Melinda and Bodie do Desolation

Melinda and our son Bodie decided to do a second Tune-up cruise while Liz worked on healing her injured knee. (Maybe Liz will write more about that on the "LMEA" blog.)

Bodie and Melinda's track on the left. Part of Liz and Melinda on the right.

Their original plan was to:

1. Enter at Wrights lake and go to Lake Schmidell via the Red Peak Stock trail the first day
2. Go to the Rubicon Reservior on day 2.
3. Take the Rubicon trail to Doris Lake on day 3.
4. Exit via Rock Bound pass on day 4.

Day 1 went exactly as planned, except that they were hit by an usual summer storm. They hemmed and hawed at the trail head but finally decided to go for it. They got a lot of rain and had some tough trail spotting as Red Peak Stock Trail is unmaintained and crosses some wide expanses of solid granite, marked only by "Ducks" (Called Cairns by some... small stacks of rocks that mark the trail).

Day 2 started out soggy, then cleared, then every time they got motivated to take off, it went soggy again. During one of these respites from the rain, Melinda packed her tent just before the rain started up again. She dove into Bodie's tent, and there they stayed all day... 2 not so small people packed into a single person backpacking tent. Bodie mostly slept (That's what teenage boys do) and Melinda read.

Day 3 dawned brighter, so they decided to head out. They thought that the Rubicon reservoir might be a bit of a stretch given their lost day, so they changed their plans and did the McConnell Lakes loop, which goes by several lovely lakes and returns you to the Rubicon river. This went well, with the exception of a bit of a detour. When they reached the Rubicon River, they somehow ended up on a trail that took them back to the last lake they visited, Four Q's Lake. Once they sorted that out and made it back to the Rubicon, they were losing daylight, son they went south on the Rubicon trail to China Flat and camped there for the night. During the night, there was huge crashing sound that Melinda was sure was a bear climbing a tree to get their food. The next morning though, their food was untouched. They did find a tree that had very recently been gnawed through by a beaver, so they think the falling tree is what made the racket.

On day 4, they got up and headed out on the Rockbound trail without further incident.

Altogether, it was a very successful trip in spite of the blisters Melinda got from her new "Guaranteed blisterproof" boots.