North Fork of Big Pine Creek: Lakes 1-3, Sam Mack Meadow & Beyond, October 3, 2015

Earlier this year, I made a mental list of the alpine lakes, mountain passes and peaks that I wanted to visit before leaving California. With a busy schedule, I’ve had to do some crazy things to see all that I have over the last few weeks. This trip to the North Fork of Big Pine Creek was no exception.

If planning this trip under ideal circumstances, I’d want a block of time that was at least 36 hours long. With the busy schedules of everyone in the group, this wasn’t possible:

• 8:30 PM – Leave home
• 9:15 PM – Dinner in Victorville
• 12:30 AM – Setup camp in the Alabama Hills
• 3:00 AM – Tear down camp, drive to the trailhead
• 5:15 AM – On the trail
• 10:15 AM – Time to turn around (made it to ~11,200)
• 2:15 PM – Back @ car, start the drive home
• 6:30 PM – Arrive @ home

The hike was reminiscent of a cool New England morning in many ways – cold, crisp air, ice on the trail and aspens showing their fall colors. Since this was my first long hike with this group, as well as the first time that many of them would hike above 9,000 feet, I didn’t know what to expect in terms of how much territory we would be able to cover. With this in mind, I mapped out several potential routes and planned to make a final decision while we were on the trail.

The hike to Lakes 1-3 went quickly. After we arrived at the junction for the glacier trail, we decided to hike towards Sam Mack Meadow. We were about 20 minutes from our turnaround time when we arrived at the meadow, so we dropped our packs to see how much further we could make it. We hiked until we had a nice view of Lakes 1-3, took some photos, then started our descent. With the photo ops along the way, the descent took longer than I had expected and we started our drive home about 45 minutes later than planned.

Geek Stats

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Gear

• WoolX Heavyweight Longsleeve Merino Wool Shirt
  • Very warm and comfortable shirt. When we started our hike, it was below freezing and I was comfortable wearing this shirt along with shorts, a tank top, lights gloves and a beanie.
• Darn Tough Merino Wool Mountaineering Extra Cushion Sock
  • Ideally used in cold weather, but since my backpacking boots are sized for heavy socks, I used them on this hike.
  • These will get a ton of use once snow starts to fly.
• Geigerrig
  • Geigerrig In-Line Water Filter, Hydration Pack Engine & Insulated Drink Tube
    • With the pressurized bladder, pulling water through the filter was easy. On trips where I’m not carrying a pump filter for the group, this will be my go-to filtering system. Even when I carry a pump filter, I plan to carry the Geigerrig filter as a backup.