Big McGee Lake

At the beginning of August, my friend Gerald and I made a four-day trip to Big McGee Lake, which is about 10 miles southeast of Mammoth Lakes. I had been there 48 years ago, and I always wanted to go back again.

The summer of 1962, I had just graduated from high school, and I signed up for a Sierra Club trail maintenance trip. It was a good deal. For a small fee and 4 hours a day working on trails, we got to spend a couple of weeks in the mountains, with our gear packed in and food supplied by the local packer. I was with about 20 other young people, in a very beautiful place and I had a great time.

This time, the lake was just as I remembered it and just as beautiful. We drove up from the bay area on a Thursday morning, stopped for lunch in Mammoth, and started hiking in the early afternoon. The trail starts out climbing gradually up the canyon in sagebrush and aspens.

The beginning of the trail up the canyon

My pack felt heavy, but I started out OK. I had tried to cut back on weight compared with previous trips, but I had added a small tent while before I had only had a nylon tarp. The pack was about 45 lbs. Gerald was soon far ahead of me. He had been running every day for several months and was in much better shape than me. I hadn't done much to prepare besides my usual short walks with my dog. His pack was also lighter, with a lot of new high-tech gear. Most of my stuff is pretty old.

It seems that altitude has been affecting me more with age. We started at 8000 ft., which wouldn't have bothered me a few years ago, but this time I was feeling it right away, light-headed, spaced-out and drained of energy. I made a lot of short rest stops, but kept pushing on, making slow progress. After about three miles, my legs began to cramp, and was hard to keep going. I was exhausted and I told Gerald that I couldn't do much more, so when we got to a little beaver pond, we stopped and found a place to camp. It was a pretty spot on the grassy shore, a bit marshy, but the mosquitoes weren't too bad.

Our first night's campsite. The beavers' home is in the center of their pond.

The next morning, we continued up the trail for several miles, climbing a steep forested mountainside, then a series of small meadows. As usual, Gerald was far ahead of me. I had asked him to wait for me when he got to the lake, but when I arrived, I didn't see him. I was exhausted, so I sat a while and waited for him to show up. I finally got up the energy to go a bit further up the trail, and there he was on a rock above the lake. We found a nice campsite in the rocks above the far end of the lake, and rested a while.

Later in the afternoon, I started to feel better. We were at about 10,500 ft., but I was getting used to it. Gerald got out his fly rod and fished along the shore while I wandered around in the rocks and meadows taking pictures. As usual, we went to bed early, around 9 o'clock. Campfires are not allowed in the area, and there is not much to do when it gets dark. We were tired anyway.

Red and White Mountain from Big McGee Lake

Evening sun on Mt. Crocker

Meadows above the lake

 In planning the trip, I had been thinking of climbing one of the nearby peaks on Saturday. On the Sierra Club trip, I had been up Red Slate Mountain, a 13,123 ft. peak just a mile or so from the trail at McGee Pass. It was an easy climb for an 18 year old, but on Saturday morning, it sounded like way too much work. We took it easy instead, Gerald fishing and me wandering around, and it was a nice time. Then Gerald suggested that later in the day we could hike a couple of miles back down the canyon to make our last day a bit easier. He had noticed a nice campsite by a little meadow on the way up. So we did that, and it was a pretty spot, but there were a lot of mosquitoes down by the creek. We didn't do much for the rest of the day, while clouds gathered and a few sprinkles came down.

Big McGee Lake as we were leaving Saturday afternoon

Wild onions at Saturday night's campsite

Sunday morning, it was all downhill, and we made good time. Gerald had a sore foot that was bothering him, but it didn't slow him down. We were back at the car by mid-morning, stopped for breakfast in Lee Vining, and made it home by late afternoon.