Rae Lakes Loop Trip Report

This tale starts in mid August with the dry lightning storm that hit the Bay Area. It sparked fires all over California and filled the air with smoke. After cancelling their camping trip to Pinecrest Aug 22nd weekend- Aaron, Avery, and Morgan were eager to get outside. They had been cooped up with the windows closed since the fires started on the 18th.

Permits to hike Rae Lakes were not easy to get. They had to submit their permit application at exactly 12:00AM the day the permit lottery started back in March. They didn’t get their first choice of Rae Lakes clockwise, and instead got the counter-clockwise direction. The clockwise direction is preferred by most backpackers because the elevation gain is spread out over more days and the steep sections of Glenn Pass come when packs are lighter. The counter-clockwise direction features 7000 ft of elevation gain in the first 2 days.

The week leading up to the trip, air quality wavered between orange and yellow. On Monday before the trip, Avery talked with a ranger on the phone to get the permit. While the ranger didn’t make a recommendation on cancelling, she did say that she had been out in the back country and hadn’t noticed negative effects from the smoke. She also said that while it was hazy in the mornings, it was generally clearing up for the rest of the day. This convinced the group that air quality would be good enough. The Bay Area fires were at 70% containment and should be contained by the time the group started hiking on Thursday. The trip was on!

Initial pack weights

Morgan	32
Aaron	30
Avery	27
Karissa	26
Andrew	30

Wednesday night, they drove up and stayed at Sunset Campground (6000 ft). The air was a little bit smoky, but somehow was still more fresh than the Bay Area (maybe it’s all the trees?).

Day 1

Thursday morning, the group drove to Road’s End. Air quality seemed poor along the way, but improved at Road’s End. They started the hike with blue in the sky!

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They began the hike by immediately picking up 5-6 fly satellites each. Avery put on her mask- not to keep out the smoke, but to prevent the flies from flying up her nose. Morgan put on his mosquito head net. As they navigated switchbacks, the air quality continuously improved. After 7.5 miles, they stopped at Charlotte Creek for lunch. Avery and Morgan caught rainbow trout in Bubb’s Creek.

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3 miles later, the group reached their first campground at Junction Meadow. Karissa, Avery, and Aaron soaked their feet in the creek. Avery measured the water temperature at 51 degrees! Morgan caught rainbow and brown trout on spinners.

Inspired by the small creek, Avery whipped out her tenkara rod (she brought it despite not catching a single fish on it in the Golden Trout Wilderness). She got a few strikes fishing in the pool below the campsite, but wasn’t able to set the hook. Morgan took over the pool and Avery moved onto the riffles above camp. She didn’t see any trout there, but to her surprise, a brown trout hit her fly!

Avery was so excited! She made Aaron stop reading the Stormlight Archives at camp to take a picture of her catch.

Darkness began to fall early around 6. Avery, Aaron, and Andrew read their Brandon Sanderson books before falling asleep in their tents.

Day 2

The next morning, Avery and Morgan woke up early and quickly packed their packs. While the rest of the group packed, Avery caught another brown trout on tenkara rod. This was helpful for resetting the timer on her trout grand slam. Morgan and Avery decided the rules of the grand slam were 3 species of trout in 24 hours.

Morgan and Avery were eager to get to Rae Lakes to continue progress on their grand slams. Morgan needed to catch a brook trout by 6pm and Avery needed to catch a brook trout and rainbow (her rainbow would time out at noon on 9/5).

They had a bear sighting after leaving the campground. It was an adolescent bear – roughly Avery sized. The woodsy environment soon opened up to an exposed climb with the sounds of the roaring creek.

After a mile of steep switchbacks, they had lunch at the last stream crossing before Glenn Pass. Karissa took a nap. Avery sat in damp gravel while eating and needed to dry her pants before continuing. Aaron took a picture for the trip report and named the pose “the upward baboon”.

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As they climbed higher, the elevation started to kick in. Morgan could really feel it. The terrain changed again to rocky crags with small pools of water at the bottom. The wind whipped through the peaks.

The top of Glen Pass loomed far and high. From the unnamed lake at the base of the south side, Andrew could see switchbacks heading up to the ridge and people walking around on the top.

Hiking up to Glenn Pass was really hard. Andrew made it first, then Aaron, then Avery, then Karissa and Morgan who was struggling with the altitude and elevation gain.

