence with no goals and no distractions. This turned out to be a very wise decision.

Tonight I thank the Creator for a backyard like this and for a day as pleasant as listening to a bird’s song in the sunshine.