Solo Backpack to Big Pine Lakes | Autumn 2021

October 2nd to 4th, 2021

Backpacking the Big Pine Lakes wasn’t on my radar of bucket list trips until this year when I started thinking where I wanted to go for my fall backpack. My summer trip was going to be tough to top, but hitting all 7 of the Big Pine Lakes might suffice. The weather was great during the day and not too unbearable at night. It may have not gotten cooler than 35 degrees my second night out, but I was plenty warm inside my tent. I did cut the trip short by one day because of smoke pouring into the area from the Complex fire that was ragging in the Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks regions. Other than that, the trip did live up to the expectations found online and it was nice and relaxing in comparison to my big trip earlier in the year.

On night one, I hiked about three miles up the North Fork trail and camped near the Lon Chaney Cabin along Big Pine Creek. I’m not entirely sure camping was designated there, but there were no signs stating “No Camping”. I can’t imagine I was the first to pitch a tent a few hundred feet from the cabin, but it doesn’t appear to be a poplar place. After-all, camping near the cabin that was once owned by the Hollywood legend known as “The Man of a Thousand Faces” automatically leaves you with the impression that phantoms and Frankenstein’s monster lurked in the surrounding forest. I wasn’t the least bit spooked though and I enjoyed this quite spot.

I hiked the following day to the first 5 lakes that were lazily given a numerical designation. How boring is that? 1st Lake, 2nd Lake, 3rd Lake, etc. The first three deserve better names considering their unique minty blue coloring as a result of glacial runoff. Although, 4th and 5th Lakes were equally beautiful and not the least bit crowded with other hikers they also deserve more appropriate names.

The trail wasn’t completely void of people, however, I only met one day hiker leaving 4th Lake around noon and didn’t see another soul until around 4 pm the following day. You might think it would be a little eerie being by yourself in the backcountry at almost 11,000 feet for that length of time, but it’s actually quite relaxing. Don’t get me wrong, I like people, but it’s nice to listen to nothing, but nature and yourself for an extended period of time especially in such a remote place.

Camping the second evening at 5th Lake and day hiking to 6th and 7th the following day to spend another night at 5th was my plan, but as stated earlier, the smoked rolled in and I said forget it. So, I broke camp and left around 10:30 am, hiked to 6th Lake and then enjoyed my lunch in absolute solitude at 7th Lake. A blue sky would have made the view looking down at 7th while eating my tuna salad pita pocket all the more stunning, but I pretended that I was on Mars with that smokey rust-colored sky. Even though there wasn’t another soul to be heard, I wasn’t alone. I was kept company by Two Eagle Peak to my front and Cloudripper to my right. I was happy to be there looking up at these majestic granite peaks.

When I finished my lunch, I hiked the eight miles back down to the truck, drove out of the mountain to Big Pine and had a wonderful celebratory meal at Coppertop BBQ.

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