Tahoe Rim Trail: Day 2 – Susie Lake to Phipps Creek – 8/14/21 – 11 Miles
Despite yesterday’s Sisyphean effort and a Tylenol PM, sleep eluded me as I concentrated on my self-assigned angst for today’s challenge: the climb up to Dicks Pass. Yes, I do get tired of projecting and worrying about things. Mark Twain said, ““Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.”
Daylight comes super early in this part of the world, and I was awake with the sun’s first glimmer at 5:00 a.m. but stayed put for a while longer. Unlike back home where the dawn chorus would be nonstop, there was no birdsong with the sunrise at Susie Lake, and I missed that. Might as well get up.
Carol was up and moving around, too. Cold oatmeal and a positive attitude to start the day! The air was clearer so maybe we’d have a blue sky. Due to the dry conditions our tents and tent pads were perfectly dry for packing up, a rare occurrence back East.
Speaking of packing up…My backpack is a 13-year-old Osprey Aura 50, not quite big enough for a trip of this length, especially with a bear canister, so I was trying out a new strategy. Usually I packed my sleeping bag in its own stuff sack, my clothes in a gallon size ziplock bag, and so on, which makes pockets of dead space. So I lined the inside of my pack with a trash compactor bag as a water barrier and I stuffed everything inside loose to maximize squishability – like a college kid’s laundry bag coming home for the weekend. Yes, everything had to come out when I set up camp each night, but that happened anyway. One exception was my sleeping pad, which I deflated and rolled up tight in its stuff sack before it went into the pack, to protect it from being punctured.
The trick is in layering what I’m going to need when. Sleeping bag and silk liner go in first, shirts and puffy jacket for cool evenings, then the bear canister full of food to squish all that down. Cookstove and sleeping pad fit next to the bear canister. Sleeping clothes and spare socks fill in the nooks and crannies. The next layer was my tent and tent pad (the first thing to be set up at camp), then the current day’s food and a rain jacket on top, and there you have it.
I’m a convert for this type of packing. I didn’t invent it, of course, and most long distance hikers eventually get to this system. The pack was tight but not towering over my head, and it felt lighter in my mind.
We had planned to be on the trail by 8:00, but were ready to set out at 7:15 a.m. The cool morning air was refreshing. Maybe we CAN do this!
Before we left camp I walked down near the base of Susie Waterfall, impressive during normal flow, but it was a wispy veil not visible enough to photograph. That and the dry lake beds earlier yesterday indicated the extent of the drought and how it would affect the coming days.
As the trail turned away from Susie Lake, we met a backcountry ranger who checked our permits (yay, glad someone is paying attention). She was toting a full-size shovel and told us that the biggest problem with people in the backcountry is improper disposal of human waste. Remember that, folks.
Pearly Everlasting
Our climb up to Dicks Pass started off gently enough – does that mean we are finally acclimated? – taking us through shady trees as we passed side trails to Glen Alpine and Half Moon Lake. We stopped at the Gilmore Lake turnoff for a snack break, said hello to two backpackers who had spent the night there and said there was bear activity all night.
The TRT passed through a lovely meadow and turned right. Suddenly we found ourselves looking at a magnificent landscape painting. Blue waters (Susie Lake?) glimmered low in the valley and the Crystal Range gleamed on the horizon. This was the kind of view we’d heard so much about.
Carol, always on the lookout, got a cell signal here. We were able to send texts and What’sApp messages to family and Carol got a phone call out to her husband. Touching base whenever possible was important to everyone.
Half Moon Lake lies at the base of a massive cirque created by a glacier that flowed down from Jacks Peak and Dicks Peak
We’d been walking in shade until now when the sun came up over the ridge. The heat really intensified in direct sun and the going got a bit tougher. The trail was above tree line now and we took a few 30-second pauses in the shade of the occasional tree on the slope. Still, it felt less horrible than yesterday as we followed the switchbacks and the pack felt better on my back.
