And yet, my memory tells me that at least two or three of those years must have been pretty wet. Since completing my first 210-odd miles on the John Muir trail at 19, I figure by now I must have walked at least 2000 miles in the Sierra Nevada (I'm 48) -- and quite a few of those miles were cold, snowy, wet-boot miles.
Yes, I distinctly remember an early-oughts cross-country hike over Graveyard pass, where I was surprised to see that someone else had already stuck a few walking sticks in the snow up there before their footprints got snowed over. More recently, I've slid and stumbled and butt-glissaded in The White Stuff in places like Yosemite and Emigrant Wilderness, with witnesses!
Sometimes, lovely witnesses:
My wet tale of woe, though, was a solo late June hike in the northern Yosemite wilderness. Experienced people will tell you, as I now know, that June is still pretty early for backpacking up high -- especially in a wet year. But I had it in my head that I was going to be the first guy to fish a few of my favorite lakes up there at the 9,000 foot level, and I had lovely images of stripping wooly buggers in front of the noses of hungry trout along the edge of a lake still in the process of ice-out.
Along this 20-24 mile schlep into my favorite lake, I was to experience five increasingly convincing, disturbing, and finally disastrous signs that it was not only a very wet year but -- ironically enough -- too wet for wetting a line effectively.
Sign #1
When the trail turned into a U-shaped track through meadowy areas, that track was in fact a slow-moving, inches-deep stream of clear, cold water. To save my boots, I switched out to Tevas until my toes got numb.
Sign #2
Arriving after about 10 miles at lovely, trouty lake at 6500 feet, I found that the lake's shore had extended WELL back into the trees. The rocks that I had cast from in previous years were either submerged, or were little islands out in the lake, and there was a good 2-3 feet of cold-ass water lying between the pines where I might have expected to camp. Casting a fly in those trees was not going to work well (assuming there were even any trout rooting among the pine cones), so I kept moving along.
Sign #3
The main waterway in this canyon, the same one feeding the aforementioned flooded lake, was, as I found upon climbing up the granite slopes, not the usual collection of fishable pools connected by quaint waterfalls -- it was a ROARING TORRENT. I remember standing by the white, leaping water and having two thoughts:
- "This sounds like a goddam jet engine at full blast."
- "This could be dangerous if I slipped and got my sorry ass swept in there."
Sign #4
My final hope for that first day was to fish a second-favorite lake around 8,000 feet -- but that was not to be either, for a whole new Cause of Unfishability. In this case, the flooding stream, normally crossed on stepping stones or waded at a cold but shallow ford, completely locked me away from the lake. Believe me, I covered ground looking for a crossing of some kind. But the prospect of wading with a backpack in four or five feet of firmly flowing, icy water didn't have great appeal. I pitched a camp away from the stream and put all my hopes on the #1 lake, still 8-9 miles and 1000 vertical feet away.
Sign #5
If you've ever walked a hard day in the Sierras, filled with anticipation of arriving at a sweet camp and throwing your backpack down at last, you'll know exactly how I felt the following day when I rounded the last few hills blocking my view of the lake. I was excited and walking fast through about a half-foot of damp snow. There was snow on the trees too, all of which created a fairly blinding effect in the midday Sierra sunlight, but I tramped along with my lovely image of the ice-ringed lake brimming with big, hungry trout. Finally arriving at an overlook to the lake, what did I see? WHITE STUFF. A big, long field of it right where the lake should have been, without a single break of visible, liquid water surface. The lake was still ice-covered, in late June!
Those were some wet year woes. I got to walk through some unique conditions, and I sure got a workout -- but in one the wettest multi-day California hikes in my personal history, I did not get to wet a line. I'm sure you appreciate that I'm not making this up, because you can't make this stuff up.
For last summer's backpacking, the bigger issues were shallow, warm water, and smoke from wildfires. One night, after a long, hazy day, I woke up in the wee hours with genuine concern for the breathability of the air. Smoke from various fires in the general area had created a dense, white fog around my camp. The next day -- a much clearer day, thankfully -- my tent smelled like it had been held over a campfire. A group of kids hiking down from higher up were very relieved to hear from me that the trailhead was not actively aflame.
I'm wondering how things will look this year. Will the plumbed and piped lower Sacramento be running high and clear during the shad run? Will the aqueducts in Glenn county spill the usual flood of water into the furrows between the almond trees, or into the big shallow lakes where a fat percentage of American rice is grown? Is "megadrought" a scary enough prospect that Californians might adjust their agricultural use of water, in addition to asking citizens to wash their dishes more efficiently?
As a guy whose wilderness activities are partly motivated by a desire to create distance from the general disappointment created by fellow humans, I'd tend to think: probably not. However, in an effort to see the glass as half full, I'll reflect that there will probably be no problem fishing a certain lake system this year, even in late June.
