sierra trip

[bstolton]

planning a 4 day trip at the end of july. using smitty`s book for inspiration we want to focus on two areas, the bishop creek drainage and rock creek drainage. first we will stay in bishop so any recomendations for inexpenise but clean rooms with of course bbq facilities would be appreciated.my buddy and I are 50 but still in pretty good shape and looking forward to some interesting day hikes without over doing it. I was reading the posts on the north to south lake event and saw where some hiked to brown lake its not mentioned in jareds book, is it on the way to any of the other lakes ( ie grass, long, marie louise or tresure ). we are looking forward to good scenery, the chance to catch a few wild trout and just the good feelings the sierras always bring. I have been going up to the sierras for about 4 years now and have just gone to the various drive to lakes so looking forwards to the back country experience. In the rock creek area if one wants to venture past box lake what else can be reached in a day hike with return. sorry I am so long winded. any recomendations on things we should bring over and above what jared mentions in his book are welcome. pm me if necessary.

Thanks Bill

[BrandonFish]

idk whats in the book but i know night crawlers work pretty well over there
Good luck up there

[chris273]

a few fellas and i will be up in bishop 7/30 for the weekend we will be staying at browns town if you would like to meet up or something

[thedeadone]

check out the rockcreek forum- they will give u all the info you need

[bstolton]

Thanks for the input guys. We are trying not to cram to much into one trip but at the same time want to keep our options open in case we hike to the lakes jared recomends and decide we want to go further.

thedeadone whats the link or website you are refering too?

I can`t wait for the end of july its going to seem like forever, but I know it will be worth it!

Bill

[thedeadone]

http://rockcreeklake.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=d3be909d701f23ffb6097734415fd0 99& here you go

[bstolton]

so anybody stay in bishop whats a good motel, clean, cheap and bbq friendly.

Bill

[SierraPeaks]

so anybody stay in bishop whats a good motel, clean, cheap and bbq friendly.

Bill

I can't remember right off hand if it's The Best Western or Motel 6. They are right next door to each other and directly across the street from Denny's on Main St. (it's been a while since I stayed there and I can't remember which one it was) but one of them has a pool and a bbq. (BBQ is in the pool yard) They also have a cleaning station for your fish.

[jim532]

I've stayed at Mountain View motel, I can't remember if they have BBQ area, but they have fish cleaning facility and and the rooms i've stayed in there had a kitchenette with everything you need. It's also usually the cheapest in town.
Defenitly not the Westin resort but at least there were no pubic hairs or creepy crawlers in the beds.

[chris273]

I can't remember right off hand if it's The Best Western or Motel 6. They are right next door to each other and directly across the street from Denny's on Main St. (it's been a while since I stayed there and I can't remember which one it was) but one of them has a pool and a bbq. (BBQ is in the pool yard) They also have a cleaning station for your fish.

that would be the motel 6 on main st ive stayed there plenty of times w/o any problems

[golfish]

so anybody stay in bishop whats a good motel, clean, cheap and bbq friendly.

Bill

The Vagobond (sp?) next to Denny's was the cheapest I found last weekend. They have a huge BBQ area in the back.

[bstolton]

I had narrowed it down to the bishop village motel and the vagabond, did`nt think motel six would have a bbq area. anybody hike to box lake or beyond and is that a pretty easy day hike with turnaround.

Thanks Bill

[Crawler]

Box and back is no problem. I have been to box and back with my (then) 6 year old daughter. I have gone as far as the lower Gems and back myself, and im no John Muir. Coiuld have gone farther, but my fishing time overlapped into my hiking time. :-) I have had good luck at Heart, box, long and lower Gem. The inlet at box is teaming with nice little brooks, and you can move up stream about ten feet and catch nice little wild rainbows. Ive never fished the inlet of Heart, but have heard that thats the spot there. Dont forget the streams between the lakes. The few spots I encountered them were full of little brooks.

[jim532]

I have gone as far as Long lake, if you start early and can resist stopping on the hike in I'd say you can get to the gem lakes and fish your way back no problem.
Also, when you book your hotel if you do it online, I use Travel Zoo, it queries all the travel sites in one click, if I'm book at a chain hotel I also go directly to the hotel website to check rates. Have saved a few bucks doing it either way.

[bstolton]

Hey thanks you guys for all your help.
can anyone recommend a good hiking map for those areas? also wondering if a handheld gps would have maps of those areas or if you could download some or are they more for just logging your own points of interest.

Thanks Bill

[bstolton]

4 more days!
Couple of ? maybe you guys can help me out. In little lakes valley anybody been to chickenfoot lake? Then in bishop creek what about lamarack lakes and also hows the road to north lake? Also I am assuming if we are just day hiking in these areas we won`t need permits correct?
Thanks Bill

[bstolton]

Alright leaving tomorrow around noon, if anyone has any last minute advice or suggestions let me know. I will post a report when we get back.

