Trip report Twin Lakes Loop (NE Yosemite)

[holz]

Hi all,

Just got back late last night from a marvelous trip through the NE corner of Yosemite.

Synopsis: Perfect weather, abundant wildflowers, minor snow patches that caused minimal inconvenience, horrid mosquitoes up high (sometimes 8 on 1-10)
(mosquitoes present [3], but tolerable at lower elevations)

Details:

Left out of Twin Lakes a bit late, so stayed about a mile short of Peeler Lake. Mosquitoes chased us into our tent where we spent the evening including cooking dinner. (Boy is the guy that works at Twin Lakes resort a real jerk or what?)

Arrived in Kerrick Meadow mid morning day 2. Beautiful lush green with plenty of wildflowers. Mosquitoes weren't so bad here. We random camped near a very pleasant chunk of the stream running through the meadow near Arndt (I think) Lake.

On the way to Benson Lake on day 3, went swimming in a small lake before the big plunge down to Benson. It was soooooooooooo warm!!! Dove in several times and generally had a blast. All but no mosquitoes @ Benson.

Went from Benson to Rodgers the next day. Took a zero day and bagged Volunteer on the zero day. Mosquitoes @ Rodgers were about a 4 in the evenings, but 8 or so in the mornings. Uggggggghhhhh! Rodgers is one of my favorite places on the planet, but they were thick enough to make me look forward to leaving.

Left Rodgers, went over Benson Pass (plenty of mosquitoes even up here!) and on to Matterhorn. Very pleasant day with plenty of wildflowers along the trail and in the meadows. Found a nice place to camp just east of the trail junction.

Over Burro Pass which was a really nice hike. It wasn't easy, but wasn't as bad as I expected. The trail was so nicely graded all the way but for the last few hundred vertical that it went by pretty quickly. I was tired at the top, but boy, what a view! Really nice day. There was still some snow on the Mule side of the pass, but no big deal. Mosquitoes kept us moving the whole way and were bad in the meadows just below the pass. Camped about 1.5 miles short of Mule Pass.

Over Mule Pass, past Crown and Robinson Lakes. The last of the Robinson Lakes looked like a swimming pool. We went all the way out this day so didn't linger to try it for a swim, but it sure was tempting!

All in all, I think this was my favorite hike in Yosemite so far. Absolutely fantastic trip that I would recommend highly. Despite too many bugs, would do it again for sure. Plan to take others on the same route on day in the future!

[holz]

Oh yeah. . .

Volunteer is well worth the effort. Quite a bit of scrambling for the summit, but it wasn't hard. Great 360 view up there!

Left you a note in the log there Bill. Thank you very much for all your help in planning a wonderful trip!

[bill-e-g]

Nice!

I'll look for the note someday.

Totally agree on Rodgers.... sigh... Been smacked there a
number of times too by the little buggers!

[balzaccom]

Hi Holz

We just finished the same loop ourselves, but had a somewhat different experience. I'll post a TR later today with photos for everyone, but...

We did get rain one afternoon, other than that, perfect weather, abundant wildflowers, minor snow patches that caused minimal inconvenience, horrid mosquitoes at Crown lake--and the biologists in Kerrick Meadows were suffering--but the rest of the trip wasn't bad at all!

Did not have any problems with the guy at Twin Lakes resort--found him friendly and helpful!

But since we camped in very different places from you, I'll put the rest under its own thread

[holz]

We saw the biologists too. . . .

They were both very cool and rather "easy on the eyes".

[balzaccom]

We saw three biologists. Pretty interesting. Two were doing "walking surveys" where they....yep, They walked around and took note of the mammals they saw.

One was doing "point surveys" which meant she picked a spot and sat there for 15 minutes and counted any mammal she saw. When we spoke to her, she was skunked for the morning, while the other two had seen both marmots and ground squirrels.