Day 1

Aaron met Avery and Morgan at their house at 5:40. It was an easy and uneventful drive to the Pinecrest ranger station. After getting their backpacking permit, they headed to Crabtree Trailhead and were on the trail by ~10am. On the way to their first lake they decided to make commemorative patches for trip and to name themselves the Snail Kickers. The name came about because Aaron had kicked a snail thinking that it was a rock. This name was voted unanimously by Avery and Morgan.

They stopped at Camp Lake for a snack. Ironically, there was a sign next to that lake that said “no camping”.

It was quite a while until they stopped for lunch at a meadow. Morgan laid out his backpacking towel and Aaron and Avery were surprised to see how much stuff Morgan packed. He packed 10 portions worth of chicken and rice, a whole roll of toilet paper, and two backpacking towels!

The Snail Kickers continued onward to their destination of Gem Lake. They hoped to go fishing in Cherry Creek which Aaron was told was impassable just one month earlier. A mile before the creek Morgan ran out of water. Each tiny rivulet of water he asked if that was good enough for us to get water. Aaron and Avery assured him that those little water dribbles were not Cherry Creek. It had now been about 8? miles of hiking and everyone was getting tired. They finally came across Cherry Creek and it was more like Cherry Puddle. There were definitely no fish in Cherry Puddle.

The Snail Kickers encountered another couple that were also looking for water at Cherry Creek. The couple had come from the other direction and assured them that there was no water in between the creek and gem lake. So stagnant water it was! Aaron filled up half of Morgan’s water bladder and they were on their way again.

Reenergized, Morgan charged up a hill of switchbacks while Avery and Aaron struggled with tiredness. They finally got to the top after a few rest breaks and saw… water!! They were at Gem Lake!

Gem Lake was a fairly small lake. They walked to the other side in minutes and set up camp. There was a preassembled fire pit. Morgan did not want to practice good bear food safety so he got to sleep in the tadpole with all his food. Avery and Aaron put their food in the bear canister and slept in the new backpacking tent.

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Avery set up the new half dome 2 plus tent over a small hole [edit from Aaron: it was a rather large hole]. Aaron did not complain at the time, but after sleeping with his feet in the hole, he had plenty of complaints! He took this out on Avery by punching her and crossing the invisible dividing line “in his sleep”.

Aaron was so tired he went to bed before the stars came out. Morgan and Avery stayed up to play nature flux in the tadpole. Morgan won and Avery went to bed. Morgan stayed up longer and saw many shooting stars! Avery woke Aaron up at midnight so they could look at the beautiful stars. [edit from Morgan: Avery did not see any shooting stars] They were fantastic!

Day 2

Morgan woke up first and washed his shorts. He attempted to dry without burning them on their morning fire. Aaron stole Avery’s awesome quilt and slept in while Morgan and Avery did sunrise yoga and ate breakfast. Avery had oatmeal and Morgan had a whole mountain house meal of biscuits and pork sausage. They were not bad!

The Snail Kickers finally got on the move around 8:45. They were excited to go fishing at Buck Lakes. On the way, they came across Deer Lake. Aaron spotted some fish in the water. The Snail Kickers couldn’t wait for Buck Lakes. They threw their lines in immediately.

Aaron used his black Panther Martin lure, Avery used dad’s pink Panther Martin lure that he got after getting skunked at Pinecrest, and Morgan used worms and a bobber. Two casts later and Aaron landed his first fish!!! It was a rainbow trout. The Snail Kickers were so excited! This was now their most successful backpacking fishing trip of all time.

Avery and Morgan threw their lines in too, but no luck. Morgan got his line backslashed and Avery had to fix it while Morgan fished with her rod. After getting no bites, Aaron returned to the log where he caught the first fish and landed another one!! Avery fished from the log with no success and the log crumbled when she tried to step on the end and her whole shoe got wet. Good thing her luxury backpacking item was an extra pair of socks!

The Snail Kickers decided to move on from Deer Lake. They reached Buck Lakes fairly quickly even though it was a few miles away. This was because Morgan was on a mission to go fishing and set a blazing pace. They reached Upper Buck Lake and it was beautiful!! There was even a campsite with a grate and wood already gathered.

They went to the lowest part of the lake and could see fish in the clear water. Avery wanted to eat lunch but Morgan couldn’t wait. Emboldened by Aaron’s spinner success, he used the pink Panther Martin. He threw his line in and almost immediately caught a fish!

Avery was so jealous! She tied on Aaron’s black panther Martin (which by this point, they were calling old faithful) and also caught a rainbow trout!! Since they didn’t have a string to keep the fish on, Avery gutted the fish and cooked it in its own skin over a small campfire at the previous campfire. Fresh caught trout for lunch!

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After lunch Aaron and Avery went exploring and found a whole canyon with waterfalls leading toward Lower Buck Lakes. Morgan continued fishing and landed another small trout! Then Avery tried another location across from the outlet they were fishing at and caught another rainbow trout.

