Emigrant Wilderness

[Tony Wong]

Rick,

Love it that you have posted photos of your trip into the area.

I have my Topo map out and it really is fun tracing your journey on the map with your photos and your narration.

Yeah, gotta love a trail that has been beating to a dusty pulp and held together with a healthy dose of horse poop to keep it from all blowing away in the wind. :)

I see that you have a Contrail too….great shelter.

Was it hard to go off trail?

My navigation skills are pretty poor, so for now, I am sticking to the main trails, but photos like yours are great for pointing the way for landmarks for me to look for in the future.

Keep posting…love to see more of this area for inspiration for future trips!

P.S. Tom…thanks for your kinda words of praise. Hopefully you can get your family out on trips with you soon. We took our daughter, Mei, when she was 2.5 yrs old. Now that she is too heavy to carry at 5 yrs of age, our family trips are limited to just a few miles in from the trail head.

-Tony

[Ken Helwig]

Well Tony if you hike with the Bay Area possey then your off trail skills will increase!

Oh and don't discount yourself on the off trail stuff. You did Tenaya Canyon and even though it has many hand rails to use, you did a great job. Thanks for the reccomendation on that hike. Sublime!

[Tony Wong]

Ken,

Looking forward to hooking up with the Bay Area BLPers.

Think my wife would prefer that I don't develop those off trail skills….she really wants to collect on my life insurance. :)

Fortunately, for the Tenaya Creek trip, my friend lead the way on that one, but yes….it was pretty easy in that we were following the creek down stream.

-Tony

[Rick Dreher]

Hi Victor,

For the time being, it appears all the north side campsites west of the inlet stream are now unusable, which is the majority of legal sites near the lake. There's another camping area on the east shore, but I don't know how many sites it has. Until the widowmakers fall it will be chancy to camp there, and the soil has to recover as well. It must have been windy when the fire occurred, as several isolated stands of trees in the rocky basin to the north burned, as well as some stands on the western ridge.

I can't find a record of this fire, probably a product of a summer when at one point California had more than two-thousand active wildfires. There was another recent burn in the Pine Valley area on the trail in.

That is an FS camping boundary signpost next to my camp, marking a hundred feet from theoretical water. More like three-hundred this trip.

[Denis Hazlewood]

There are many isolated burn areas at Piute Meadow, East of the creek crossing. I believe they, and the Pine Valley fires were all lightning strikes, early in the year.

Burn area Pine Valley – Emigrant Wilderness

[Rick Dreher]

Thanks Tony,

All in all, Emigrant seems like a good area to develop your off-trail chops, especially above treeline. But like any new skill set it's best to build those skills in an organized fashion. Visual overland navigation using map and compass in open country is a great way to start and Emigrant has many opportunities. (Desolation offers similar terrain and is more compact.) A gps preloaded with key waypoints organized into routes is huge help, especially traveling through woods and across complex topography, but I can't stress enough how important map and compass skills are in tandem with our electronic friends.

I like uploading tracks at home and comparing my actual route with my planned path, and with the mapped trails. Sometimes the discrepancies are startling.

My feeling is that even if one never *intends* to travel off-route, from time to time we're all forced to. Perhaps I've lost the trail, or the route is covered with snow, or a bridge is washed out, or a fire is blocking my intended path, or I have to bug out before dark (or it IS dark), or the weather has turned evil…these have all happened to me.

p.s. The TarpTent is a gen 1 Virga, a great little shelter.

[Ken Helwig]

Rick, just like my Tarptent. And yes, Tony, Rick is right, The ability of accumilating backcountry offtail skills just take some care, patientce and some know how. It is actually quite fun, once you figure the basics out. Once you do figure it out, it is like having a light bulb going off in your head…and you say…ahhh now I understand!

[Victor Karpenko]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for update. The eastern camp has been in that condition for about ten years. Early in the season there is the soil is very damp and buggy. It is a shame that there was a fire there, not much shade left I suppose. Is this area before the burn?

[Rick Dreher]

Hi Victor,

Yes, the burn affected the majority of the area to the left of the inlet, which in this shot is about a quarter of the way into the frame from the right.

