View west down Gardiner Creek
Written: July 15, 2020
Gardiner basin is a remote and seldom visited area. The maps show an old trail, but it is almost entirely gone. This is the kind of place where you can expect to spend two days and not see anyone else. This was entirely true for us, with one exception -- a researcher studying birds and bats and alpine lakes and who we actually were expecting to encounter. This kind of solitude can be great, but you also have to be sober minded about the consequences if something goes wrong.
We applied for our wilderness permit on Recreation.gov, paying the required fee. And when instructed to do so, we sent a request for our permit to the address indicated. We had received not a thing by our departure yesterday, so we are heading out with some worry and a printout indicating our "reservation". Unknown to us, our permit was emailed to us this very day, in fact received at 12:51 PM -- almost to the minute as we set foot on the trail. I learn this a week later when I arrive home. This is unfortunate, but we never do get confronted by a ranger and asked to produce our permit.
We hike up the trail and head over to Matlock Lake, finding a nice spot to camp. This lake seems more beautiful every time I camp at it, with a fine alpine setting beneath University Peak. We stroll over for a quick look at Slim Lake. I set up my hammock and Ingrid sleeps for the first time in her single person tent. There are some mosquitos, but not bad.
The night is fairly warm at 51 degrees.
Another warm night at 55 degrees.
We are on the pass by noon, and although there is a cliff on the north side, it is a simple matter to move right (east) and descend what seems to be a remnant of the old trail. The trail vanishes shortly before reaching the first lake and that is the last we see of it. This is no particular problem as we just wander through the basin. The terrain steepens above the big lake at the end of the basin. We keep to the right and above the lake and avoid the drop into Gardiner Creek entirely. We stay high, actually slowly climbing up in elevation, staying below cliffs and often finding an animal trail to follow. This is a huge savings of time and energy. We cross over a rocky ridge at very close to 10,000 feet and then drop east to the creek itself.
We camp at a nice spot on rocky slabs just north of the first lake. We have just passed a branch of Gardiner Basin to our south and will leave it and its lakes for a future visit. Mosquitos are severe.
It is worth mentioning that Secor says that it is easier to access Gardiner Basin from Sixty Lakes Pass than via the old trail over Gardiner Pass. I am sure this is particularly true if you don't contour high as we did and end up tangling with vegetation and route finding down near the creek.
Temperatures drop to 36 degrees, which is interesting since we are at 10,300 feet, almost identical to the elevation at Charlotte Lake.
We are at the big lake (at 11407) by lunchtime, and are crossing Sixty Lakes pass around 4:00 PM. In Sixty Lakes basin we decide to split up. Rick and Amanda head on over Glen Pass (they are young and strong). Rick needs to hike out to Roads End tomorrow, so he needs to be at Charlotte tonight.
Ingrid and I camp at the first of the lakes on the way up to Fin Dome. We are glad to stop early, and in retrospect it would have been tough to continue on over Glen Pass. Honestly, if I had done this on my own, I might have taken (and might need to have taken) 3 days instead of 2 to get to Sixty Lakes Basin.
Another cold night at 10,900 feet: 34 degrees. We are well equiped and quite comfortable.
Ingrid enjoys the challenge and having the pass in view provides a clear goal. We are on top by mid afternoon. We head down and once we are above Charlotte Lake begin looking for a use trail we have been told about. We found a way to drop directly down to the ranger cabin, but we were definitely not on any kind of frequently used trail (we should have been further west).
After a quick swim in the lake, we have a quick dinner and it is me in the hammock and Ingrid in the tent again.
Temperature drops to 50 degrees at 10370 elevation.
We were able to witness a rescue. Someone with diabetes was in trouble and was evacuated by helicopter from near one of the upper Kearsarge Lakes.
We arrived at our vehicle around 6PM, went to Lone Pine and got a pizza, which we ate on the porch, then it was south on 395. By this time it was pushing 9 PM and we stopped at a spot near Randsburg where I have spent the night before. It was quite a warm night -- a heat wave is settling over the southwest.
All these plutons are "granite" to the non-geologist, but geolgists take note of different kinds of rock that ordinary people would simply call granite. Most of the rock in the Sierra is actually called granodiorite, which has no free quartz and more dark minerals that a true granite.
The rock around Kearsarge Pass, Charlotte Lake, and much of the south side of Glen Pass is the "Bullfrog" quartz monzonite. This is a coarse very light colored rock with visible quartz if you look closely.
By the time we dropped across Gardiner Pass we had entered the Paradise granodiorite, which is darker and more fine grained, except for attractive larger crystals of potassium feldspar. In other words this rock has a dual grain size, or as geologists would say it is "porphyritic". The big crystals are called "phenocrysts".
As we hiked through Gardiner Basin towards Sixty Lakes, we crossed into the Arrow and then the Cotter plutons, which are fine graned granodiorites. Much of the Sixty Lakes area is again the Bullfrog Pluton, but Rae Lakes is in the Dragon pluton, which is coarse like the Bullfrog, but darker and for whatever reason seems to readily break down into gravel.
A map would help, and I probably should add one to these notes.
My starting pack weight was 31 pounds. I had extra food that I carried out, partly because we exited a day early and partly because Amanda fed us one night. Ingrid started with 24 pounds, which shows that she is smarter than me. My hammock setup is somewhat heavy, but also warm. I hiked out with 29.5 pounds, which included 3 pounds of rock samples. So, I may have consumed 4.5 pounds of food in 4 days, which is 1.1 pounds per day -- a bit less than my carefully calibrated 1.3 pounds per day, but the calculation is not entirely reliable.
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