2003 Bull Run Lake Backpacking Trip - Day 2
(Saturday, 06 September, 2003)
See also my photo gallery from this
trip.
I slept fairly poorly on Friday night; my right shoulder was still aching
from the previous weekend's backpacking, and sleeping on a thin pad didn't
help matters. I woke several times during the night, mainly due to the wind
noise. It had proved to be a bad idea to sleep with the tent fly door open,
as it let in quite a lot of cool air, flapped annoyingly in the constant
breeze, and left me feeling pretty exposed. Ah well, chalk it up to lessons
learned!
I made oatmeal, realizing then that one packet is not enough for a hungry
hiker (note to self, bring two per day next time!). I filtered coffee
directly into my cup, finding it cumbersome. Next time I'll not leave the
Nalgene bottles behind, as they're useful for bedside water (not to mention
dayhiking) as well. It was pretty chilly, as I was up earlier than planned,
but with a 7:30pm bedtime the night before, I couldn't sleep in all that
late, so I walked around for a bit and enjoyed the early-morning light. I
took in the nice views north from a nearby low ridge, and sat on a rock
waiting for Barry to arrive.
At around 10:45 I saw him hiking in and took some stealth pictures of him
before he saw me sitting on a rock above the trail. After he set up his tent
(an also-new 1-person Sierra Designs Clip Flashlight) and relaxed for a bit,
we set out at noon to dayhike Bull Run Peak. After finding the use trail, we
hiked up a very
steep
meadow, alternately following and losing the trail. Not that it mattered,
as it was obvious enough where we wanted to go, at least for now. Upon
gaining the ridge above the lake, on our left we saw a broad, cliff-sided
rock formation that matched the vague descriptions I'd read of Bull Run
Peak, although it didn't seem terribly peak-like.
We saw two fires burning near Spicer Meadow Reservoir to our south, one
apparently a lightning fire near a ridge. The other was closer to us (no
more than a few miles from our camp), and was also larger, which made us a tad
nervous - with the howling winds that had been in the area, an unchecked
forest fire could spread very quickly. We followed a well-defined use trail
for a little bit until it started losing altitude - hmm, this one must go
somewhere else (where I couldn't say except maybe to guess it goes to the Bull
Run Creek Trial?). We ditched that trail and walked around towards the cliffy rock outcropping.
Upon attaining a ridge, we saw what was definitely the real Bull Run Peak,
about a mile away, and looking a touch intimidating.
We followed the ridge north for a little ways, through low-lying clumps of
Pussy Paws, before
deciding (unwisely) to traverse directly towards Bull Run's west flank, which
looked the most promising for a non-technical route. This proved very slow
going as we had many large boulders and gullies to climb and descend. Fun,
but slow (and trekking poles really get in the way when boulder-hopping). We
eventually got to the base of the peak and scrambled up a steep, but somewhat
stable talus pile to the left of a rocky cleft in the summit plateau. My new
shoes were holding up excellently; I figured if they were comfy here, they'd
be comfy just about anywhere! Upon attaining the summit plateau, I ditched my
poles, admired some Rubber Rabbit Brush, and we scrambled up to the broad summit.
There was a lot of rock art on the summit,
"Welcome" was the first
we saw, followed by an ankh and the BOC symbol, which I thought was amusing
:) A large'ish cairn topped by a stick piqued my interest, and when I lifted
the top rock, I found a metal plate. Upon close inspection, the plate had been
scratched with a message whose effect was "the summit register for Bull Run
Peak has not been destroyed. To view, or take custody of the register, please
call (209)...-....." This was rather odd - why would the register be taken,
but not destroyed? The only thing Barry and I could think of was that someone
got wind of the forest service removing registers and took this one for
safekeeping. Obviously no such un-human'izing activity had been taking place,
however, as the voluminous rock "art" remained intact. Regardless, we
continued on to the true summit and had some snacks.
From the summit, we had excellent views of
Peep-Sight, Highland, and Silver
peaks to the east, the Dardanelles to the south, and Round Top and the other
Mokelumne peaks to the north, along with a closer-in view east down the
Pacific Valley. I spent a little time with my map trying to identify the
nearby peaks, but had only limited success.
The fire near Spicer kept spewing more and more smoke, and we decided we'd
better head back to camp. This time we traversed the ridge back towards the
steep meadow, and this proved vastly easier and faster than our bee-line
approach to the peak. Once we had the fire in view, we saw that although it
was smoking more, it hadn't actually grown or moved, so we didn't need to
worry any further. We skirted the not-bull-run rock formation and descended
the meadow back to the lake.
Upon arriving back at camp, I fished for a little while, trying first
superbait, then flies. I had not so much as a nibble, but felt very civilized
drinking
Syrah whilst not catching anything :-). I cooked up a backpacking version
of pasta primavera with alfredo (actually quite tasty) while Barry made a
campfire. This was my first time backpacking somewhere where fires are
actually permitted, and I enjoyed sitting around the fire with Barry and
shooting the breeze. Come 20:30 we decided it was bedtime and retired to our
tents. Unlike the previous night, I had little trouble falling asleep
(probably due to both the efforts of the day and my closing of the tarp door
so it wouldn't flap around).
Day's statistics:
| Distance: |
~4mi |
| Total Time: |
4hrs 21min |
| Elevation gain: |
2,050 feet |
| Difficulty: |
8 |
| Scenery: |
8 |
| Trail condition/markings/etc: |
N/A |
| Overall rating: |
8 |
Trip links:
Other links: