Meadow Lake?

[locrwln1]

Anyone up for a challenge?

Darcie and I are thinking we want to head up to and into Meadow Lake on Saturday. There is still some snow up there and as of last week, Meadow Lake was partially iced over. We want to head in to the top of Winch Hill 5 (if we can get that far) and hike down the trail to one of the river crossings (or until we get tired). Of course if you have the rig, you can wheel it.

We are thinking we will camp at Meadow Lake afterward and head on home on Sunday. You don't have to camp if you don't want to.

Anyone else want to go? Don't forget to bring your bug spray.

Let me know if you want to go and we can figure out a meeting spot and time.

And yes, we will be in the Chevy.

Jack

 

[WILLD420]

Where is this Meadow Lake you speak of?

 

[flexing40]

Meadow lake is where you will end up if you take the full Fordyce Trail if you go in at Cisco Grove. Or it is where you can start if you go in the back way. Meadow Lake is off Hennes pass road, which is about 17 miles north of I-80 on Highway 89. Hennes pass road can be accessed between Dog Valley and Long Valley, goes west north of Stampede resevoir and continues towards Jackson resevoir. I haven't been any farther west on the road.

Mike

 

[flexing40]

Anyone up for a challenge?

Darcie and I are thinking we want to head up to and into Meadow Lake on Saturday. There is still some snow up there and as of last week, Meadow Lake was partially iced over. We want to head in to the top of Winch Hill 5 (if we can get that far) and hike down the trail to one of the river crossings (or until we get tired). Of course if you have the rig, you can wheel it.

We are thinking we will camp at Meadow Lake afterward and head on home on Sunday. You don't have to camp if you don't want to.

Anyone else want to go? Don't forget to bring your bug spray.

Let me know if you want to go and we can figure out a meeting spot and time.

And yes, we will be in the Chevy.

Jack

Anxious to hear how you do. I love that trail. If you can't make it down the to creek, then maybe it will be a doable trail in October.

Mike

 

[DirtyHarry]

Dreamflows shows the water down to 250 cfm, I am planning on running the trail on Saturday with friends and camping at Meadow Lake Saturday night. I will keep an eye out for you Jack.

 

[rusty_tlc]

I'll be screwing around with the suspension on the 40, otherwise it would be a no brainer for us.

 

[locrwln1]

Anxious to hear how you do. I love that trail. If you can't make it down the to creek, then maybe it will be a doable trail in October.

Mike

I will let everyone know. That is the one trail that both Darcie and I really miss. So the only way we can enjoy now is to walk it.

Dreamflows shows the water down to 250 cfm, I am planning on running the trail on Saturday with friends and camping at Meadow Lake Saturday night. I will keep an eye out for you Jack.

Yeah, I have been keeping an eye on the flows and trail reports. Looks like it may be the first weekend that everyone will be able to comfortably do the trail. Are you going to be driving your truck? I will keep an eye out as well. Good luck and have fun.

I'll be screwing around with the suspension on the 40, otherwise it would be a no brainer for us.

No problem, sometimes you gotta do the maintenence. Were you able to pick up those tires that Will gave you the heads up on?

Jack

 

[Krusty Krab]

Hey Jack,
Just talked to someone who works for the forest service opening up camps in the meadow lake area. He said the road to meadow lake is open but very wet and mud in some areas. The F. trail from meadow is still to muddy with snow in the shade and not fun to wheel it(In his Opinion). He has been over the trail with his sammi many times in the past. He was amazed with some of the flows he has seen this year. He was saying alot of debris has washed down and changed some of the crossings. He said it should be great to walk. Have fun. I think I will do a pre-run to Deer Valley tommorrow

 

[locrwln1]

Hey Jack,
Just talked to someone who works for the forest service opening up camps in the meadow lake area. He said the road to meadow lake is open but very wet and mud in some areas. The F. trail from meadow is still to muddy with snow in the shade and not fun to wheel it(In his Opinion). He has been over the trail with his sammi many times in the past. He was amazed with some of the flows he has seen this year. He was saying alot of debris has washed down and changed some of the crossings. He said it should be great to walk. Have fun. I think I will do a pre-run to Deer Valley tommorrow

Glad to hear it. I am not crazy about the mud part, but that's the price you pay to get to the backcountry. I just hope the snow has melted enough that I can get to the top of winch hill 5.

I will let everyone know and hopefully I can get some decent pics of the trail.

Jack

 

[locrwln1]

We're back.

The snow beat us. We started up the "low" traditional road to Meadow Lake. And the we hit the first snow drift and...got stuck and good. I didn't think I could get a stock truck stuck enough to really get it stuck. I was wrong. Darcie and I spent about 45 minutes trying to dig it out. It didn't work. I tried everything with no success. Luckily for us a group came up behind us and we got a tug from a Toyota Mini-truck. He saved us big time.



We obviously learned that we were not going to make it on that road, so we spent some time looking at some other roads before we realized that none of them would get us where we wanted to go.

So back out to the pavement and down to Jackson Meadows Lake to try the "high" road into Meadow Lake. We made it up to about the 7200' level and ran into a guy coming back down the mountain who let us know that the snow would win again. We went up a little further and found the drift that ended our vehicle progress.

Darcie and I had some lunch and as we were finishing up, there were two quads that came down the trail. We talked to them and they had made it over the pass and let us know there were some serious snow drifts ahead of us.

We decided to hike our way over the pass. Hiking up the snow drifts was like hiking in sand, you loose 1/2 to 1 step each time you take a step. We topped out somewhere around 8300' or so, didn't really look at the map. We figured we put in about 4ish miles or so round trip. Near the summit on the Meadow Lake side, we saw a nice granite point that piqued our interest, so to the point we went.

