Last weekend I went on a two-nighter to Waptus Lake.
Nestled within the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, Waptus Lake offers incredible views of Summit Chief and Bears Breast Mountains as well as access to the PCT. The relatively flat 9-mile hike in follows the Waptus River on and off and sports a number of small creek crossings to keep things interesting.
Unfortunately the foot bridge at the end has been washed out so access to the main campground is via a horse ford where moderately-paced water currently sits at a depth of around 26 inches.
The Waptus River runs the gamut from lazy emerald bends to modest waterfalls to rapids coursing through steep-walled canyons.
The hike shares the Salmon la Sac trailhead with the much more popular Cooper River Trail, in fact the turn off for Waptus isn’t even signed. It bends around the eastern terminus of Polallie Ridge before entering the Waptus River valley via a wide-open recovering burn.
Gear
LighterPack:
https://lighterpack.com/r/o6i7vt
I did a piss-poor job of recording my cuisine choices, to say nothing of weighing them, so they aren’t included.
What Worked
First and foremost, this was the inaugural outing for my custom not-custom Enlightened Equipment Enigma 20F long/wide quilt. The in-stock version wasn’t so I opted for an identical custom except with sweeter colors: black outside, burnt orange inside. Spicy. It performed amazingly, which probably isn’t saying a whole lot since the first night was in the low 40s but hot damn was I toasty. On the second night the low was just above 50F and I was still comfy as could be, a good indicator that I’ll be able to use it all summer long without overheating. One quilt to rule them all? It’s sure shaping up that way!
And if my memory serves me correctly this was also my first overnight trip using my seldom-in-stock six-inch Easton Nano Nails. They were incredible, easily sliding into the ground yet holding like absolute champs. Granted, my tripping over the guylines at night doesn’t really compare to the 30mph winds that I’ve endured via my previous stakes, but it’s a start. They come out of the ground clean, too, which was – I’m almost embarrassed to admit – on par with durability as far as purchase motivations go. Worth every penny.
My Omni-Freeze Zero-enabled hiking shirt continues to impress. Scrambling in broad daylight with highs in the upper sixties, I never felt suffocatingly hot, although non-PNWesterners will probably laugh at my definition of “hot”. Still, if comfort is king then this shirt is royalty. I should also add that if you’re hanging around in the shade next to the water and a light breeze picks up you’ll be reaching for an additional layer in no time.
The Green L 10-stop neutral density filter yielded a couple incredible shots of silky-smooth water. I have a hunch that the filter isn’t quite as dark as advertised but it does the job nonetheless.
I’m warming up to Buffs. It adds a bit of neck warmth when I don’t want to put my hood up and kept my face warm at night while trying to fall asleep. Towel potential is still pending evaluation.
Litesmith’s micro-scissors effectively cut that which needs cutting while weighing less than a fifth of my previous pair, the Cudas. Having (re)discovered that Leukotape is tearable by hand, however, I hardly have a need for scissors at all.
Alpineaire’s Southwestern Style Masa With Beef gave me indigestion, a Pepto Bismol tablet at bedtime and another in the morning kept my tummy in check. It didn’t fix my appetite (breakfast was skipped) but it did allow me to avoid anything more unpleasant than a few rumblings. Not that this is news to anyone but it’s nice to have occasional justification for seldom-used first aid kit components.
I used my Kojin stove to start a campfire. An ounce of alcohol burns for a good 10 minutes so this was a cheap (in the not-fair sense) way of ensuring that the fire was going somewhere. To my surprise, just letting it sit under the tinder all ablaze caused no ill effects whatsoever. This also served as a reminder to always check fire regulations ahead of time and, if permitted, to set aside some alcohol for the cause.
What Didn’t
Well, first off, I forgot my waterproof socks and sleep socks and spare socks which left me with only a single pair for the entire trip. I chose to go to bed the first night wearing damp socks to guarantee that they’d be dry by morning. This left my feet in the early stages of maceration with large white patches of pulpy skin. I believe that’s the body’s way of saying: don’t do that again. Cross my heart.
I read some things, particularly that a Bic Mini lighter could still produce a spark even after running out of fuel. Upon reflection this seems like a no-brainer as clearly something has to be lighting the gas in the first place, and that something should still function even without the presence of gas. This would seemingly give lighters a leg-up on my esoteric Spark-Lite since in the worst case they’re equivalent and in the best case the former gives you a flame. It’s an escalator-stairs sort of relationship. In any case I brought the Bic but then promptly left it out in a rainstorm. Lo and behold: it stopped working. No spark, no flame. Can’t say the spark wheel would have been any different but it’s good to know. I’m sticking with the Bic regardless.