At the saddle between valleys, the next amazing view opened up. Dicks Lake spread out in the valley before us and I felt I could see every inch of its shoreline. Lake Fontanillis lay just beyond it. Behind us was Half Moon Lake, and to our left was a trail going up to Dicks Peak and Jacks Peak, patches of snow clinging to their shadowy sides. We had a half-mile yet to reach the pass, but we took an extended break to, as Ram Dass says, “Be Here Now.”
From the saddle, the trail turned right and climbed the last 200 feet to Dicks Pass, which was a surprisingly broad open meadow dotted with fir trees. The pass is at 9,400 feet and my breathing felt great. I’ve struggled with high elevation over the years so this was a triumph in itself.
From the pass, the TRT careens down to lake level via 18 switchbacks, dropping 900 feet in 1.7 miles. The trail is on the north-facing slope which is covered in snow much of the year. Mostly hemlock trees grow among the granite.
Dicks Lake
We met a multitude of dayhikers and backpackers headed up to Dicks Pass, coming from the parking lots at Bayview near Emerald Bay State Park. Some looked energized, some looked exhausted, but everyone was pumped to get to the top.
Among them were southbound Pacific Crest Trail thru-hikers (the PCT and the TRT run together for about 40 miles). We asked about water sources for the next couple of days and learned that there was no reliable water between Middle Velma Lake and Richardson Lake, which are about 9 miles apart. This confirmed what Guthooks was telling us. We were planning to camp at Phipps Creek tonight, about 3 miles past Velma Lake and 6 miles before Richardson. Hmmm…
At the bottom of the switchbacks, we passed the spur trail going left to Dicks Lake and set our sights on Fontanillis Lake. Along this stretch we met our first fellow TRT thru-hiker, a young math teacher named Jamie. She was hiking bigger miles than we were (wasn’t everybody?)
whose trail name was “Dirty.” She confirmed that Phipps Creek was dry.
Our lunch stop was leisurely, a bit too long, I guess since we felt good about getting over Dicks Pass in four hours. However, so much stopping and dawdling and talking to folks adds up and we realized that we were not getting to our intended camp very quickly. Now that we knew it would be a dry camp, we needed to formulate a plan for water there.
Somewhere in here I stopped for a bathroom break and my collapsible water bottle slipped out of the side pocket of my backpack. It’s bright orange and its purpose was for my Nuun water (electrolytes). The one time I didn’t do an “idiot check” to make sure nothing gets left behind.
The trail skirts a small edge of Middle Velma Lake, looking more like a little pond than the big lake that lies out of sight. Carol and I weren’t willing to take the side trail to find a better place to filter water, so we did our best in the shallow end. (At least the vegetation looked lush and green.)
Considering the extreme heat in the afternoons, we decided we would each carry 5 liters (that’s 11 pounds!) to Phipps Creek to ensure we’d have enough to get to Richardson Lake the following day. These were decisions we thought we would be making on the eastern side of Lake Tahoe, not in Desolation Wilderness where water was usually plentiful. What will the higher eastern elevations be like? Even drier.
We were already hiking slowly and the added water weight made it worse (mentally as well as physically). We arrived at Phipps Creek at 5:15 p.m., making it a 10-hour day to go the same distance as yesterday – 11 miles. On the bright side, though, we conquered Dicks Pass!
Phipps Creek was a very comfortable campsite and we were glad to stop there. The size of the creekbed implied that it is robust in the spring (I walked upstream a little ways and found some stagnant pools teeming with bugs – no thanks!) We pitched our tents and had plenty of time for chores, spreading out for cooking and organizing.
I think Carol has a career as a tent model
Considering mileages and water sources, Carol and I began thinking outside the box for the next sections of the TRT: hotels and slackpacking?
“It is easier to go down a hill than up,
but the view is best from the top.”
~Arnold Bennett
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