Someone had tried to mine in this area sometime in the distant past. There was a few pieces of machinery lying around and a notch blasted in the side of a cliff with tailings below. We found the remnants of the trail they had built to get their mules up to the site, and followed it down through a cleft in the cliff wall. We traversed at the base of the cliff towards the first of the Twin Island Lakes. As we were on the west side of the range, all was still in shadow, a nice cool time to move.
Twin Island Lakes are two lakes about two hundred yards a part, the second, or western most, 100 vertical feet higher. We clambered over solid ribs of glacial smoothed and striated bedrock, wound between them on carpets of heather and soon were at the eastern most lake, about mid-lake. We dropped to lake level after trying to traverse west up high and getting cliffed out. Once down at the lake level we did whatever always do, fish. We caught four as we moved along the shoreline. All we beautiful Rainbow Trout. We cleaned them right there and slid them into our ziplock bag dedicated to fish, the "fish bag".
We climbed up to the other lake and repeated the process, pulling in another four fish. With those cleaned and bagged, we began the cross country route that would culminate with us in Bench Canyon, a beautiful, U-shaped, glacier carved valley that Ansel Adams called his favorite.
We rounded the ridge, turning from south to west, then traversed diagonally upward for about a mile to 10,200' and a small lake. Both of us were struggling today. Tired. Lethargic. Every step a push. Was it the two big previous days? Left over fatigue from the 17 mile day to see Sally in Mammoth Lakes? Being 62?whaterver the cause, we made lots of excuses to stop during the day. This time, the lake seemed to be crying out for someone to swim in it. We obliged.
By now it was lunch time. We both were eating burrito wraps with cheese. But, with eight trout in my pack it seemed logical to fry a few up and have fish tacos. They were delicious.
With no further excuses to delay us, we started off again. The route took us uphill to the north, then west. Being adverse to too much uphill today, we turned west too soon and began descending not into Bench Canyon, but into the North fork of the San Jochin River. We caught our error before we had lost too much elevation, and traversed upward 300' to the top of the dark bluff. From here we could look down into Bench Canyon, with its lazy stream ambling over solid slabs of granite on the bottom of the broad U-shaped valley, it's Lodgepole Pine groves and its abundant meadows. We dropped the 400' into the canyon, dropped our packs and lay down on the smooth granite slabs, listening to the soft babble of the steam nearby. After our break, we struggled up the valley, wheezing and puffing as we once again cleared the 10,000' mark. We were tempted by a few comfy looking camping opportunities, but knew we wanted to make it to Blue Lakes at 10,500', the glacial tarns at the head of the valley, just below the head wall and the pass. We struggled up the last few hundred feet to the lake, then quickly unfurled our sleeping pads and lay down, hoping to gather some strength. It was 2:55 pm.
After an hour, Craig grabbed his fishing pole to see if there were any fish. I wrote in my blog, maintaining my horizontal position. The sun was warm with a cool wind blowing, but I was low enough to the ground that the wind missed me, mostly.
Craig returned with stories of big fish. He said he had landed an 11" Rainbow, but released it due to the six fish I already had in the fish bag. I thought more fish was better. After a half an hour, we both returned to the lake. We caught fish, but most were 8-9". We threw them back. Finally, I hooked into something big! How big? I could make this a great fish story, but suffice it to say, he broke my line. That was my bad, I had the drag too tight. After tying on a new swivel and lure, I tried to catch the fish that stole my gear. In the process I hooked a 12" Golden Trout.
It was now 6:30 pm, so we wandered back to camp and began frying our eight fish. It took the better part of an hour to get them cooked, but what a great supplement to our dinner.
While I was finishing up some Alfredo noodles just before dark, a man suddenly appeared in our camping area. He had been high tailing it the canyon to get to this lake for the night. His name was Martin. He was from Switzerland. He had come Minaret Lake, covering in one day that which had taken us two. He headed for the other end of the lake to camp and we settled in for the night.
It was a little disappointing to be caught by someone moving that much faster than us, but then again, we had spent time fishing every lake we had come to, not just racing through this incredible wilderness. I slept well.
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