Bruce had been working out of the home office for weeks, and we’d already dragged him to Bryce Canyon and Zion. But we weren’t done with him yet. Nicholas, Pokin, and Bruce loaded up the car and headed west toward the Sierra Nevada.
The destination: Big Pine Lakes, a chain of turquoise glacial lakes tucked into a granite amphitheater beneath Temple Crag. The plan: start early, hike the full loop to all the lakes, come home heroes. The reality: slightly different.
4 AM Start#
The trail was supposed to be hot, so they started before dawn. Which meant it was actually cold. The kind of cold where you question why you agreed to this while stumbling up a trail in the dark.
But then the Sierra did its thing.
The alpenglow on the high Sierra is something else. The peaks go from gray to orange to gold while you’re still hiking in shade. It’s like the mountains are showing off.
The Trail#
The Big Pine Lakes trail climbs about 2,000 feet over four and a half miles to the first lake, then keeps going through a chain of seven lakes. The full loop is somewhere around 15 miles. They were going to do all of it.
I rode in Nicholas’s pack. Anti-bath technology deployed. Hoodie up.
The trail starts in sagebrush and pine, crosses a creek with some spectacular dead standing trees, and then gets into serious granite switchback territory.
The Lakes#
And then you see the water.
The Big Pine Lakes are turquoise. Not blue, not green. Turquoise. The color comes from rock flour, basically pulverized granite dust ground up by what’s left of the Palisade Glacier and suspended in the water. It looks fake. It looks like someone poured food coloring into a mountain.
Temple Crag dominates the whole basin. A massive wall of vertical granite with buttresses and couloirs that looks like it belongs in a fantasy game, not California. I’ve seen a lot of mountains on this blog. This one is up there.
Bruce found a perfectly round boulder perched on a granite slab and decided it needed a photo.
I got my own photo series at the lake, because priorities.
The Early Exit#
The plan was to do the full loop, hitting all seven lakes. They made it to a few and then took an early loop back. Smart call. Nicholas and Pokin, who hike regularly, were going strong. Bruce is a gym guy. Very fit, very strong, could probably carry me and Nicholas up a flight of stairs without breathing hard. But gym fit and trail fit are different animals. Long-distance hiking at altitude doesn’t care how much you can bench press. His knees were done.
No shame in that. The trail gained 2,000 feet and the altitude hits different when you’re from sea level in Colombia. They still covered serious ground, saw the best of the lakes, and got to stare at Temple Crag for a few hours. That’s a win.
The Drive Home#
Eventually Bruce headed back to Colombia with busted knees and a phone full of photos. A summer of Bryce Canyon, Zion twice, and the Sierra Nevada. Not bad for a work visit.
Next time we’re doing the full loop.