Hilgard Basin

Date: August 27th - August 29th, 2010
People on Trip: Jonny, Annie, Klint and Chris
Distance: 20.4 miles with about 5.5 miles of day hiking
Total Climbing Elevation (which includes day hikes): 6,352.50 ft

Wow, what a trip. I knew the first time I went into this area a few years ago, I wanted to come back and explore more of the area. What I didn't know was that I would discover paradise on this trip. In other words, I discovered my most favorite area I have ever been to.

As Jonny and Annie knew, I was concerned that they were not prepared for the trip...and they definitely were struggling througout the whole trip. But to their credit, they made it 10.25 miles to Blue Paradise lake the first day. With that said, I had major foot pain and blister pain I was dealing with as well. Klint, on the other hand, is like a body builder because his pack weighed maybe twice the weight of mine, but he had a lot more energy and was less sore then everyone else. Both him and my dad are clear evidence that being pain free and not sore on these trips has more to do with how physically fit you are and less in how much your pack weighs (for the most part). They are inspiration for me to more seriously work out all year round and figure out all of my pain problems (hip flexors and foot issues).

We were on the trail at 8:30 am on that Friday morning. Like last time, at the top of the ridge near Expedition Pass had great views. The weather was also fantastic on this day and the trail conditions were great. We made it to Blue Paradise lake at about 3:30 pm. At that point we decided that it wouldn't be a good idea to hike into the south basin that day, but that we would do a day hike to the area on Saturday. The rest of that day and that night continued to bring us great weather.

Expedition Lake

We found an excellent camp site near the lake.

One funny story worth sharing was Jonny's butt problems. When he went fishing on the first day at Blue Paradise lake, he mentioned that his "butt was sore from chaffing". What I found amusing was that he just noticed this after we stopped hiking. The only thing that makes sense to me was that there was some paranormal activity at camp that made a manifestation up his ass. This fueled a lot of "butt" comments during the trip, and this was one of the highlights of the trip for me.

That night, most of us didn't sleep that well. But this ended up being the best night of sleep on the whole trip for everybody.

Expedition Lake

The next day we woke up and headed on our day hike mid-morning. I knew that there would be a climb from Blue Paradise lake to the South Basin. What seemed odd to all of us was how the trail on our map ended before the basin....so we weren't even sure you could get into it.

So we made the rather steep ascent up the ridge. Right at the point where the trail ends on the map is when we were blown away. In front us we saw five bodies of water, and at least three peaks near or above 10,000 ft overlooking the basin. We could even see a small waterfall. We also realized why the trail ended. There was a very steep cliff in front of us.

Looking down into part of the South Basin

At this point, Annie and Jonny were hurting pretty bad (I was too, but I was too excited to try to get into the basin to care about the pain). The group decided that Klint and I were going to try to find a path to get into the basin while Jonny and Annie were going to head back to camp.

The weather for that day (Saturday) was completely overcast. We hadn't got any rain at that point in the day, but it definitely looked like it could turn bad at any point.

So Klint and I followed a trail that was very obvious at the ending point of the map. It continued on the ridge and followed the ridgeline. It was a very cool ridge, which felt a lot like a pass. The trail followed the ridge for quite a ways, until we found a spot where it switched backed into the only accessible part of the basin (from where we were), which was far to the west. From the top of the ridge, you dropped from about 10,243 ft in elevation to 9,516 ft at the first lake. At that point, we weren't expecting the basin to drop much down to the other lakes, but our guess is that it drops down another 500 ft or so to a few additional lakes in this basin. I really would really like to explore this area.

At this point I knew this place was going to be spectacular. What I didn't know before I got to the lakes was just how much the area around each lake is different. At Hilgard Lake, it is right at tree line. There are still trees, but it definitely thins out. If you go to the lower lakes (which we didn't get to), the forest appears to be much thicker. We basically walked and fished at the three western most lakes in the basin. We hiked towards the center of the basin, and that is where we were surprised to see the lower lakes still 500 ft below. Not wanting to make the climb out of that area, we decided to head back at that point.

