Meanwhile, dramatic technological and social changes during that time have rendered both my pack and my self most obsolete. During that time, not just "ultralight" but also "fastpacking" have forced their way into any compleat notion of walking as a sport. "Wha was that -- 'fastpacking?'" It passed me right by, in a blink of the eye. My personal experience of it goes something like this: one minute I was watching my friend Scott pass out in a camper van, empty bourbon bottle and creel of live eels knocked over by the campfire, and then the next minute someone was telling me that Scott had finished the entire Appalachian Trail in six weeks -- and was trying it a SECOND TIME. Fast, indeed!
"A wise man climbs mount Fuji," the Japanese say, "once."
Not to boast, but I did climb it, once. John Muir trail, once. But about the sierra lakes I have fished multiple times -- best we not go there. I'm not going to give out any names of my secret spots, anyway. I won't even mention the lake at the end of my Tahoe-to-Yosemite hike where I was quickly deprived of my last flies by big snap-offs, and which, after a few days restocking down in San Francisco, I drove back out and hiked back up 20+ miles to reach again and have a second whirl at. Nor will I mention that I have been back there five or six more times since, with a friend, and a (now ex) girlfriend, and giddily alone. Oh, how closely I will guard the secret of having witnessed the spawning run one July, and taken the measure of xxx or so trout of xx inches or more milling in foot-deep creek water!
Over the recent labor day weekend I took five days of serious slowpacking time in the south sierras, and it was sublime. Bucking personal trends, I hiked in to a completely new area, fished completely new lakes and streams, and had a catch-a-thon to remember. Friday's hike may have been hell on wheels for my feet, back, and head (OK, I admit it, I did slowpack a bottle of Allagash Curieux three miles into my Thursday night camp) but when I was eating sweet orange brook trout flesh for dinner under the stars late Friday night, I cannot say I was feeling much pain.
The next day I did a 10+ mile day hike that saw me fishing three different bodies of water and having more and more fabulous fishing all the way up. Though a committed slowpacker, I am nonetheless a weight nazi who only packs essentials, and I guess this time around I decided that a 22 oz. bottle of bourbon cask-aged Belgian-style ale was essential, while a small (but dense!) digital camera was not. If I had known how beautiful the lakes and the fish would be, I might have reconsidered that. The brookies were in full fall mating colors, and the goldens I caught were so colorful -- and large, for their kind -- that I almost wept at the effect of their blazing red smears on spotted, irridescent golden backgrounds.
I fear this may be one of the lamest moves in blogging history, but here are some pictures I have poached of someone else's trip report to the same area (curse him for posting the place names! I shall not; and these image file names have been changed to protect the innocent). This is a lake where I sight-fished for brookies with a big hopper pattern that they just couldn't resist:
And in this lake a little further up, I got lots of goldens like this, and several that were bigger and even more colorful (probably because they were males, with larger, kyped heads and lots of red in the sides):
In fact, I sight-fished repeatedly for a golden trout that might have gone 16 inches or more, and who really acted like a wise old bastard; meaning, he refused six different patterns that I threw at him, from the hopper to a size 20 pheasant tail. Which is not to say that his smaller cohorts didn't come crashing in after a nymph as soon as it hit the water, or move 20 feet in a hurry after hearing the hopper splat down on the surface. We are talking Very Fun Fishing.
And also, far more than I ever appreciated it back in my epic-hikin' days, Fun Walking and Fun Camping. Other humans were mercifully few, and trees and stars were practically infinite. The moon was big too, at midnightlighting up my orange tarp like some kind of psychedlic cocoon (which in a way, I suppose it is). You can't beat the air nor the quality of the light, especially in mid-morning, which is the time I am usually sipping coffee, laying back and gazing around as I slowpackingly put off the business of the day.
The year is slipping away slowly and the nights were very cold, but I still think there may be one more weekend trip left in this oustanding 2009 slowpacking season . . .
