Ansel Adams Wilderness: Lillian Lake Loop (August 13th to 15th

Ansel Adams Wilderness: Lillian Lake Loop (August 13th to 15th) Thanks to Chakri for inviting us to the Lillian Lake Loop backpacking trip. This was Renuka's first backpacking trip and I was hoping that she would enjoy the awesome experience. The planning involved about 80 emails :-) but we finally nailed it down to 7 of us (First timers: Renuka & Megha, Chakri, Stan, Abhijit, Krishna and I). We left the Bay Area around 3:30pm on Friday Aug 12th and stayed at the Sky Ranch in Oakhurst, CA. As soon as we checked in we worked our way to the bar. Sky Ranch is a nice cozy place tucked away in a corner of Oakhurst. The bar (The Branding Iron) is supposed to be part of a 100 year old converted mountain ranch, and has a nice old bar feel to it. The walls around the bar are covered with dollar bills signed with memories of past patrons. As we walked in the bar was closing, but the extremely friendly bartender Johnnie Rae (an Elvis impersonator) opened the bar for us. All of us has a few drinks, Abhijit and I had a few few more :-) - The evening was great with Johnnie bringing out his guitar and singing a few Elvis songs for the 5 of of still at the bar.

(Rest stop)

(Renuka)

We began our drive up to the trail head at Clover Meadow at around 9:30am. The road to the trail head was really bad, most of it was potholed and in terrible shape. After squeezing into the packed trail head parking lot we set off on the Walton/Fernandez trail towards our first campsite, Flat Lake. With about 30lbs on our backs we made our way up to Flat Lake. Some of the climbs were tough but by and large the 7 miles there were beautiful and everyone made it without any issues. The only problem we had was the immense amount of mosquitoes in the area...just swarming. Thankfully we all had head-nets and plenty of repellent. Once we got to Flat Lake we set up camp and found a nice fireplace build with rugged stones. After we were all settled, I took a quick dip into the lake to freshen up and were all set for an evening with a small fire, a sip of vodka and some dried 'Mountain House' food packs.

(Flat Lake campsite)

We were up and packed by 10am the next morning and made our way back to the Lillian Loop (Flat Lake takes a small detour off the main trail and is on an extension of the Fernandez trail) and continued in our anti-clock wise direction towards Lillian Lake. The route to Lillian was a bit more challenging than yesterdays trip to Flat Lake, so Stan, Abhijit and I did some out and back runs to relieve others off their backpacks for short steep climbs. We made it to Lillian and hung around for an hour. Then we made our way towards Staniford Lakes. Once at Staniford (around 12:30pm) we stopped and tried to figure out our next step. So Chakri, Abhijit and Stan decided to head up to Chittenden Lake (our next campsite) and set up a few tents and then come back for the rest of us at Staniford. Megha, Renuka, Krishna and I climbed our way to the largest of the Staniford Lakes and found an awesome spot to rest and swim. The water was clear and cool, I'd hazard it was in the low 60s (F). Stan, Chakri and Abhijit joined us about 2.5 hours later and after we all had a good swim we headed for Chittenden Lake which had a decent climb and an unclear, rocky trail. The climb there was one place a lot of us were not very comfortable. Some of those ledges seems a bit hairy specially when you have 35lbs on your back :-). But the campsite was awesome, Chittenden Lake reminded me a lot of Minarets Lake, rocky, clear and edged with snow. With all the tents set up we settled in to watch the sunset and moon rise and then for another nice evening with a campfire, jokes, a few drinks and food.

Chittenden Lake

By far the highlight of the day was the swim at Staniford.

(Staniford Lake)

The next morning we headed back to the trailhead with a brief stop at Vandeburg Lake (we skipped Lady Lake as we were getting a bit tired) - The trip back was easier as we were dropping from the 9000s back to the 7000s.

(Renuka at Chittenden)

(Renuka[in blue] and Megha on our way back)