​A 25 mile lollipop route into the Humphreys Basin via Piute Pass from the North Lake Trailhead with some of my best friends (defacto brothers) from high school. Thirty years on and Steve and the three Ryans (me, Aric & Gaska) still had a great deal to talk about when we could find enough oxygen to breath. We made camp at 11,200' near a small pond on a grus covered flat behind a small knoll. There were not many trees around thanks to our camp's very permeable soil, but the views were out of this world. We day-hiked to Desolation, Muriel and Tomahawk lakes and enjoyed the sun, marmots amd a few brook trout. Winds were forecast to gust to nearly 60mph on the Saturday we originally planned to hike out, so instead we packed up and came out a day early, goaded by a morning freeze and the leading edge of lenticular clouds from the impending storm.

The second day we decided to make a LONG day of it and drove all the way up and over Sonora Pass stopping along the way at Knights Ferry (to admire the inverted topography), Columns of the Giants, Leavitt Falls Overlook (to see the Little Walker Caldera) and a few miles of off-trail hiking looking for some petrified wood fragments. 

We finished the day with dinner at The Rock restaurant in Twain Harte and then went to the Twain Harte Lake Rock that famously exfoliated explosively in 2015 as seen in the video below the photos. 

​Laura, Z and myself had been working so hard and recovering from our first COVID infections that we hadn't had a chance to get out and hike during August and most of September. We decided to change that by heading to Chain Lakes via one of the least-visited trailheads into the Emigrant Wilderness: Box Springs.

After leaving HWY 108 at Long Barn, it takes a little over an hour to travel another 28 miles on paved, then gravel, then rutted and rocky dirt roads to reach the trailhead. Most 4WD SUV's and crossovers should have no problem reaching the trailhead. But it pretty much guarantees you'll be the only one on the trail there! It'll even get you away from the hunters!

​The 2.8 mile trail to the group of three chain lakes gently wanders through the remnants of a 2003 fire that we last visited in November of 2006. Many of the snags we saw in 2006 have since toppled and willows and small fir trees are regenerating near the meadows. Trail fining was a bit sus at times since this are is not highly trafficked and the many downed trees have fallen since the last trail crew came through to cut a path. The lakes are small and lovely, but fishless. Thunderstorms chased us out a bit earlier than we anticipated and didn't get to explore the lens of Disaster Peak Formation nor hike to surrounding domes for a great view. But a little hail and thunder made for some great excitement!

Our first stay at Highliner Lodge was a great experience and we're heading back for 5 days of fishing in 2026. The only bummer on this trip was an excess of kings, and missing a half day of fishing due to SeaTac delays. But otherwise a very cool experience! Below is the review I left on Trip Advisor.

To tell the full story of our great experience we need to start the day before our arrival. But I’ll preface it by saying that the Highliner Lodge and business operations staff were great as were most of the captains. We’ll be returning in late July of 2026 for five days of fishing.

Our flight from Sacramento to Seattle was delayed 3hrs due to a ground stoppage in Seattle. We thus missed our connection to Juneau and subsequently missed the Pelican Express ferry to the lodge that afternoon.
Thanks to great communication with the lodge staff, they were able to help us book an Alaska Seaplane for first thing the next morning that flew us to Pelican so we only missed half a day of fishing.

Fishing at Highliner was great. We fished for 3.5 days (again, our fist day impeded by flight issues getting to Juneau) and got our daily limits of halibut and usually about 2/3 our daily limits of Silvers. Kings were off the charts in 2025, as it seemed 50% of our hook-ups were short kings, the other half being silvers and pinks. With limit being one king per year, we also released 15 legal kings (28”+), including one that was near 40lbs and took about 10 minutes to land do my 81yo dad. We also caught our desired amount of black cod (sablefish) and lingcod, which wasn’t a lot since we mostly prefer salmon and halibut. Electric reels were provided to the deep dives of 800’+.

Our captains were really great and the Highliner fleet did a great job communicating with one another to help everyone zero-in on productive spots each day. We happened to have rough weather nearly every day, but still managed. We had the same very nice captain for three days that got along very well with our group of easy-going teetotalers. One day we had a captain green to Alaska and was doing his best to make small talk, but just had a bit of a gruff personality and we could tell he was a bit stressed when the fishing wasn’t as productive as it could have been. But I think it was a good learning experience on how to get along with clientele that have dissimilar life experiences.

The fleet of boats were varied but very nice and well-kept. We had the bad luck of having several downriggers decide to give up the ghost, but it wasn’t for lack of maintenance and there were spare parts on board to keep the down time to a minimum. The fish processing was also excellent. Salmon were immediately bled and cleaned at sea. The processed fillets were excellently sealed and flash frozen in time for us to make long trip home. 8 months later and we are finally almost out of fish from last summer. Everyone remarks it is the best fish they’ve ever eaten.

Overall a good fishing experience!

