Hoover Wilderness - Virginia Lakes to East Lake - 09/03 - 05, 2016


Trip Logistics
•       When - September 3– 5, 2016
•       Hoover Wilderness – Virginia Lakes to East Lake
•       Total Mileage – Approx. 14 miles (not including layover)

Pictures

With only 3 days and dreams of another Eastern Sierra trip before the end of my high sierra-backpacking season it meant one place – Hoover Wilderness.  The year before I done a trip out of Virginia Lakes over to Yosemite and I loved the terrain and figured we could do a different trip out of Virginia Lakes.  Given the limited time we had we figured we’d head over to East Lake do a layover day and some day hiking in the area.

After a filling breakfast at the Walker River Lodge we headed up to the trailhead.  I wasn’t super in a hurry because it was a typical cold early fall morning.  It was a beautiful day and we head a wonderful hike.  The trail winds it way up through sparsely covered forest.  The thing I love about this area are the colors of the rock – yellows, reds, oranges.  Given it was Labor Day weekend there were a fair number of people out hiking which of course thinned out the higher we climbed.  I love the last bit of climbing up towards the pass…the views are really great of the lakes you hike by and in my case I knew what view I was in for just on the other side of the pass.

Since it was windy and cool at the top of the pass we hiked down a bit before we stopped and had lunch.  There is a nice stream that runs on the south side of the trail.  The trail is steeper on the west side of the pass and of course we took notice of this given we would have to hike out in a couple of days.  At the junction of Summit and East Lake we turned back north and headed to East Lake.  I had never been towards East/Green lakes and the terrain was spectacular.  There was a lot of cool moraine along the way. We passed by gorgeous Hoover Lakes and got a bit of a view of Gilman Lake as well before we got to East Lake. 

East Lake is huge and we decided to camp on the southeast side.   Once we reached the lake we went off trail and there were tons of established campsites.  We wanted to try and get away from the masses so we hike a little further than most.  We spent the afternoon exploring our camp area.  There were great spots to swim and sunbath but the wind was whipping and not so conducive to either of the-afore mentioned activities.  We were treated with a beautiful pink and orange sunset and Curtis cooked dinner while I went off and did some photography.

Unfortunately nighttime was not so peaceful with the wind and dirt blowing into the tent but the sun was out and it was a new day.  We decided that we’d go ahead with our plan to day hike and at least get to Green Lake and then decide if we’d go to West Lake where I really wanted to go.  The hike down to Green Lake was through nice forest and there were a lot of established campsites at Green Lake.  We ran into some workers – maybe volunteers - doing some end of season clean up. We stopped to do some snacking and picture taking of the lake and then made the decision that we would go back and move camp and try to find a less windy campsite and put in some miles to have a shorter hike the next day….West Lake would have to wait.

We ended up hiking back to Hoover Lakes…note to self and others there is no great camping at Hoover Lakes.  Our goal was a campsite at upper Hoover Lake and there was one established spot on the northeast side of the lake in the trees.  I wasn’t so interested in being down in the trees so we squeezed into a tiny area on the east side of the lake.  We had the lake to ourselves that night and thankfully the wind died.  We woke up in the morning to frost on everything and all of our whatever being frozen…ahhh September. 

The hike out was wonderful. It was another beautiful day with great views.  On our way out, close to the trailhead, we past some hikers that pointed out some bald eagles.  I was soooo excited I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one in California but I’m not usually looking either.  It was another great trip and it was of course followed by some soft serve ice cream at the Jolly Kone in Bridgeport – “Burgers, Burritos, Ice Cream, Massage”…. probably my favorite sign in all of the Eastern Sierra.


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