Five of us in our 60s hiked the Yosemite backcountry and lived. I want to thank my hiking companions for their perseverance as I hiked with healed back injuries, a flat foot, and diastasis recti requiring me to wear a truss to hold in my gut in: my lovely wife Susan with her sciatica and foot-numbing neuropathy, my retired teaching buddy, Bud Donaldson with his two bad knees, Carl Kittrell with his missing toe and transplanted tendons, and Deb Kittrell, healthy as a filly and a retired nurse. She was our guiding spirit and strength.
Deb was also the instigator. She came up with this healthy idea months ago as a way to celebrate her recent Kaiser retirement. “Let’s go in strong,” she said to work us up. For me it had been 17 years since I’d worn a weighted pack on my once injured back. The inactivity contributed to high cholesterol, sugar, blood pressure, and triglycerides.
We worked on stamina for a couple months. Then last week wearing full backpacks weighing 25 – 40 pounds we began our Ten Lakes Trek from Tioga Pass Road at 7,500 feet and hiked uphill over granite slabs and through clusters of trees for four miles to a wide beautiful meadow that backed up to a steep mountain pass. After gaining over 1,000 feet in elevation, our trail relented, leveling out and leading us gently through the wild flowers of the meadow, toward the mountain.
Ahead of us, and above us, ran the dreaded, steep, rugged Switchbacks to Ten Lakes Pass, leading up nearly 1,000 feet in 7/10ths of a mile. The trail was more steps than slopes, taller than the Golden Gate Bridge. We munched power bars, drank our electrolytes, and pushed on. Pain. Suffering. Exhaustion. Second thoughts. Then came the purple lupines.
We emerged from the trees into another meadow of wild flowers and blue sky at the mountain top. After gaining 2,200 feet in elevation, the aching ended. The effort was worth it, and we hadn’t even seen the lakes yet.
From the ridge we could see over the peaks of the Yosemite mountain range. Below us 800 feet down the far side was an elevated basin of alpine lakes, each feeding the others with trickling streams.
Hiking down switchback steps uses muscles that hiking uphill never woke up. Our final mile into the Ten Lakes Basin was worth it and painful, but we made it!
Only a few other hikers were camped around these remote lakes, several of them had passed us by on the trail in, young with a spring in their steps.
In the jumble of trees and boulders along the biggest lake, we needed a flat place for tents and an existing fire ring. Carl had arrived in the basin first. While waiting for the rest of us, he made friends with Louie, a train conductor from Minnesota and solo hiker. Louie had plenty of extra flat space beside his tent, a fire ring, and a pile of firewood. I showed up next. Carl and I asked Louie if he minded us camping on some of his flat space.
“I’m fine with that. We’ll have to OK it with Jean,” he said, and nodded to a young man in a t-shirt and shorts fishing off the bank nearby.
Louie had just invited Jean to also share his flat space. Jean, a solo hiker from Paris was a professor here for conferences in L.A. and San Francisco. He’d visited Yosemite Valley the previous week, fell in love, and on impulse gathered together bare gear and hiked into the backcountry. I’d met him on the trail hours ago. He had no tent. I told him firewood was scarce, but that he’d surely catch trout. He had a trout on his stringer.
Jean was happy to see us again and helped welcome us into their camp space. When the women and Bud arrived, we had a camping family already started. We helped the ladies off with their heavy loads. Deb broke out the Fireball.
We put up our tents, and Carl hung his elaborate four-layer hammock between trees overlooking the lake. Too tired to cook, we gathered wood and sat nibbling trail mix by the fire as dark clouds rolled in and a brief rain wet the landscape. The sky again turned blue before sunset.
Jean tried to cook his only trout by jamming a stick down its throat and holding it over the fire. “You should clean it first. Its guts will bubble and ooze,” I advised. He shrugged. He had only a Bowie knife twice the size of the fish. I cleaned his trout for him and fried it in a pan. He took photographs as souvenirs. Everyone got a taste.
First full day activities were self-inspired. Bud and I fished the lake. Carl and Deb hiked around it and took a northern look down 3,300 feet into the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River. Susan hung out in the campground reading and roaming for firewood. Jean fished and caught another trout, which he cooked while I was off fishing. He jammed a stick in its mouth and cooked it ungutted. Susan and Deb helped him eat it; said they liked it.
Louie and Jean both packed out that afternoon. Jean may stop in Benicia before flying home. First he was going to hike another dozen miles of Yosemite. We gave him food, energy bars, and electrolyte powder.
The young people had moved out and left us old folks home alone.

Steve Gibbs is a retired Benicia High School teacher who has written a column for The Herald since 1985.

Sharing is caring!