Emigrant Wilderness, California, USA

October 2020

We love the Emigrant Wilderness not only for its easy access, but for it’s beauty and remoteness. Like much of the Sierra Nevada, the Emigrant Wilderness is a land of endless granite landscapes carved out by glaciers and water over millions of years. It is a place where the pines, cedars, and firs of the Stanislaus National Forest gradually thin as granite cliffs, mountain tops, and monoliths take over. It goes without saying that we tend to plan our backpacking routes to satiate our craving for adventure. So for this trip into the Emigrant, we wanted to explore several “off-trail” lakes and an old horse camp that we spotted on our trusty Tom Harrison topo map. The contours appeared navigable as we created our custom route on AllTrails.

Starting at the Crabtree Trailhead, the trail climbs gradually up a forested ridge for 2.5 miles to the easily accessible Camp Lake.  If you listen carefully, you might hear cowbells in the distance, as ranchers frequently use areas of the Stanislaus NF to graze their cattle. Occasionally we’ve had the pleasure of running into small herds of forest cattle. They seem a little out of place, but don’t seem to bother anyone. Camp Lake is a popular spot for picnicking day hikers and swimmers alike. Thus, overnight camping is not allowed at this lake due to its popularity.

It is important to note that there are 2 parallel routes into the “middle” Emigrant. Both can be accessed by the Crabtree, Pine Valley, or Bell Meadow Trailheads. The Bell Meadow Trail pretty much parallels the Crabtree Trail for about 14 miles, and can create a variety of nice loops (via connector trails) to explore depending on how much time you have. We chose to start our trip on the Crabtree Trail and return via Bell Meadow Trail for a change of scenery.  Crabtree has more ups and downs and expansive views, as it sits a little higher in elevation, while the Bell Meadow trail follows a canyon, passes sheer cliffs and crosses through Pine Valley full of remnants of past wildfires. Both result in similar elevation changes while offering different perspectives of the terrain.

From there, the Crabtree Trail descends into canyons and climbs ridges, undulating in this familiar fashion for miles.  As we hiked further into the Emigrant, more rock formations began to appear and the crowds thinned. Once the trail descended the first canyon down to Piute Meadow, we turned south on a small connector trail to join up with the Bell Meadow trail. This flat, sandy area trail junction is called Groundhog Meadow.  We peeled off our layers as the temperatures started to rise. Heading east on the Bell Meadow Trail we climbed through a cool forest and descended into another scenic canyon.

We left the official “trail” at West Fork Cherry Creek, venturing south down Louse Canyon.  In the late spring and early summer, the rushing water along the creek creates gorgeous cascades for miles along this canyon.  However, at this time of year, only a few stagnant pools remained. We crossed the dry creek bed and climbed a steep, rocky slope up to beautiful Rosasco Lake.  Here the colors of autumn were starting to show in the foliage framing the lake. 

We followed our route over another rise and eventually navigated our way down the granite terrain to Hyatt Lake for the night.  On the way, I lost count of the many mounds of berry-filled bear scat we passed.  This was alarming but not surprising, and we were prepared with our bear canister full to the brim. 

Being autumn, the water level at the lake was low, allowing plenty of room to set up our tent on the beach and climb onto a rocky outcropping for some great views. We met two other friendly backpackers, who were heading back to their camp on the opposite side of the lake with some freshly caught trout.  Other than that, we didn’t spot any other hikers. The smoky skies made for an amazing sunset and sunrise the next morning.

After a restful night, we hiked up the rocks to perhaps our favorite part of the trip.  We have seen it referred to as the “granite superhighway”: this huge granite bowl between Hyatt and Big Lakes that empties into Cherry Creek Canyon.  We stood in awe of the immensity of the “bowl”. 

After taking a ton of photos that wouldn’t do it any justice, we skirted around the upper flanks to a notch where our route would take us over to Big Lake.  Climbing up the boulders, we were amazed to see horse poop, a sign that they too ventured along this steep path.

We were treated to more bear scat while passing Big Lake, not wanting to stop as we were eager to reach our destination. I would like to go back to enjoy this lake another time, as I hear the fishing is pretty good. Following our GPS, we eventually made our way over to the highlight of our trip: the historic Yellowhammer Camp.

Located 15 miles into the Emigrant Wilderness near Yellowhammer Lake, the existing Yellowhammer Camp was constructed in 1922 by Fred Leighton at the site of an old cow camp cabin from the 1890s. Most of the buildings were made with local sugar pine logs and seemed to be in pretty good shape. They included a few small cabins, a barn, a hitching post, an outhouse, and various dilapidated items.  There were remnants of recent visitors (Aspen Meadows Pack Station leads multi-day horse packing trips out here), but on this day we had the entire place to ourselves.  It was fun exploring the camp in such a remote area and it felt like a mini ghost town!

After spending over an hour at the camp enjoying our lunch, we decided to do a little cross-country navigation over to Pingree Lake.  We headed straight up the granite behind the camp. This required some steep climbing in the heat of the day, but proved to be a fun adventure. With our GPS and good sense of direction, we made our way up to Pingree Lake and enjoyed its cool water as the smoke from nearby wildfires closed in. 

As the smoke gradually began to thicken, we decided to make our way down towards Rosasco Lake for the night.  Donning neck gaiters over our faces, we followed a horse trail down to what we thought was our trail intersection, but we were wrong! We were following cairns that led us away from our destination. Luckily after some backtracking, we found our original route and headed over to Rosasco Lake, only to find a large group of campers with some aggressively barking dogs at the only viable site.  Since we wanted more privacy, we found a small tarn just below the outlet creek and pitched our tent in a clearing. We soaked our tired feet in the cold water and happily ate our dinner.  

Because of the fire ban that summer, we couldn’t use any fuel sources to cook our meals.  This was a perfect opportunity to experiment with cold soaking!  For this evening, we had soaked brown “minute rice” with dehydrated black beans and a little taco seasoning for about an hour.  We then added crushed BBQ bean chips and turkey jerky.  It was surprisingly delicious! After dinner we climbed up the cliffs for a sunset view. The smoke cast an eerie glow to this pic.

The next morning, the smoke had cleared. We decided to venture down the “outlet creek” from Rosasco to see where it led, since it appeared like it drained into Hyatt Lake. After following the creek downstream for 15 minutes or so, we were cliffed out, but we could see Hyatt Lake way off into the distance. We vowed to come back sometime to explore. Once we packed up camp, we began the climb back down to Louse Canyon. 

We enjoyed the different scenery for our return trip along the Bell Meadows trail, and found a few groves of yellowing aspen along the way.  Trail engineers had carved stairs into the granite in a few sections, and we marveled at the high cliffs. We crossed through the charred tree trunks of Pine Valley, which showed hopeful signs of regrowth after a devastating wildfire ripped through there in 2003. It was hot and stagnant in the valley with the lack of shade and vegetation. At the trail junction, we turned north and climbed 500ft up a ridge to the intersection with Crabtree Trail, ultimately making our way back to the trailhead.  Along the way we chatted with a friendly older gentleman who was going out for 2-3 weeks with his fishing gear. Much respect!

Once back at the car, we changed our clothes, wiped the dirt and dust off our bodies with baby wipes, put our sore and tired feet in our trusty Crocs, and headed down the mountain. We clocked over 5000′ of elevation gain and 32 miles over three days. We were proud of ourselves for adding yet another amazing trip to our backpacking memories.