I’ve been wanting to get out solo on hikes and peaks a lot lately and in July of this summer I had an excellent opportunity to bag a couple peaks in the Desolation wilderness. I very nearly made one of the peaks and realized my eyes were bigger than my stomach for the main goal but had an excellent hike and learned some valuable lessons along the way.

The night I got in it was clear skies and an awesome show of bright long streaking meteors. I pulled in towards fallen leaf lake and slept out off to the side of the road. After about 30 minutes a couple of girls from New Jersey cruised in and parked nearby to finish off a 12 pack of beer. This was slightly annoying but I appreciated the company. I knew I wasn’t going to be greeted by any big animals that night sleeping under the stars with their warding voices.

At about 3 am, all the stars disappeared and I panicked a bit because I thought a storm moved in while I was sleeping. After I roused a bit and considered moving into the car I realized a heavy smell of smoke in the air. Something big was burning somewhere but I couldn’t tell how far or close so I went back to sleep.

In the morning I found the skies filled with smoke. The radio mentioned a big fire burning north of Yosemite so I imagine that was the source. I headed toward the trail head hoping for a change in the winds to push the smoke away.

Hiking in along the trail was pretty straight forward. It didn’t take long to find out that desolation wilderness isn’t quite as desolate as one would hope but it’s still a beautiful area. Before heading for the peaks I passed by a few lakes, a couple with a 2 year old out backpacking (awesome!), and a field of high sierra flowers.

It wasn’t long till I thought I saw my first goal Jack’s peak. As I turned off trail and started climbing straight up I noticed actually summitting the peak would be difficult possibly class 5 climbing. Since this was my first solo trip I was starting to have hesitations regarding actually summitting but as I climbed on I realized the peak I was aiming for was not Jack’s peak but a lower peak preceding it and Jack’s peak did come into view. It looked much more achievable. There was a huge field of smaller sized talus to walk through as I made my way. It was very easily passable but warranted careful footing to avoid twisting ankles. You can see Jack’s peak in the background beyond the talus in the picture below.

When I got to the saddle in the above picture I stopped looking up towards Jack’s peak and looked down towards the way I intended to descend. I also noticed Dick’s peak which was my second goal for the day looming above Jack’s peak. The summit to Jack’s looked passable and safe but the summit to Dick’s was literally huge loose talus all the way up from the side I was on. That’s when I decided rather than summit jack’s or dick’s I needed to work my way down. It was treacherous and loose the whole way down. I was so focused on the route, I didn’t even pull out the camera. I slowly picked my way down to a much more desolate lake from the previous ones.

There were tons of fish I could see and the main trail in was over grown. I for sure plan on bringing Erica back in here via the trail. When I looked back the way I came down I felt a sense of accomplishment and safety to be on flatter more solid ground. It was literally cliffs with landslides of rock between. All of the rock was loose and I had to be careful to not slide down or cause larger rocks to slide down on top of myself.

Heading back to the car felt like driving on a highway since I was back on trail. I was happy to get back safely and ponder the lessons learned for future solo trips.

1. Have an awesome map. The scale on the map I had was a little too small for hiking off trail. It was good enough to keep me from getting lost but bad enough to keep me from seeing where I really was. I constantly was mistaking the peaks I saw for what were only ridges on the map.
2. This one is a tough lesson for me cause I hate going back the way I came but if the way you came was way safer do it! I ended up taking major unnecessary risks just to not see the same thing twice in the day.
3. Loose large boulders suck to travel over.
4. Giving up is okay. Yeah I totally wimped out of the peaks and one of them I was within 500 feet of the summit. But I’m here writing about it and I didn’t have an epic in the dark walking out.
5. If I were to hurt myself during about half the hike, it was going to be pretty serious to get out dragging myself along and I saw nobody nearby who could help. You gotta take every step with thought and diligence over treacherous terrain. It would also be very wise to leave a marked map with someone who knows when to expect you.
6. Desolation wilderness is awesome!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 8:48 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.