Dusy Basin Backpacking | Day 2 | August 6, 2011
November 30, 2011
Day 2: Long Lake to Lower Dusy Basin
The first night is always rough when it comes to sleep. I’m used to being sprawled out, tossing and turning all over the place. That doesn’t work so well inside a sleeping bag, and I’m sure Arun wouldn’t have appreciated it either. Fortunately it was a relatively warm morning, so getting up wasn’t too much trouble despite not getting my usual 8-9 hours of sleep. Arun and I went our separate ways wandering around and taking pictures, then came back to camp and got ready to hike over Bishop Pass.
Today would be the longest day, but still pretty easy, especially since we’d already made it to Long Lake. We were looking at about 6 miles with 1300′ up and 1300′ down. It was time to see how well my usual 3 mile runs and Fartleks (at sea level, on flat ground) had me prepared for hiking uphill, at elevation, with more weight on my back than a normal person (aka non-photographer) would haul.
We took a pretty easy pace going up and over Bishop Pass. The one exception was rock slide areas where we moved quickly through. There was one small stream crossing below Bishop Lakes (small because we were there in the morning). And there was one snow bridge and a few snow patches to go through including a large snowfield at the top of Bishop Pass. In early afternoon we arrived at sunny, mosquito filled Dusy Basin. As a resident of San Diego, I know I’m supposed to like the sun and enjoy things like spending an afternoon at the beach on a cloudless day. I don’t. It sucks. I like clouds, fog, rain, temperatures between 40 and 70F. I can imagine John Coleman cringing if he were reading this. The mosquitoes and lack of shade made the middle of the day a little rough.
Shortly before sunset in Lower Dusy Basin
Later in the day the temperature dropped and the light became less intense as the sun moved closer to the horizon. I wandered around, checking out a few places I had scouted earlier in the day. While TPE and Google Earth are helpful, you don’t really know how a place will look at a certain time of the day without actually being there. I photographed some trees on the North side of the basin that were catching their last light of the day. Then I headed towards a stream I’d checked out earlier to photograph the last light on the Palisades. Unfortunately the light went away much faster than I thought it would. I was caught off guard. From a photography perspective, there would have been a big advantage to staying in Lower Dusy Basin for another day. But, this was the first time in the area for both Arun and I, and this trip was more about exploring the area than setting up in a spot and waiting for the perfect light (which wasn’t going to happen on these cloudless days anyways). The next morning we’d photograph at sunrise, then head back towards Bishop Pass and check out Upper Dusy Basin.