Despite his struggle to get to the top, once there were trout on the horizon, Morgan filled with energy and left the peak first to go fish in Rae Lakes. The group watched him charge down the hill.

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The rest of the group talked to the trail crew at the top of the pass. They learned that to get the bear boxes into the back country, the trail crew carries them on top of logs shouldered by 4 people. Crazy!! They went down the pass. It was really rocky. There were many almost-falls.

They found Morgan at Upper Rae Lake. He had already caught a bunch of what he said were brown trout. Avery looked at his pictures later and determined they were all brook trout. He thought he still needed a brookie to complete his grand slam, but when we looked at the pictures on his phone, we could see he had actually completed the grand slam in Bubb’s creek. One of the rainbows he caught actually appears to be a gold-bow!

Morgan’s trout grand slam

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Avery caught about 10 brook trout in Upper Rae Lake while waiting for Andrew, Karissa, and Aaron to catch up. The water was really clear. They could see brook trout cruising around and jumping for bugs all over the lake.

Avery was only one rainbow away from finishing her grand slam. She finished while they hiked in between upper and middle Rae Lakes looking for a campsite.

Avery’s trout grand slam

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Tired from a long day of hiking, the group scouted for a campsite. All of the good campsites near Middle Rae Lake seemed to already be taken. The group settled for a campsite to the side of the trail in some slanted, battered alpine grass. This plan was short lived as Ranger Mike came by and scolded the group for setting up on the fragile alpine grass. He recommended walking 2 minutes farther down the trail to get to the established campground.

Even though they were tired, the group packed up and moved over to the suggested camping area. It was AWESOME. They had a great lake view with flat, even ground. Thanks Ranger Mike!

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Avery tried out her new homemade spinner (parts from Jannsnetcraft). She caught trout on the first two casts! Her plan is to replace all their spinners with these homemade spinners with single hooks. The single hooks haven’t arrived in the mail yet, but they should cause less damage to the trout and make it easier to release them.

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Day 3

The group woke up on Day 3 to beautiful blue skies. They decided that Day 3 would be an easy day. Morgan, Andrew, and Karissa spent the morning reading. Aaron and Avery did rock yoga.

Morgan let Aaron borrow his fishing pole. Avery and Aaron strolled around Upper and Middle Rae lakes slaying trout.

Everyone reconvened at the campsite around 11 to pack up. They planned to hike 2 miles downhill to camp at Dollar Lake.

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It was an easy stroll down to Dollar Lake. Once they arrived at Dollar Lake, it became apparent that it wouldn’t be a good campsite. All of the established campsites were too close to water. They took a 2 hour break just hanging out – fishing, swimming, and reading.

The group decided to go with the original plan of camping at Woods Creek. This meant they had another 4 miles to go for the day. With clouds rolling in, they marched down the hill.

Morgan got to the campsite first. He found a great site away from the majority of campers at Woods Creek. Morgan and Avery both rigged their tenkara rods with small fake worms and dead drifted them down Woods Creek. The action was unreal! Avery and Aaron, using Avery’s rod, caught tons (20+) of little gold-bows. They were so pretty!

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Day 4

Aaron wanted to get home early to spend time with his girlfriend on Labor Day. Morgan and Andrew were strongly on board. This plan would require the group to hike out 15 miles with about 2000ft elevation loss.

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Suffering from a strained calf, Avery was having a tough time with all the downhill staircases. Around Upper Paradise Valley, she threw in the towel and let the group have at all the contents of her pack. Aaron swapped his sleeping bag for her tent, Morgan took her sleeping bag, and Andrew took the stove and med kit. This left Avery with a 15 lb pack.

While racing to get back to the car to get home at a reasonable hour, the group got stuck behind a bunch of slow day hikers. It turned out they had a great reason for walking slowly- a small mama bear and her cub were casually strolling down the trail.

As we drove home, the smoke was thick. Normally, there are great views driving home from Road’s end. However, all the vista points were blank with smoke. Visibility was just a few hundred feet.

This was unexpected because we thought the air would improve since the Bay Area fires should have been almost contained. We didn’t know that the Creek Fire had started in Sierra National Forest on our day 2 and had grown to over 70,000 acres.

The Sequoia Complex fire had more than doubled in size and unfortunately burned some of the Golden Trout Wilderness we explored in August. Avery and Aaron were so sad for the little Golden trouts who are probably on fire.

The next day, when we checked the map, it was solidly purple throughout Sequoia and Kings Canyon. This means that it was a great call to hike out a day early!