Outdoor Leadership Highlight: Golden Trout Wilderness, Eastern Sierra

This October, the twelve students in Fall OL jammed into two white vans and embarked on a long, arduous journey: the six-hour drive to the Golden Trout Wilderness in the Eastern Sierra Nevada. Upon arrival, we slung on packs laden with food for five days (plus snacks) and hiked long into the night to our first campsite.

The second day was beautiful and painful. We began an eight-mile-long, 2,400 foot uphill, passing talus hills, towering cliffs, piles of rock, and other Sierra features, such as the creatively and aptly named Long Lake and High Lake. High Lake, despite tasting somewhat like iron and fish oil, provided a scenic locale for lunch and a piercingly cold polar plunge. Afterward, with full bellies and lightened packs after dining on a cheddar cheese, salami, and cracker trifecta, we ascended New Army Pass: two thousand feet of elevation over eleven endless switchbacks. Reaching the top felt like heaven, albeit with less oxygen, at over 10,000 feet of elevation. We were greeted by views of miles more of stone, a small patch of snow, and a cute fuzzy marmot. Yet winds howled, leaving fingertips chilled and lips chapped, and brought with it a bank of daunting thunderheads.

Our group, at this point quite beat from the long uphill climb, oxygen sparse air, and altitude sickness, had to keep walking with only a quick break at the summit so as not to get caught in unsafe weather conditions. Meandering down the back of the pass, it quickly became apparent that our group was (rightfully) too exhausted to trek the remaining four miles to our planned camp. So while the group made their way down, Dan S., Dean of Experiential Learning, and a few students went ahead to scout out a nice meadow to call home for the night. The only problem? It required another mile and a half trek to find water. While most of the group set up camp and a ‘kitchen’, Bella, Science faculty and OL instructor, and two intrepid students made the journey to fill over 30 water bottles and three dromedary bags. As the sun dipped below the westernmost granite embankment, we sipped on warm ramen broth and shared our appreciation after one of the most physically and mentally rugged days of our lives.

To recuperate, we set our alarms for a leisurely 7:00am the following morning. Yet at 6:45, every student had emerged from their tent, drawn out by the fresh graupel beginning to melt through tent zippers in the morning sun. It seemed as though everything was glistening: catching the light like a billion tiny prisms.

After a four-mile calm stroll through the Siberian Outpost basin (named for its cold, wind, and flatness), we arrived at the Gemini Lakes, named because there are three of them. We had blue skies while we cooked our final meal before heading onto solo, but as we packed our bags for the night alone, wind began to howl and clouds poured over the horizon. Suddenly we were shivering: engulfed in strong winds and snow, in the belly of a blizzard. We begged not to go on solo, fearful of hypothermia. We canceled solo, but within minutes, the storm had passed and every student decided (by their own volition) to go on solo. It is truly remarkable that our trip was populated by 15 students willing to brave the rugged landscape of cold stone, snow and scraggly pines and spend a silent night reflecting. As the sunset illuminated the blockade of receding storm clouds, every single one of us began to wrap our heads around just how much we had grown during our five-day trek through the Sierra.