To rewind a little bit...we spent the afternoon fishing the lakes that we came across. I had made one cast into the first lake without any luck...which I wasn't surprised because supposedly there aren't too many fish in that lake. But the second lake we hit I caught 4 fish or so out of the 5 casts that I did on that lake. Klint was using a fly fishing rod and I believe he got one on the line. We came across a very scenic waterfall that fed into a really cool stream for maybe 75 feet before entering the small lake. There were pretty flowers growing in this area, and it would be great to see the flowers bloom at peak season. After we spent some time at that lake (maybe 30-45 minutes), we made the short hike up to Hilgard lake (which is maybe 100 feet from the lake we were at, which was feeding the stream). I was able to catch one fish at this lake, but Klint had much better luck than I did. I believe he caught 6 or so fish. The fish that we were catching in the two lakes were very healthy and ranged from 10" to 13". They were beautiful cutthroat trout.

I think we stayed at Hilgard for 3 or so hours. I was able to start a fire and cook up a fish, and Klint walked around the whole lake fishing. What is unique about this area is that you have views in all directions. What I also found interesting was how the weather passed through the basin. At one point we saw clouds shooting through the basin, and it looked like they were going 50 mph and they were really low. While we were at this spot, it rained/hailed two or three different times. It wasn't a big deal for us, because we took refuge under trees.

At this point I was going out of my way to try to find areas that would be good camping spots. I did find two or three spots that you could probably make work (they were fairly clear), but there were quite a bit of rocks around the Hillgard Lake area, so that might not make the best spot. We did find an area that would work better for tents near the center of the basin...but I'm not convinced there are not better spots lower in the basin. Unfortunately, I was too tired and we were running out of time and we did not get a chance to explore the lower area. When I come back to this area, I probably would try to find the trail that continues near or around the northern part of the basin and do more exploring on the lower end to find a better camping site. But, you could always make due with a base camp in one of the areas we found...as a worst case scenario. From what we found, it doesn't look like a lot of people make it into the south basin, but we did find signs that horsed did get down there (which surprised us with how steep some of the switchbacks were). So I think there is a good chance that there are better camp sites in the area.

We wanted to give ourselves 1.5 hours to get back to camp. I think we started heading back at around 4 PM. It was still overcast at that point, but it slowly started getting worst. About mid way up the exposed ridge that leads out of the south basin, it started to sprinkle. We also started to hear lightning get closer to where we were at. At one point, we saw lighting and within a second heard the thunder and knew that it was not safe. So we sprinted to some bushes that were on the side of one of the switchbacks and ducked for cover. Of course we couldn't be on an exposed ridge without hail! The hail got progressively bigger (up to a dime size) and the wind picked up.

I was in a state of mild panic when it felt like we almost got struck by lightning. I am no weatherologist, but I know being on an exposed ridge during a thunderstorm is not safe. And my legs were starting to get cold. In fact, they started to get really cold to the point where I had very little feeling in both of my legs.

We decided to make a run for it, even though the storm was still raging on. We finished the few remaining switchbacks until we reached the top of the ridge that we would follow and finally start to go down. This was higher than we were before, but there were more trees available to take shelter under.

It is amazing what the body will do when it thinks it is danger. I no longer felt any pain from my blisters or hip flexors, and we were running on the ridge. Moving was the best way from allowing my legs to get any colder. In my head I was thinking of worst case scenarios, and debating on how cold I should allow my legs to get before stopping and starting a fire. In any case we made it to the end of the ridge through all of the rain and hail and started the descent down.

I thought I was through the worst of the hike back. But going down a steep slope when it is raining and cold, combined with wet rocks and mud is not easy. At one point I heard a strange sliding sound. I turned around and noticed a huge mud slide coming down the trail. Of course I jumped off of the steep trail at that point. I'm sure I would have been swept down the mountain if I had stayed on the trail while this mass of mud and rocks was coming down the trail.

We finally made it to our camp. My legs and feet were bitterly cold and I immediately went to work getting the fire going (it was smoldering at that point in the rain). Jonny and Annie were making out in the tent when I got back. After about 15 minutes, the fire finally got going again and I started to warm up. It continued to rain for maybe about 1 hour or so after that. Everyone ended up coming out of their tents when it stopped raining (I just stayed by the fire because I didn't have dry pants to change into).

Jonny and Annie discovered that their tent was leaking really bad and their tent site selection was pooling water. So they ended up moving the tent to a new location after it stopped raining.

We had a period of maybe two hours to dry off and eat dinner. At 8:30 pm it started raining hard very quickly, so we sprinted to our tents and went to bed.

This was the night that I was irritated by my tent location the whole night. You see, I was on a diagonal slope, and of course my tent was not setup to match the slope. So I basically was sliding to the far right corner the whole night. This didn't bother me all that much the first night, because there wasn't that much condensation. But since it rained and it was colder, my sleeping back was touching the side of the tent way too much. So on top of adjusting all night long, I could not get my love handles warm! The rest of my body was fine, but my love handles were freezing. I think part of it might have been because on one side I was touch the trekking pole that was holding my tent up, but I'm not sure.

Even with the little sleep I got, I ended up waking up at 4:30 AM in the morning. I laid there for about an hour before I got up and started a fire. We packed up our wet gear and headed towards the trail head I think around 10:00 AM or so.

The hike out was generally easy....that is until we about 4 miles from the trail head. Up to that point, we encounter a few muddy spots, but nothing that slowed us down too much. At around 4 miles, we started to come across massive amounts of mud on the trail. This wasn't too bad, but then it started getting ridiculous, where we almost lost our shoes in the mud in the spots where we couldn't bush whack around it. This slowed us down a lot to the point where it was very difficult to make good time in the mud. I stopped trying to walk around the mud because I was very sore and my feet were aching all over the place. Jonny was whailing in agony, until Annie rebuked him and he went quiet for a while. I continued to whine out loud as I stood on what felt like popsicle sticks for legs and little girls feet.

We finally got to the trail head at around 3:30. We ate at the grizzly bar which is about ten miles from the trail head and had the best burger of my life (I'm not kidding either).

I think I was more sore after this trip than any of the other trips. Part of it was because I did not do very much conditioning in the 2.5 week period from the last backpacking trip, and my blisters from that trip were not fully healed. I enjoyed all of the trips I went on this year, but this was the only trip where the scenery combined with the fishing seemed to make all the pain and suffering on the trail worth it. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the other trips, but this was the most special to me.

This place is so awesome, that I'm already starting to plan another trip to go here next year. I'm thinking about spending two or three nights camping in the South Basin. This is the type of area that is not easily accessible by most people, has great fishing and is incredibly scenic. I have seen all of these come together like I have for this area, and I'm super excited to explore this whole area!

What I learned on this trip:

• It is possible for a ghetto butty to chafe.
• Even when using a tent, choosing where to place the tent is very important.
• Decreasing the weight of your pack in taking stuff that you don't need to take and still be comfortable is important. But what is more important is how hard you condition your body in preparation for a trip. It is okay to take a 60 lb pack if you are in incredible shape. I on the other hand wouldn't have been able to do this last trip with a 60 lb pack. Maybe next year.
• I think decreasing the amount of pain I experience on the trail (blisters, sore feet, sore body) will increase how much I am able to enjoy backpacking trips. I did a better job this year than last year, but I still could do a better job. I think Jonny and Annie would agree that being incredibly sore takes away from the experience.
• Again I realized that having an extra day off after I get back from a backpacking trip, allows me to enjoy the trip a lot more.
• Investing in some kind of water proof pants or something "might" be worth it. I find that this is the case when I am hiking in the rain, as this is when my pants get wet. I may decide not to do this if I get a base layer that sheds moisture from my body, as I find my pants dry out very quickly. But I am not sure.
• An upper and lower thin base layer would help me sleep a lot better, and would make me warmer those times that it is really cold.
• A baclava that is able to cover the top of my nose and cheeks (without having to cover my whole face) would help me sleep a lot better at night.
• A bright colored tent/tarp sucks in the morning when you are trying to sleep, since it is so bright when the sun starts to come out.
• I brought way too much food this time.
• I used my alcohol stove to boil water for some of my meals. I found this to work very well. But I think if I am going to go this route, I could make a much lighter alcohol stove than I have now and save room in my backpack.
• When taking a pack that is more than 25 lbs, my current hiking shoes are not supportive enough and are too small. I need to go up a step or two with the type of trail running shoes I use...which I think would make my feet a lot more comfortable and prevent blisters.