Thanks Bill

[Crawler]

Chickenfoot. Its a large lake. I didnt give it a solid try, only fished it near where the trail comes in, and only for an hour or so. It looks like it has potential to hold large fish, but I could only wrangle up a few small brookies. A hike to the Lamarck lakes is going to be a bit harder than just about anything that Little lakes has to offer. Its about 1300' to the first lake, and 1600' to the upper lake in just a couple miles. Little lakes valley is an easier hike to more water. The road to North lake should be no problem at all.

[bstolton]

Hey Everyone
The trip went great. Day 1 we hiked to Treasure lakes as described in Jared`s book. Awesome area with great views of South lake on the way up. Definitely got us huffing and puffing in a couple of spots, but it was well worth it! Caught our first golden/hybrid trout, way cool. They loved the orange power worm and even caught some on gold and red spinners.
Day 2 we hiked to Lamarck lakes on the trail out of North lake. This was definitely the hardest hike of the three. Uphill pretty much the whole way, my buddy even had a blowout on his hiking boots. Lower Lamarck wasn’t much, but when we got to Upper Lamarck all I can say is Wow. The brookies where jumping everywhere.
Day 3 we hiked into little lakes valley, nice easy hike for our last day. I would recommend this hike for the whole family, every 15 min theres another lake or meadow or stream crossing and its just beautiful. Our goal was to make it to Chickenfoot lake just because it sounds cool. Got there in no time at all and it was probably one of the most beautiful lakes we saw. No luck fishing there and the fish we saw where very small 2-5”. Next time we will venture on further.
Bill

[bstolton]

Can`t seem to attach any pics my buddy took, It says the files are too large. I never had this problem before but my camera is only a 4mp his is 10mp. any suggestions?

Thanks Bill

[RiversideTrout77]

Can`t seem to attach any pics my buddy took, It says the files are too large. I never had this problem before but my camera is only a 4mp his is 10mp. any suggestions?

Thanks Bill

Have you tried to use photobucket and resize the pics. I have a 8mp camera and this has worked for me.

[bstolton]

Added photos, thanks rt77. resolution is not as good as the originals but you get the idea.

Bill

[teejay]

You sure covered alot of territoty. Nice job.

[Natural Lefty]

This comes a bit late, but it looks like you had a good trip. Regarding places you can hike to from Mosquito Flats, I have actually gone as far as Lower Morgan Lake on a day hike. It has nice size G-R hybrids around 10 inches. The weird thing is when I was up there, this 4 wheel drive vehicle with 3 guys in it came along. I hiked all that way, and you can drive there in a 4WD vehicle. It's not in a wilderness area, and there is an old mining road going there from the Pine Creek area. The road must be really rough, though. There are even Goldens in some ponds near there. Also Upper Morgan Lake has Rainbows. (I suspect they airplant it with fingerlings.) There is a pond in-between the 2 Morgan Lakes on the creek where I saw 2 really large (like 2-3 pounds) Rainbows swimming around, but they wouldn't bite and they appeared to be the only 2 fish in there at the time. All of this was a long time ago, so I don't know what the situation is now.

You can get to Morgan Lakes by just continuing on the main trail past Chickenfoot Lake, and over Morgan Pass, which is a very easy pass to go over at about 11,000 feet. Morgan Lakes are in the Pine Creek drainage. There are also some off-trail lakes in the Morgan Lakes area which get very few visitors. I went backpacking to that area once, and went to a small off-trail lake where I caught a couple of good size (10-11 inch) Brook Trout. I think the lake's name is Finch Lake -- plus there were some other small lakes around there that we didn't get to.

[bstolton]

NL next time I go to LLV I definitly want to go further, we forgot our maps that day so we weren`t sure how much further the next set of lakes would be.I will let my buddy know about the offroad trail he has a jeep and has talked about taking it to the sierras sometime. I will look up the pine creek area on some maps. Next trip is in sept to the june lake loop, planing on hit up a couple more spots in Jared`s book. They have to be easy because I will have the wife with me.
Bill

[Natural Lefty]

Bill, I know what you mean about the wife. Mine is a great fishing partner, but she is not a good hiker so she only takes short hikes. Otherwise, I would be doing farther hike-in fishing, or backpacking. The trips over Morgan Pass were a long time ago when I was a teenager, but it's only about 4.5 easy miles to Lower Morgan Lake -- or zero if you have the right type of vehicle. Good luck, and I hope you make it to some good new spots. Robert

[bstolton]

since we will be in the loop I was thinking either walker or parker, anybody been there? Jared makes walker sound pretty inviting. Also I thought one day we could do the saddlebag taxi or maybe the hike to bennettville ghost town. anybody been to any of these areas?

Thanks Bill