They decided to move on to Lower Buck Lakes as it was getting to be around 2 in the afternoon. As Avery made her way back to base camp, she rubbed her nose and both sides started bleeding profusely. She had to use Morgan’s whole roll of unnecessary toilet paper to get it to stop. The team packed up and left no trace except for the split shot that Aaron dropped accidentally. They buried the fish head and were on their way.

Lower Buck Lake was even more beautiful than Upper Buck Lake. Most of the lake accessible from the trail looked to be prime fishing territory. “We will save it for next trip”, they said. The mission was to get to Wood Lake to camp and fish so that they would have 9 instead of 11 or 12 miles to hike the last day. Wood Lake also looked very promising- from their campsite on a hill, they could see lots of fish in the water.

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The fish weren’t biting when they tried to fish. Avery got one fish on the line, but it escaped just before she could land it on shore. There would be no trout for dinner. Avery and Morgan built an awesome campfire ring and even were able to roll some big flat rocks over for seats. The trio spent the night sitting by the fire, attempting to identify the Big Dipper, and wishing on shooting stars. Aaron wished that he would catch trout for breakfast. Morgan also wished for fish (but not specifically morning fish). Avery wanted to see the shooting stars the most [edit from Morgan: I think Avery wanted to see shooting stars more than implied in the story] and did not see any.

Day 3

Aaron and Morgan woke up and got ready at 5 AM to go fishing. Aaron changed his mind and slept in for another hour and a half. Aaron went down around 6:30 and after less than half an hour caught 1 small trout that he released and a medium sized trout which he kept.

Avery had to forgo her breakfast trout dreams to help Aaron gut his fish and cook it. She made an awesome fish oven in the fire pit with a thin flat rock in the middle to cook the fish on. Aaron made trout mashed potatoes and chili for breakfast. It was great! Aaron said it was the most fulfilling breakfast he has ever had while backpacking.

After breaking camp, Morgan still wanted to fish so they took out their rods at the very end of Wood Lake. This would be the last opportunity to catch fish for the trip. They set a leave time of 9:30 and went to work. Avery caught a trout on Old Faithful and Aaron tried to make the trout magnets work. He got one bite, but had to ultimately declare the trout magnets unsuccessful. Morgan was able to catch a fish right outside the time window by having Avery spot the fish from above while he casted below. The technique worked and he landed the 10th fish of the trip!

After Wood Lake, it was 9 miles to the car. The first 3 miles was mostly downhill across granite slabs and steps. Morgan led the way saying “it’s all downhill so it’s easy and we can go fast!”  Avery and Aaron lagged behind- Avery with an ankle which was not completely healed from the previous month’s sprain and Aaron with jumper’s knee.

The next 3 miles was meadows with lots of streams and trees. Morgan was getting way ahead of Avery and Aaron and had to stop to wait for them. When they met up, Avery confessed that she had almost fallen, but had caught herself twice. Morgan said “you should watch where you step then”. He told them to go ahead and he would catch up. Two minutes later, Morgan caught up behind Avery. He was stepping in her steps until suddenly he was on the ground! Morgan clutched his ankle in pain. When Avery asked if he was ok and what happened he pointed at the dirt and said “there was a hidden root!!”

This injury came at a big lull in the trip and the team had to make some decisions. Morgan decided to take an ibuprofen and hike out. The next and last lake of the trip was Grouse Lake. They had intended on filling water there, however they decided to skip it to power out their injured member. The last two mile section was going to have a steep section with a 500ft elevation gain. Aaron was getting low on water and worried about how he was going to ration his 5 sips. Additionally, after leaving the lake, the biome turned dry and hot with no shade. Avery and Morgan heard a lot of noises. Avery thought that it was either someone playing drums on pots and pans or someone trying to make noise because they needed help. Morgan said obviously it was wind chimes. It turned out to be a caravan of horses and mules led by a bell ringing cowboy. Avery thought about asking the cowboy to pack Morgan back out to the trailhead, but chickened out when the cowboy said hello.

The trio continued on in the hot sun. They still had 3 miles to go. Abruptly they came across a surprise stream crossing with a prominent swimming hole and rushing water. Aaron and Avery filled up their nearly empty water bottles with fresh cold water. They were really excited about this unexpected water source. Morgan spotted fish in the small swimming hole and couldn’t resist getting some more action. He caught a little fish that was barely bigger than the pink Panther Martin he used to catch it. When he pulled it out of the water it flew into he air and landed somewhere in the bushes on the bank. Morgan ran on his sprained ankle to find it. This brought the total fish count up to 11.

The final 2 mile stretch came fairly quickly. Aaron insisted “no stop, till top” and charged up the mountain. It turned out that the 500ft elevation gain that the team had been so worried about was over a whole mile. This meant that it was a fairly gentle incline overall. So it was an uneventful last stretch that finally brought the Snail Kickers back to the car at just after 3pm. A very successful backpacking trip!