I started up the hill towards Grandaddy Basin at about 3PM. It’s a late start, but for me, it feels like it always is. I fell into a daze of awe and giddiness and in my joyous hypnotism I hardly felt the 900ft elevation gain.
After cresting the saddle at the gateway between East and West Granddaddy Mountains, the Basin of the same name revealed itself to me. Laid before me a pantheon of pine, and chasm of verdant green interspersed with it’s dead and dying kin. The only break in the vast horizon of speckled fauna--besides the great bald rises containing it--was a great shimmering bed of azure aqua. It’s discoverer, George Baird, would say it was “The Granddaddy of them all”, and thus the name had been given. And here I am today, so many years later.
I wonder to myself, did it always look like this: A sage ocean peppered with black and gray stalks abound, nearly rivalling the living majesty? Or is this place, dying, and already past the halfway point. Asian Pine Beetles have been a stowaway import in our modern industrial age, and the creature has wreaked havoc on this landscape. Perhaps the one great fire, the final purge for this magic place, is what it is needed to bring it back to life? Questions like these are irrelevant to my insignificance.
I set my camp at Betsy Lake on the West side of her shores. I have a long pitch tonight, and the hammock is tight but workable. I sit by my small campsite overlooking the lake 200 feet away, and brew some ramen noodles for dinner with a small cup of mint tea.
I light a cigarette and close my eyes. I inhale deeply and let it suffocate my lungs. I exhale. The lake spins waves over it’s timid, dark depths, and I feel the urge to dive.
I awake after a rather uncomfortable night of one hour bursts of sleep, still adjusting to the elevation difference from my native 6k to the 10.5k I walk among now. My hammock felt too tight last night, and it was my first time using the 3/4th quilt and sit pad combo in temps of 37F. It wasn’t cold, I was actually quite comfortable, but my breath kept waking me, as the hammock walls pushed my sides in to a compromised position. Oh well, it’s 7:30 and the sun is rising. I get to bringing down my bear bag I had hung in a tree last night, but to my surprise my knot had come loose and the bag is laying on the ground. Luckily, nothing has taken to opening it up or travelling inside!
Breakfast is a special quinoa grain oatmeal with berries and nuts and is especially fulfilling after the hike yesterday. I have a big order ahead of me now, 5mi of hiking and 4 lakes to fish in this short day. I don’t get to leaving Betsy until 10am, having fished it for an hour or so with no luck. I pass by several lakes on the way to my next destination; Fish Hatchery, Pine Island, and many ponds that dot the landscape remind me of the glacial lands this place once was, until I arrive at the lake I had come to fish, Lilly Pad Lake.
Lilly Pad Lake was marked for high catch rate high quality Brookies, and when I first arrived I spied a monster of a trout that would have been the biggest fish I've ever caught just off the shoreline. I cast out once with a #12 Irresistible dry but landed out of it's feeding path; on the second cast, the wind picked up and absolutely cucked my cast, throwing my flyline right on top of his head and spooking him off into the deeper waters. From there I had major problems with the wind interfering with casts as it was blowing the exact opposite way I was casting on both sides of the lake. I had sent out a #8 Brown Shiny Leech and got the attention of many young trout who seemed to be more intrigued by the lure than trying to eat it, just following it around on every retrieve. I got a few big bites from the deep ends on the leech, and a few more strikes on a #14 Parachute Allen.
I had to pack up after fishing the lake for 2 hours if I wanted to get to my destination in time to fish (Powell Lake) so I sent out a last cast targeted at a medium brook I saw wading above a sunken branch. Perfect placement, he headed straight towards the fly and gulped the damn thing, when I pulled it out it was about an inch into his mouth, hungry fucker.
As I make my way down the trail, I wonder what it would have been like to be one of the first to venture through this cathedral of Lodgepole Pine, with no definitive trail. I think of the joy it would incur to come upon a lake, undisturbed by people for perhaps hundreds of years before you, completely alone and yet still a part of it all. My mind wanders to the ghosts in this labyrinth; How many souls has the mountain claimed? Below my very boots may have been a man who could not spare one more mile, a lake to have saved his life, but slain by fatigue. Or perhaps that’s a modern man’s fragile take on those who came before, which were with no doubt harder, faster, better, stronger. I hope I die among the pines, and my ghost will guide those who come after me towards their destination.
Arriving at Governor Dern Lake was a special moment for me. The trail behind me had been a particularly hot one and I opted not to drink any water until I got to the lake which was about 2.5 miles from the last stop. Seeing this lake was exactly what I imagine to be a picturesque deep Uinta Country lake - pine trees with small primitive camps nestled with, large open fields and marshes, grassy paths and crystal clear water. This lake was supposed to have Quality Cutthroat in it's waters, but I didn't see a single fish rise during my time there and the side I was on was particularly shallow. I waded out about 30 yards until the mud was swallowing up to my knee, casting there still led to no bites or shows. Still, it was great to take off the boots and enjoy the cool water for a bit. I stayed here for about 40 minutes to take in the scenery, the peaks I've been to in the distance seeming an eternity away.
I light a cigarette, and inhale deeply. I exhale, and the valley whispers to me, here is a good place to go. Here is a good place to leave.