Despite owning a variety of ultralight toothbrushes and always measuring out the proper amount of toothpaste-in-tablet-form I almost always forget to actually brush my teeth: on this trip, however, a corner was turned. Sadly the Litesmith Shorty Toothbrush didn’t quite pan out: in order to reach the furthest recesses of my rear molars my fingers had to ever-so-slightly enter my mouth which triggered my stupidly sensitive gag reflex. Not fun.
What’s Next
Gossamer Gear sells a ridiculously light full-size toothbrush (6.25 inches and 3.5 grams) for a dollar. One. Dollar. Incredible. I imagine this’ll put my toothbrushing woes to rest.
Route
The Wednesday before the trip I visited the lake (and did the ford) as a day hike, here is the Gaia track:
https://www.gaiagps.com/public/YOHVepxonKDcuSeyDs1lOFB5
- Distance: 18.4 miles (x2 for the scouting hike)
- Elevation gain: 1,430 feet (also x2)
I believe that this is a new one-day record for distance by an entire mile, hooray! And surprisingly after just a day of recovery I was able to get back out and do it again – albeit spread out over three days.
Photography
SmugMug gallery:
https://turigrinos.smugmug.com/Adventures/2020/Waptus-Lake/
Let’s discuss.
Stopping by a creek just a few miles in I spotted this small and particularly debris-free waterfall, the perfect opportunity to try out my new 10-stop neutral density filter. In order to bring out the details in the water and avoid a big white blob I did a single-bracket HDR blend, however, this also brought out all the detail in the shadows around the edge of the photo and made it look too flat. To fix this I added the original picture as a new layer and blended it in with an inverted luminance blend. This meant that the bright areas of the picture (the water) would “absorb” all of the detail from the HDR layer but that the shadows would remain untouched. Pretty good results for what started as just a hunch.
Another long exposure, this time from some rocks that were barely big enough to hold myself and the tripod. The daylight drains all of the softness out of the colors but the incredible effect of the flowing water over the rocks more than makes up for it. I kept the waterfall in for context to avoid it being just an abstract texture shot.
This is a dusk shot bordering on nighttime but with a long enough exposure the camera can see just about anything. Mount Jerry Garcia (no really – and Deadhead Lake sits on its shoulder) occupies the background, peeking out from behind a veil of clouds. The symmetry is good, the blue is good, and the dark contrast of the peak is good especially in the reflection. I used the circular polarizer to suck out most of the glare in the reflection, leaving the rocky bottom of the lake exposed. Fantastic.
Handheld at dawn so a lot more grain in the shadows than I’d like. Still, I think it worked out nicely and the ring of clouds going in and out of the trees was sheer dumb luck. Five to ten minutes earlier and a taller tripod might have taken this to the next level.
Bright and crispy. HDR allowed me to bring out a lot more color and detail in the water than I otherwise would have had. Not a stellar composition by any means but it’s a location that’s a bit lacking in options – I’m standing on the spine of the triangular ridge of rock in the lower left.
A missed opportunity: the sun came out of the clouds just moments after arriving at this off-the-map pond and washed out the color. After cropping out the ugly rocks and trees on the far side I decided to make do with a panorama.
This is not a good picture, I only kept it for the deep emerald color of the water. The shore and logs along the bottom are distracting, as is the bright patch on the right and the sky. Somewhere in here there’s a crop that makes this work. Maybe.
It took over an hour of off-trail exploration along the river chasm to find this one overlook that wasn’t obscured by trees or bushes. Sadly the resulting picture wasn’t worth all the effort. Again, there’s a good picture in here somewhere – perhaps at sunset?
Future Trips
The trail skirts the eastern face of Cone Mountain, which sports a large and relatively flat not-quite-alpine basin on its backside. From the same trailhead a loop via the Polallie Ridge Trail with a detour to explore the basin and summit Cone before descending to the lake and exiting via the river trail sounds like it’d be quite the endeavor. One benefit of being on the ridge all day is, of course, the views.
From Waptus the PCT heads north to Deep Lake, a place I’ve visited a handful of times already. The connecting river valley hardly looks interesting, however, using Waptus as the northern end of half of the PCT’s J section might be spectacular 3-4 nights.