The views were worth every step.





We got back to the truck and headed down the mountain to Tollhouse lake.



We set up camp and it wasn't long before we realized that with the late melt (still), the mosquitos were actually swarming. We spent a couple of hours relaxing and realized that maybe we didn't want to spend the rest of the evening battling the bugs, so we broke camp and headied home.

Jack

 

[WILLD420]

Nice adventure.

I'm thinking that snow runs are going to be the "thing" this summer...

Looks like the kind of slushy frozen crap that swallows vehicles and won't let them go.

 

[spressomon]

Kewl.

So...the winch, lift/suspension and 35's just got bumped up on the list huh?!

 

[Krusty Krab]

Nice Views--way to turn lemons into lemonade!

I can't believe it's the end of July and we are still fighting the snow. Misquitos yes, snow no. The Bugs were bad near the river on Deer Valley also. Glad I had some Off in the pocket.

Lets hope this next week of 90s in the valley and warmer nights get our trails open. How else can we get on our wanderlust?

 

[locrwln1]

Nice adventure.

I'm thinking that snow runs are going to be the "thing" this summer...

Looks like the kind of slushy frozen crap that swallows vehicles and won't let them go.

Thank you. I agree and it is.

Kewl.

So...the winch, lift/suspension and 35's just got bumped up on the list huh?!

Sure, just as soon as the money tree matures...

The winch is definitely much higher on the list. That's two times where it would have been useful.

Nice Views--way to turn lemons into lemonade!

I can't believe it's the end of July and we are still fighting the snow. Misquitos yes, snow no. The Bugs were bad near the river on Deer Valley also. Glad I had some Off in the pocket.

Lets hope this next week of 90s in the valley and warmer nights get our trails open. How else can we get on our wanderlust?

It was a great hike and the views were awesome.

That is the second time I have tried the "high" road to Meadow Lake. The first time was similar conditions and got stopped in pretty much the same spot due to snow. Really going to have to try someday when the snow is finally if ever gone.

Jack

 

[WILLD420]

From the looks of that stuck, you should've gassed it harder and not worried about killing the bumpstops so much..

On a serious note, we ran into a couple humps of the white frozen junk on the Hunter Lake run today. It's like a giant snowcone. Slushy on the top foot, then frozen hard, then the bottom is all mushy from melting. Perfect goo for sticking anything without lots of clearance, since you can't get traction in the stuff. Even my swampers didn't like that crud.

 

[chicago]

Actually really amazed that snow is still an issue and it almost august.
Glad you and the missis had a nice trip back up to your old stomping grounds.

 

[DirtyHarry]

The trail itself is clear of snow and the water crossings were about three feet deep (manageable on 33s or larger). The big drifts start after Winch Hill 5... and were as hard at the trail itself! I will post up more photos and details from my trip in the morning.

 

[locrwln1]

From the looks of that stuck, you should've gassed it harder and not worried about killing the bumpstops so much..

On a serious note, we ran into a couple humps of the white frozen junk on the Hunter Lake run today. It's like a giant snowcone. Slushy on the top foot, then frozen hard, then the bottom is all mushy from melting. Perfect goo for sticking anything without lots of clearance, since you can't get traction in the stuff. Even my swampers didn't like that crud.

It was definitely a case of wrong speed. Too fast to not get stuck and not fast enough just to get over it. I turtled it good. That is the same kind of stuff we ran into, no way to get any traction.

Actually really amazed that snow is still an issue and it almost august.
Glad you and the missis had a nice trip back up to your old stomping grounds.

No kidding, it is really putting a damper on the travels this year. We had fun, so it's all good.

The trail itself is clear of snow and the water crossings were about three feet deep (manageable on 33s or larger). The big drifts start after Winch Hill 5... and were as hard at the trail itself! I will post up more photos and details from my trip in the morning.

Looking forward to your trail report. The truck and Winch Hill 1 is looking good. We really wanted to get to the trail, oh well, next time.

Harry,

Are you back in Reno on a more permanent status? Liked your article on traveling with the parents in this month's issue of FourWheeler. We did the same thing the first time we went to Moab. I guess we thought there would be no food available, so we packed like we were going to be in the backcountry for the entire week.

Jack

 

[DirtyHarry]

Jack- I am back living in Sparks now (for the most part). Just got back from six weeks in the Aleutians and leave this weekend for two weeks in Laramie, so work still has me traveling a lot but my mail is delivered to Sparks now.

I met up at Eagle Lakes with Erik and Dave from the Auburn area at 9 AM on Saturday morning. They both have pretty built Toyotas with dual cases, lockers front and rear, and big (36”) tires. I had not seen either of them for a while so we BS’ed for about 45 minutes before we finally hit the trail. There were a lot of trailers at the bottom of the trail and I was concerned that it would be a zoo, but we did not encounter that much traffic.

There were a lot of UTVs on the first part of the trail, but they were stopped by the first water crossing. It was over our tires, but not flowing real fast and we didn’t have any issues. The trail was pretty wet and the mosquitoes were out in force, but that was about all we had to complain about. The trail was rough and obviously has not been run a lot since the harsh winter, mainly because the water was simply too high up until recently. Erik’s son Tim handled driving duties of my truck while I was shooting photos. He is only 13, but he had been driving on the trail for the past six years. His dad used to put the truck in low gear and let him drive even before he could reach the pedals!

 

[DirtyHarry]

We made decent time, stopping for lunch along the creek and having to stop a couple of times for break downs/slow groups in front of us. We all attempted Winch Hill 1 and conquered it, but it took us about 15 minutes each. This was by far the most difficult section of the trail (although none of it is particularly easy). The Sierra Trek committee had already spent a significant amount of time on the trail, judging by the trees that had been cleared along the way.