Beast and Snake Charmer Tour Twin Lakes
The tiny Big Meadow Brewery where Tyler and I planned to meet was closed, so I parked in front of it on the deserted section of the 395 that constitutes Bridgeport’s downtown. Across the street stands the court house, a proud reminder of a bygone era with an Old-West architecture that speaks boldly of the great aspirations the founders of Bridgeport must have had, but also the utter failure of the town to realize that potential. The incongruity of its grandeur is also a shadow of a darker side of Eastern Sierra history. Bridgeport resides in an area where traditional lands of the Western Mono/Manache, Numu (Northern Paiute), and Washoe overlap. Writings of John Muir and others make it clear that First Peoples were an integral part of the landscape, the mountains, and the ecosystems prior to European Americans’ invasion. In fact, the development of our beloved National Parks, including nearby Yosemite, was to a large extent part of the plan to restrict Native People’s ability to use this land for their traditional purposes, and eventually to extricate them entirely. Leaving what has since been touted as “pristine wilderness”, though it never really was unpeopled wilderness until recently.
A few doors down from the courthouse is a market that seemed to be the only open business in town. I sauntered in and perused the non-perishables, assessing what it would be like to resupply in a store like this, checked out the hologram post cards, the regional maps and books, and found some hamburger buns growing a blue-green mold.
The wind outside barrelled through the empty street and cut through my thin hiking pants. I hid from in my car and a few minutes later Tyler’s Yukon pulled up behind me. After a quick greeting on the cold, windy, empty street, we got back in our cars and headed up to Twin Lakes. We found a staging area for chaining up snow-plows near the lower lake where we could assess some possible routes, but the snow coverage was meager, and skiing options limited. Starting above the upper lake from Mono Village seemed the better option.
The sun was already setting when we stepped into our bindings and started through the woods following Robinson Creek with fully loaded packs. After a few wrong turns in the twilight, we found a definite skin-track going in the right direction. Headlamps on, we trudged uphill over solidly frozen snow, sprinkled with evergreen detritus. It was after dark by the time we found a spot that was flat enough and offered enough protection from the wind to stop. Snake Charmer set up his one man tent, and I shoveled out a flat spot in the snow and unfurled my bivy. The air was bitter cold, but my Thermarest NeoAir XTherm Pad, Western Mountaineering Versalite Sleeping Bag, and Outdoor Research Alpine Bivy turned out to be a formidable sleep system and I was warm and cozy all night.
It was hard to convince myself to climb out of my warm cocoon before the sun crept up over the ridge-line, but I could hear Snake Charmer rustling around and I knew it was time to get up. We slung our avalanche packs over our shoulders, stepped into our bindings, and skinned further up Robinson Creek through a grove of Aspens marred by the carvings of every passerby. Tyler is something of a wilderness guide, and as he led the way skinning through the Aspens, he talked about the Basque sheepherders who had grazed their flocks in the Sierras and how they’d be away from their ladies for months at a time, nothing but sweet memory to inform their carvings of their ladies’ naked likenesses.
Before long we arrived at the mouth of Little Slide Canyon where we’d veer South and climb toward Kettle Peak. The route turned steep through a dense evergreen forest and eventually a boulder field whose lack of snow made picking our way through slightly complicated. A group of three had skinned past our camp before we left, and suddenly we spotted them climbing the head-wall just before arriving at the entrance to the Incredible Hulk Chutes. We followed their tracks as far as we could, passing some very tempting chutes coming off Kettle Peak, not sure what else might lie further up the canyon.
Finally the canyon leveled out to a lake, with another decent looking chute up to the right coming off Kettle Peak. We started the ascent toward the chute, and once our skins were barely able to hold onto the snow without sliding out, we unclipped and dug a pit to examine the snow pack. As expected from the forecast, it was very stable and consolidated, but just to be sure, Snake Charmer threw a huge block from our pit down the hill after ensuring no one was below. It broke up into tiny pieces and dissolved into the hillside. Finally, it was time to do some skiing.
We blazed down the canyon in under an hour, enjoying the isolated, granite-glad descent in the upper part of the canyon, and navigating the boulder fields more easily than anticipated. Soon we were back in the trees and winding our way back to Robinson Creek and our campsite.
Low on water, we skinned over to the half-frozen creek, whiskey in hand, and plopped down, filtering water, passing the whiskey, and talking about things only the warmth of the whiskey and the confidence of the canyon walls could elicit. The sun slipped behind the ridge almost without our noticing and, slightly tipsy, we skinned back to camp in the orange-pink glow of dusk.
The night was even colder than before, and despite being plenty warm all wrapped up with only my nose poking out of my bag, the morning revealed a thick layer of frost all over the outside of my bivy. A bottle of water that I’d kept in my bivy was mostly frozen, and the bottle I’d left outside was frozen solid. It was our last night and our objective for the day required skinning back to Mono Village, so we packed up camp and lumbered down the way we’d come. It was around 9 when we got back to the cars, but not too early to have a beer while we administered a little first aid/maintenance.
Heading South out of the Village, up the Horse Creek Drainage, was immediately steep, but fortunately there was a well-established skin-track to follow. It was a long, beautiful climb toward Matterhorn Peak, through forests and open glades, the jagged Dragtooth Peak bearing itself and leaving little confusion as to its name. A guided snow-shoe group that had apparently camped up in the canyon somewhere came trudging down in the opposite direction and was heading out.
It was getting late in the day but there was one more stretch I wanted to climb up and ski down. Tyler took a break in the shade as I started skinning up this final stretch. I didn’t make it far, before my skins started sliding out on me causing microseconds of panic before they’d awkwardly grab enough snow to stop. Not wanting to slide down the entire hill that way, I pulled my ice-axe off my pack and cut out a little seat for myself. I stepped out of my bindings, sat down, and pulled my crampons out of my pack. With skis on my pack, and crampons on my feet, I turned and bee-lined directly to the top of the slope, feeling crampon-invincible.
At the top I took a short break, sent Molly a message by InReach, then stepped into my bindings and began the exhilarating descent. I found the route Tyler and I had eyed from below, navigated to the entrance and was able to ski it out. What took 30 or 40 minutes to climb took only seconds to descend. I found Snake Charmer below and we started the descent back to the cars.
Hell of a trip. The snow was pretty poor by most standards. Icy. Wind-scoured. Uneven. Grabby. Dense. But all that meant that the avalanche danger was about as low as possible. And despite the snow not being great, there is really nothing like being up in the granite spires and cliffs of the Sierras when everything is glazed over in a magical icy coat of white and very nearly not another soul is around.
Back at the cars we had another beer as we stowed our gear and stepped out of our ski boots, marveling at the gurgling and grumbling sounds of the frozen lake thawing. Back on the road I followed Tyler to Travertine Hot Springs where we soaked our soar, exhausted bodies.
