Desolation Wilderness

Reunited – Day 1

Avery and Leah planned a 5 day, 4 night backpacking trip to Desolation Wilderness. Leah drove in from Reno and Avery from the Bay Area. They met at Echo Lake and took the water taxi across the lake.

It was an uneventful hike from Echo lake to Lake Aloha which was an awesome lake full of little islands you could swim to.

There weren’t good camping spots at the north end of Lake Aloha (that weren’t occupied), so we went farther down the trail to Heather Lake. Leah brought a tent and Avery brought a hammock to sleep in.

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Elevation – Day 2

The next day was mostly uphill. Despite the fact it was already June, there were still ice patches everywhere. Leah frolicked in the ice.

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We made it to the top!

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With Dick’s Lake in sight, they skipped down the switchbacks leading down to the shoreline. They set up camp on the north side of the lake. The lake was FREEZING.

The zipper on Leah’s tent broke. A giant ass spider the size of a Pringle lid climbed in the tent with Leah. She shoo-ed it away with a cup or something that she had and it was very compliant. Then she safety pinned the tent door closed. Even though there were still gaps, the mosquitoes didn’t seem smart enough to get in.

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Lost – Day 3

Avery and Leah enjoyed the hike on the PCT to Upper and Middle Velma Lake. To get to Lake Schmidell, they branched off the PCT on Velma Lakes Trail.

In a shocking display of non-responsibleness, neither Avery or Leah had brought a paper map. They also didn’t have a compass. In fact they were navigating off the photo of the map that Avery took on her phone. She also didn’t have a charger for her phone.

After half a mile Velma Lakes Trail turned into an expanse of granite marked only with cairns. Soon, Avery found herself lost. There was no obvious trail ahead! Battery running low, Avery tried to calculate how far they had gone since the PCT. Had they missed the junction to start looping back toward Aloha? They had no cell service and hadn’t downloaded maps for offline use. Unsure of what to do, Avery decided they had to turn back to the PCT and make sure they hadn’t missed a turn off. Gamely, Leah went along and followed Avery over a mile back to the PCT.

Satisfied that they hadn’t made any navigational errors, Avery said they could try again to cross the granite.

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On the second try they found out that the trail was just a bit ahead of where they had turned around the first time. In fact they were almost to the Mineral Spring junction when Avery had her crisis of faith.

Happy to be back on a well marked trail, they decided to skip Lake Schmidell (maybe some other hikers said it wasn’t worth hiking to see?). They had already added extra miles to their day by hiking back and forth along the Velma trail. Instead they took a short cut from their original plan and hiked back to Lake Aloha along the Rubicon River. Avery thought she might be able to catch a fish with her fishing rod.

As the sun started going down, the mosquitoes came out. Swatting furiously, Avery and Leah were desperate to make camp. They hiked until they found the first suitable site. While pumping water at from the Rubicon, Avery got eaten alive by mosquitoes. She decided it wouldn’t be worth it to stand in the mosquitos to try to fish. After dinner, they got immediately into their tent/hammocks and hid from the mosquitos until the next morning.

Descent into Madness – Day 4

Having gone to bed extremely early to escape the mosquito onslaught, Avery and Leah woke up early and got a fresh start on the day. The hiking out started out ok, but soon the mosquitos were back. Each girl picked up her own individual cloud of roughly 50 mosquitos. Avery took to waving her long sleeve shirt around in a tornado as she hiked. Leah said she heard they could rub mint on themselves as a natural mosquito deterrent. They grabbed fistfuls of the plant growing on the side of the trail and rubbed it all over their arms. This had the effect of adding scratches and dirt to their heavily stung arms and legs. It didn’t deter the clouds at all.

Instead of going away as the sun came up, the mosquitos only intensified. This might be because the trail entered a marsh. A creek crossing required them to take off their boots and wade. Forced to stop to deal with their shoes, they were unable to swat at the mosquitoes which all landed in their faces and had a feast. Crying on the inside [and on the outside~ clarification from Leah], they crossed the creek, and then had to repeat the shoe procedure on the other side. Avery was losing it. She asked Leah if she was losing it too. She was.

They suffered in silence for another 2 miles. Yes, the mosquitoes followed them THE WHOLE WAY. They finally let up shortly after they passed the pass aptly named Mosquito Pass.

Avery was OVER IT. She had blisters all over her feet and about 1000 mosquito bites. She had been constantly bitten for 4 miles. She floated the idea to Leah that they hike out a day early. Leah was on board!! Avery took off her hiking boots and put on her flip flops and they hiked the last 10 miles back to Echo Lake.

Epilogue

The next week Avery’s feet were wrecked! She learned a lot of lessons from this trip.

1. Bring a paper map
2. Bring mosquito repellent
3. Don’t hike 10 miles in flip flops
4. Leah is AWESOME (ok, we already knew that)
5. There is nothing like a little Type 2 fun. Avery has thought fondly of this trip maybe more than any other backpacking trip. It was EXTREMELY memorable and makes for a great story while out on the trail.