As a geoscientist, I couldn’t believe that Pelican is mostly built on stilts on the shoreline of a fjord. The lodge is built on the main “road” in town which for most of its length is a double-wide boardwalk on piers. While the lodge looks modest from the outside, it is very modern yet pragmatic on the inside. Very good craftsmanship was used in its construction and the amenities are excellent considering the extremely remote location. We stayed in the rooms that had several shared bathrooms in the hallway and never had any issues with privacy, wait times or cleanliness. The three bathrooms were individual literal rooms and not “dorm style”.

The entire town is quite an engineering marvel. The back windows of our room abutted a very steep but forested slope that was a mere 5’ away. I can’t speak for the long term stability of the slope, but I was happy looking at the 200million year old metamorphic rock exposures up close. As a side note, coming into port one evening I received word of the large M8.8 Kamchatka earthquake having just occurred which briefly put much of Alaska coastline under a Tsunami Warning. The library across from the lodge has the only public starlink WiFi in town (basically no cell reception until open ocean coastline or along the marine highway) which allowed us to keep abreast of the situation and fairly quickly rule out any threat to Pelican. But the staff did great reviewing their plans in case an evacuation to higher ground needed to occur.

The food at the lodge was also top-notch. Lovely hot breakfasts, made-to-order sandwiches and snacks for lunch and tremendously tasty dinner and desert that always hit the spot. I don’t drink, but there was also a nicely stocked bar with a mixologist. Our dining seating assignments were rotated each night so we got to converse with new folks and trade stories from the day. As an introvert, even I enjoyed the thoughtful attempts at inclusiveness.

Ellen, our longtime friend from Germany, had a dream of hiking the John Muir Trail upon her retirement from teaching English and PE in Germany for 35 years. I flippantly stated several years ago that I'd do the trail with her when she was ready. Well, it turned out the summer of 2025 was going to be The Year for her, but I had been battling through severe ankle problems, the collapse of the United States AND and a new puppy that made the JMT untenable for me. But Ellen was determined to do the JMT solo if she had to, so I planned a 5-day tune-up trip for us in the High Sierra as a litmus test for my ankle health and to pass along my Sierra backpacking knowledge. 

The available trailhead permits were not ideal (all had massive elevation gains and were fairly exposed to sun) but we settled on leaving from Pine Creek Mine and exploring French Canyon, Piute Canyon and the associated high-elevation lakes teeming with golden trout. We saw lots of amazing scenery ranging from double rainbows to electric sunsets and caught so many trout I actually got bored quite quickly. We cut the trip short by one day because the mosquitos and biting flies were so terrible in Piute Canyon. There was absolutely no place we could stop for more than 20 seconds without being swarmed and bitten. So we made a 5 mile day into a 10 mile day to find relief at the high-elevation Lower Golden Trout Lake. 

Perhaps the misery from the previous day's mosquito-fest made us more appreciative, but our last day's hike through Humphreys Basin was just absolutely spectacular! We had planned on exploring Desolation Lake, but we were both ready to just get home, so we made a bee-line over Piute Pass and marveled at the amazing rocks in the canyon of the North Fork of Bishop Creek. I'm certain that many of these photos will make their way to BlueSky (@phaneritic) for proper earth science discussions. Please open the complete photo album to see all of our sights!

A very high reward to low effort ratio, this hike is just a bit over 3 miles one way but offers tremendous views of Clouds Rest, Mt Hoffman, and Half Dome from atop the gentle dome of Mt Watkins. The views are massively expansive an there's a ton of noteworthy glaciation evidence.  Z and I found a rattlesnake in between several large glacial erratics that I was scanning with my phone to make 3D models. I had quite the startled jump, since it was the first time I've ever seen a rattlesnake above 8000'. Enjoy the photo album and 3d models for now. 

Laura, Zephyr and myself all had a great time tagging along with Garry Hayes' MJC Geology field trip as backup drivers and support for the fifteen awesome students on his annual trip to Death Valley. Normally starting on a Thursday evening, this trip instead started on Friday morning due to a terribly wet storm that drenched the valley on Thursday. Garry didn't want the students' trip to start off wet and miserable so we he cut out Shark Tooth Hill and was able to make it through the rest of our normal Friday stops and get into camp a mere four minutes later than the previous year. Friday was a bit blustery, but the winds calmed to a breeze by the evening and the rest of the trip saw partly overcast skies with high temps in the 60's to low 70's and great star viewing most nights. Enjoy the un annotated photo albums and look for previous years to find teh annotated geology.

Needing to clear our heads and prepare ourselves for what is likely to come in the next 4 years, Laura, Z, Julie, Jill, Fritz and I headed over to the Preston Falls Trail along the middle run of the Tuolumne River. We hiked just a tad over 3 miles into the 6 mile trail. The trail starts where the glaciers ended during the last glacial maximum 20,000yrs ago so there is a lot of great geology to see along the way. The water and rocks are amazing, but we didn't have much time to properly fish on this day. I really enjoyed looking at the laminar flow of the river going over the granite. I hope these memories sustain us while we fight through the impending shitshow.