Day 1: These two pictures are actually from the last day, but I figured I'd move them to day 1 for artistic purposes. We actually left Jeff's house around 7pm and didn't make it up to the trailhead until 9:15ish. By that time it was pitch black and we decided to put on our head lamps and try our hand at night navigation. That turned out to be a horrible mistake. We ended up making pretty good time, covering quite a bit of ground in 15 minutes. But then disaster struck and we lost sight of the trail at a creek crossing. We stumbled around for another 15 to 30 minutes before decided to scale a large outcropping of rocks and just "make camp" there. I say "make camp" because really all we did was lay out a tarp, throw our sleeping bags on top of that and sleep under the stars. Personally, I've always been terrifed of sleeping out in the open like that. Oddly enough though, I was the one that had the best night sleep.
Here's the sign at the trailhead. There are lots of do's and don'ts when it comes to the wilderness apparently.
One of the don'ts is shooting at anything other than the taking of live game. Apparently some people don't know the difference between a deer and a sign.
Day 2: After a nice cold night under the stars with thoughts of being eaten by bears and having mosquitoes buzzing in our ears, we woke bright and early to get a start on the day. Little did we know, this day would end up testing both our stamina and our ability to read a map.
Jeff trying to figure out where we were and where we might've lost the trail. As it turns out, we were on the trail the entire time the night before, we just couldn't see it in the black of night.
Marine corps training... Check... Camo fatigues... Check... Beretta 92fs... Check...
Worn out Nike running shoes with no tread on the soles to hike though the woods with... Check.
Why was Brian wearing worn out shoes? Because the boots he brought were worn out too. Apparently the soles rotted and fell off during our short hike the night before.
The view directly across the valley from where we had slept.
See that tree on the left hand side of the picture, way out there? Yeah, that's our destination for this day.
A shot of the sheer cliff just behind us that we slept on.
What do you mean Bryan and Brian are in this photo? I don't see them.
Everyone gave me grief for bringing my "ski poles" with me. Bryan ended up picking up two logs along the way to use as treking poles, and Brian picked up a branch the length of a jousting pole. Guess my lightweight poles aren't so funny now huh?
Brian trudging up the trail to our first major creek crossing.
Here we are at our first major creek crossing. Jeff is filling up his canteen with fresh mountain creek water.
This is at the summit the first crest crossing. Thought the tree growing out of the mountain was pretty neat.
Geez Brian, whatcha got in that canteen?
Jeff cooling off on the downhill side of the first summit.
A shot of the trees with the valley in the background.
See, told you those ski poles would come in handy.
All four of us at the trail fork. Here the trial forked north to Sword Lake or west to Burgson Lake. We had decided to go north and spend the night at Sword Lake and go to Burgson the next day but we ended up losing the trail about a mile away from this point because there was too much snow on the ground.
We decided to turn around and head to Burgson Lake instead. Here we were at our second major creek crossing. Brian decided to try and jump onto the rock to avoid having to wade across the river. He ended up not making it and soaking his right foot.
Now here he is trying to figure out how to get onto the bank from the rock he's on. Guess he didn't think that path out too well.
Here we are at the summit of the second pass crossing.
A beautiful view of the Dardanelles in the background.
Okay, back to trudging along.
Taking another break at the bottom of the pass. Little did we know the bottom of this pass would come back to haunt us later.
According to our map, and a book I had read about the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness, the trail to Burgson Lake is VERY difficult to find. So we used the GPS and the map to estimate our location and turn west. Yeah, we trudged through unblazed wilderness to find a lake. Here we are resting after going through some rough country.
I think Jeff had it the worst. His pack weighed in at 58lbs. Going over the rough ground with that much weight can't be fun.
We kept going down this rocky valley in search of Burgson Lake only to figure out we were taking the wrong heading. It's amazing that if you're just a few degrees off, you're not going to end up anywhere near your destination. But I guess if you're going to be lost, this isn't a bad view to be lost with.
"Jeff, where are we at?" "We're lost, that's where we're at." We decided to take a few more minutes to figure out where we were and where we needed to go, and we realized we were only just slightly off the right track. A simple course correction and we were at Burgson Lake. Incidentally, Jeff left his GPS at this spot, and we weren't able to find it again. So if you can figure out where this is, there's a nice GPS laying on the rock.
YAY! Burgson Lake.
Triumpantly finding our destination merited a celebratory lunch. Here Brian is licking every last tasty morsel from his government issued MRE spoon.
Here's a shot of the view at the crest behind our campsite. That waterfall feeds Donnell Resevoir.
A panorama from the same crest.
Here's Brian and Bryan coming out of their camoflauged hiding spots to join Jeff and I on the crest.
This is the north side of the lake. We had thought about camping here, but decided against it for some reason or another.
Here's Jeff and Brian setting up their bivvy for the night.
Here's Bryan trying to figure out how a hat works. You can see Jeff's urine sample in the background.
Day 3: We decided we were going to take it easy today and find a spot halfway back to the trailhead to camp at. We figured we'd leave enough time to find our way back to the main trail considering the difficulty we had finding Burgson Lake.
A shot of the lake (north-east) from our camp site.
A shot of the lake (north-west) from our camp site.
Amazingly enough, the side trail back to the main trail was relatively easy to follow. We made pretty good time back. We even found out the trail splits from the main trail at the bottom of that pass I mentioned earlier. D'oh. Here's the guys taking a break 10ft from where we started.
This is the best of about 10 pictures I took from this spot. Stupid self timer.
Here's Brian deciding to take the easy route and just walk across the 40 degree water instead of trying to jump across it. I had actually found a spot further upstream where I could cross and not get wet.
At the fork in the main trail between Sword Lake and Burgson Lake we decided we leave our packs there and fill up all our water containers so we could make the final climb up the last pass and camp at the top of the pass. We ended up finding this sweet little spot near a waterfall and decided to not climb up the pass with an additional 30 pounds of water. Guess my trekking poles aren't so useless now that they're holding up your bivvy huh?
Bryan eagerly awaiting a reading from his GPS.
Here's the waterfall we all decided to cool off under. Turns out when snow melts and runs into creeks and streams, it's not much warmer than 32 degrees.
This red artichoke looking plant is called a snow plant (Sarcodes Sanguinea Torrey)and usually begins to sprout and bloom after the snow has melted and the sun has warmed the gound sufficiently. (Thanks to Craig for ID'ing this for me)
A shot of our camp site in a nice little wind protected valley.
A view of the mountain behind our camp site. Just to the right of the photo is the pass we would need to cross back over.
The sun quickly fading.
Day 4: We all decided we would wake up early, eat breakfast, break down camp and get going so we could have a beer and pizza for lunch. Mmmmm... Beer and pizza...
Camping is all about freezing at night. This night was no exception. We awoke to snow on our tents. Turns out this was the very beginning of a storm that would sock the Sierras with snow.
Normally I put a cover over my pack to keep any condensation off. Yeah, I was a dummy and didn't the night before, so I ended up with snow inside my pack.
Here we are climbing back up the pass. You can see the snowflakes falling.
One of the numerous piles of bear poo we had run across. Luckily we never actually saw a bear, but only their remnants. This was obviously fresh since it wasn't on the trail when we came down the pass 2 days earlier.
The top of the pass. Everyone enjoying the view and looking forward to that pizza and beer.
Jeff taking a reading to make sure we're heading the right way. Yep, we were.
One of the very few animals we actually saw on our trip. It makes you realize if you had to survive on nothing but your surroundings in the Sierras, you would have a very hard go of it. Incidentially, the pizza and beer was quite tasty. :)
