Day 18: From one wilderness to the next

[Erin]

We got up and went over the little ridge at the edge of Waterdog Lake. We hiked through some snow and got above Russian Lake, which was obscured by a bright white sea of fog. Then we hiked down, through meadows richly green with corn lilies.



Children of the Corn (lilies)!

Bleeding Hearts in two colors

Siphon Lake

We exited the Russian wilderness, crossed a road, and entered the Trinity Alps wilderness. Simple as that. We hiked up to Fish Lake, which was more a swampy meadow than a lake, and found a nice place to camp. As the hail started to fall, we got into our sleeping bags and lit a fire.

The trail into Fish Lake was so very quiet and little-hiked. It was a sort of forgotten corner of the Trinity Alps.

Fish Lake, but I think the name is misleading.

 

We were so very cold.

One thing I love about wilderness areas, oddly enough, is the evidence of humans. Every trail, lake, ridge, and meadow has a name, usually (almost always) given by some Euro-American settler who thought they'd conquered the place. And look closer, there are little dynamite circles in the rocks, trails leading from campsites to the water, signs placed strategically and blazes on trees. Not only that, many of these wilderness areas not long ago crawled with thousands of miners, who left behind piles of mine tailings and occasional old roads with dilapidated cabins. And before them, more people, setting fires. These wildernesses have a seeming purity, at least in their legislative intent: "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man" but the modern construction  of wilderness cannot fully hide the fact that humans have been there, even trammeled there, for thousands of years.

Total miles: 9.3