Govn. Dern Lake was a bit of a let down, but I was excited to get to the next place. There are 2 lakes I want to make it to, one that is even further up the mountain in the Four Lakes Basin, and one that is on my way back up the trail to Grandaddy. I decide on the latter as it’s already 4pm and I need to get some fish in me, my body already furious that I’ve not eaten any “real” food in more than 48 hours now. I made my way towards Powell Lake, excitedly, as I was eager to show it to a friend who shares its name and the lake that is furthest from the beaten trail that I will be visiting on this trip.
I pass by Rainbow Lake, then Lost Lake, and take an abrupt left turn directly into the treeline. Off the path and stepping over trees, boulders, and marshes, this is what a true outdoorsman lives for--getting to the place off the trail. As I make my way down the half mile bushwhack to Powell, I find myself almost teleported from a once beautiful and serene surrounding to a hellscape of death and ash; I walk now in the wake of the East Fork Wildfire that ravaged this basin last year, along with one of my favorite places right next door, Brown Duck Basin. The rest of my 20 minute hike is through this place, stepping foot over log with the occasional rub of ash onto the skin of my legs, now pasted with soot and white ash kicked up from my boots. I finally arrive at Powell, and not a fish is seen rising, nothing under the water that I can see either. The Lake itself stands like an oasis in hell, like a scene from some surrealist fiction film. The bones of the forest still stand around the lake, innumerable in force, the legion of death surrounds the small bastion of a green garrison to the North East of the lake, likely unburned by the mercy of the wind.
I cast out a few flies to coax anything from the depths, but nothing bites. I don’t feel comfortable staying in this place, whose ghosts are more disturbing to me than the thought of wild animal interaction, or worse, human neighbors. I press on back to the trail, carving my way back up the hill, dredging through the desert of ashen soil until I hit the treeline again, then, the trail. Thanks to the work of the Forest Service, or God himself, this veil of living pine is an easy distraction from what lay beyond just a few hundred paces away. Many people will never see the destruction wrought.
As I look around Lost Lake to set up a campsite, I have difficulty deciding where to establish my domain. One spot, too close to the lake to be legal, the other, too far for good fishing access, and I’m getting tired. A 9 mile day has me drained, and all I can think of is rest. I set up at the spot with bad access and remember I forgot my tarp stakes and tie outs. Last night was 0% chance of rain, and I slept without pulling the tarp out, but tonight the forecast is less favorable, and the Uintas always seek to surprise. Fortunately, I did bring an extra set of hammock suspensions, and what I thought would be a real jerry-rigged setup actually turns out perfect and stable.
I cook dinner, then slide into the hammock at 8:00pm. An all too brief survey of Lost Lake showed no surfacing trout, and I wouldn’t be bothered to cast out anyway. My heart was set on fishing Powell, and now I am too exhausted to throw any more line to the liquid mirror. I break open the book I’ve been reading, Ernst Becker’s ‘The Denial of Death’, and continue into the tome. I finish at 50 pages before my eyes are too heavy, and I pass out. I wake with the book on my chest at 11PM, and get up out of the hammock to take a leak and get a drink. As I get back into my much more comfortable abode, a sound I’ve been eager to hear rips out in the distance: No mistaking the rugged squeal, an elk bugle in the pale moonlight. Not long after, a second buck rips out, this one much closer to me, and they shout at each other in one of the most beautiful territorial arguments I’ve heard. The calls continue for 20 minutes, and offer me the lullaby I’ve dreamt of for many years, enhanced by the percussion of snapping trees as the temperatures drop.
I Light a cigarette, and inhale deeply. I close my eyes, and the Elk assures me that sometimes, you just need to listen to the sounds that mother nature makes all by herself. You are one of us, after all.
I meditate deeply on the trip I’ve been on. I think all about this past year, all the changes I’ve been through, the highest of highs, and my personal all time lows. I’ve achieved dreams this year, and I’ve killed pieces of my soul. I’ve failed more than I’ve failed in my life, and yet, I have achieved more than ever before; The dictator of this mortal coil has dealt me a wicked hand of extreme balance. After all the philosophical musings I partake to myself, alone for all this time, the fact of the matter comes in clear.
I did not take on this trip to fish for trout, or to log so many miles. While these are great and heroic undertakings that I should be happy to accept, my reason to be here is to fight the demons I have harboured through this cataclysmic time of my life. During my descent into darkness, I slowly but assuredly relapsed into nicotine addiction. It started simple, I smoked a single cigarette on a day I was particularly stressed early in January, and threw away the entire pack, knowing the temptation I played with. But as weeks and months passed, I was engrossed with my own heroes and icons, and good times to be had at the tip of a cigarette.
I inhaled deeply to remind myself of the fatigue, disgust, and fetid decay that each drag costs me. As I put out each cigarette, I am filled with regret. When I quit once before, it was largely inspired by and for someone else. Of course I quit for myself as well, but there were memories associated with this person that made my addiction dependent on it. And then, I ripped that person out of my life. This trip is the End of the Line. This trip is to put the final breath away, and this trip is for me to contemplate deeply. I chose lost lake not so much arbitrarily, but because through this year, the emotion I have felt more than any, is Lost. And as I hold this last cigarette in my hand, I think, maybe I will still be lost after all this? That will be for me to figure out in the days, months, years to come.
I light a cigarette, and close my eyes. This is the End of the Line.
This is the end of the line.
This is the end of the..
This, the end...
This is just the beginning.