There are still scattered camps farther north, away from the lake.

–Rick

[Darren Johnson]

Tony,

Thanks for this photo essay. I've been backpacking in the Sierras since I was a boy. The AirForce as relocated me to NC and I've been here since 1996. As pretty as the Blue Ridge Mountains are, I can't tell everyone how much I miss "real" mountains. I love the Emigrant Wilderness and also Ansel Adams Wilderness. Would you ever be willing to email me two hi-res photos for use as desktop pictures? This would help relieve some of my pent-up, alpine-deprived longings. The two pictures I would like, you titled in this essay are "Private Swimming Hole" and "Touch of Pink." Thanks! Darren

[Tony Wong]

Darren,

Glad that you enjoyed the photos, it has been a real pleasure to post them up here and to hear all the positive responses back.

I'd be happy to email you those two photos, which are probably my two favorite of the bunch.

I am looking to print Private Swimming Hole out at Costco and hang it in my cube at work.

If you setup an email to PM/Private Message, I can get your email address and send them to you.

At some point, I might figure out how to use Flickr and post up the photos.

I think that Flickr allows anyone to download the image.

Well, if you find yourself out this way again, maybe we can get a group of BPLers to head out to the Sierras with you. :)

-Tony

[Darren Johnson]

Hi Tony, I feel kind of silly being a computer guy, but not knowing how to PM you. :o) Please just email me woodworkerfella aat g mail dott comm. (I'm sure you can figure that out – I'm just trying to fool web bots that harvest emails out of web pages.) I can't wait to see those two photos on my 22" widescreen LCD!

That would be really cool to join everyone for a trip in the Sierras some day. Thanks for the offer!

Sincerely,

-Darren

[Tony Wong]

Darren,

To setup for PM, you have to go into your profile and setup and email address…like the one you gave me in your message.

Then if you click on someone's name/icon, there should be an option to email them.

Anyway, I have just sent the photos to you.

Glad that you enjoyed them and want to share them with others.

-Tony

[Sara-Ann Datta]

Hi Tony,

I'd love to feature one of your photos on a travel website I am working on. Is there an email address I can contact you on? You can email me at: [email protected]

Many thanks,
Sara-Ann Datta

[Jay Wilkerson]

June Gloom!!!

When is the snow going to melt so we can hike?

[Haiqing Qiu]

Very Nice!
Thank you Tony!

[Sam Ohno]

Wow, ho, ho, that's some serious hiking there…great pics..

[John Larmer]

Great pics! Does anyone know if it's possible to go from Whitesides Meadow or some other point on that trail down the Stanislaus River to Pinecrest Lake? Is there a do-able cross-country route, or an unofficial trail?
Thanks – John Larmer, [email protected]

[Robin Joy]

A faster way in to Hyatt Lake.
Get out your maps Topo and Forest Service.
A long time ago while in Boy Scouts and they had 2 week Summer Camps one year we did a 50 miler out of Crab Tree Camp when we finally made it to Hyatt Lake we all were bushed but we noticed a guy standing on the West side of the lake fishing with just a day pack on so we walked over to him from the beach and asked him how he got to the lake his reply I have never forgotten. He told us from Bourland Meadows. Now get out your USDS MAP OF THE AREA go to Long Barn there is a road that comes out the back of Long Barn 3N01 follow this until you reach 3N09.
Follow it until the end you will know when you are close because the paved road of 3N01 will have ran out of pavement which you had been driving on for the past hour. At the end of 3N09 there is a large log across the road and a spot to camphor the night. In the morning get out you topo and hike up the old road as you get near the top of where Bourland Meadows begins (a huge meadow filled with wild flowers) look for some red tape if still there that is where you cut thru the trees to find your trail. There is a way down to some wide areas in the stream below. Make your way down to the camp area cross the stream go east up the stream to where you notice (on map) a saddle go up to the top of the saddle you will find a trail that goes up the ridge to Hyatt Lake , of course the beach will be on the other end. You will also be very close to Big Lake and Yellowhammer Lake. No horse poop to follow and will save hours off the Crab Tree Camp way.
Great place to explore for quick camping trips nobody goes there.

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