Backpacking Trip 2009

Our annual backpacking trip into the Three Sisters Wilderness was a success. Along for this year's expedition was most of the old crew -- me, Dan, Larry (aka Dan's Dad), The Nick, Jayson, and Chris -- and Chris's wife Lisa also joined us. Charlie did a day hike with us on Thursday. He brought his boat along, and transported all of our packs -- and me -- across Cultus Lake, saving us about three miles of hiking with full packs. Thanks for doing that, Charlie.

From Cultus, it was about a 4.5 mile hike into Winopee Lake (pictured above), where we spent our first night camped at a very nice spot which gave us a great view of the lake and a lot of the surrounding countryside. Bank fishing was somewhat limited there due to marshy conditions near the shore, but we managed to catch a few trout. I have no doubt that a raft or a float tube would have increased our angling success significantly at Winopee. There was a lot of fish jumping in the middle of that lake.

Dan and Larry also fished nearby Lower Snowshoe for awhile, a beautiful little lake that didn't seem to hold too many fish. This is a fairly remote area that I don't think a lot of people visit. In fact, the trails were barely maintained, meaning there was quite a bit of fallen timber over the path which had not been removed. This area, due to its marshy nature, also had more mosquitoes than we were used to for late September.

After spending Thursday night at Winopee Lake, we left the mosquitoes behind and continued north until we met up with the Pacific Crest Trail and shortly thereafter took a side trail to our ultimate destination, where we spent two nights. The fishing there was better. We landed six fish on Friday and six fish on Saturday, and had trout for dinner on both those nights.

We caught a mixed bag of rainbow, cutthroat and brook trout, with brookies making up the biggest part of the catch. The fish averaged 14 inches in length. Dan had the hot hand fishing-wise, landing five trout. Jayson caught three fish, including the largest one of the trip, the 17-inch cutthroat pictured above. [All photos courtesy of Jayson]. The lake received its first brook trout in 2007 after not being stocked with brook for many years, and some of these 2007 fish were in the 13-14 inch class, which bodes well for next season.

The best bite of the trip occurred on Saturday morning when me, Dan, and Lisa took a treacherous climb down a lakeside cliff and fished a spot Dan discovered last year. We landed three 14-inch trout there in about a half an hour. I brought in the first one, and Lisa followed with her fish shortly thereafter. A few moments after landing Lisa's fish, we glanced over to Dan's rod just in time to watch it being pulled into the lake. Dan grabbed the pole before it was yanked into the water and brought his trout in. Dan landed another 14-inch trout about a half hour later at a different spot a little ways south.

This particular trip featured the best weather we've had yet in our four years of doing this, so good in fact that we were able to go swimming on Friday and Saturday. The water was cold and presented a bit of a shock when you first went in, but you quickly got used to it. The lake was deep off the point where we were swimming, so several of our group either jumped or dove off the cliff there. Dan, The Nick, and Jayson even did a moonlight swim on Saturday evening.

One of the cool parts about being in the water was swimming out to where the lake got very deep and opening your eyes underwater. You couldn't see the bottom, so the blue, sunlit water seemed to go into infinity. I plan to bring goggles next year.

Although Sasquatch shadowed us for most of the trip, he only attacked once when he tried to pull The Nick under while we were swimming (no doubt to perform unspeakable acts upon The Nick's person before drowning him). Jayson managed to take a photo of the attack just as it was unfolding.

Fortunately, Chris was able to mimic the feeding cry of the only predator that Sasquatch fears -- the Loch Ness Monster -- and that scared off Sasquatch before he was able to hurt The Nick physically. I can't speak to the psychological damage, though.

We'll see you in Hell, Sasquatch.

I brought my tent along but I never got around to pitching it. I slept under the stars all three nights and had great sleep for the entire trip. I'm in a lot better shape now than I had been on previous trips, so I wasn't in as much pain as I usually am when backpacking, which might explain the good sleep. [Note to self -- stay in shape]. I'm certain that the daily swims in cold lake water also did a lot to take the kinks out.

We had a somewhat smoky sky on the first night of the trip due to all the fires that were burning in Oregon last week; but the winds shifted, which gave us a lot less smoke on Friday and smoke-free days on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday might have been the nicest day I've seen up there in late September, which is funny because it started snowing there three days later.

Even though the weather was great, we didn't see any other hikers or backpackers during the entire trip until we got within three miles of the trailhead near Elk Lake, where our trip came to an end.