Shaver Lake Loop (2010)

*There will be no photo or video albums for this trip due to unfortunate circumstances that I will explain later in the post.
**This trip was almost completely cross-country. All mileages are approximate.

My dad and I have been getting really antsy for a High Sierra trip for quite some time now. Since it's an El Nino year, we've had a significantly higher snowpack than usual, which has kept us from accessing our favorite backpacking destinations. This trip to Shaver Lake was completely last-minute, and ultimately was a desperately needed dose of backcountry air to tide ourselves over for another week or two. The bottom line is...it's almost June, we leave for the JMT in about a month, and we need some miles under our feet! No, this didn't hardly qualify as a "High Sierra" trip, but it was relatively snow-free, and a Shaver Lake adventure on Memorial Day weekend for sure!

My dad came up with this idea around 2:00PM on Sunday. At 4:30PM, we were parked in the Sierra Marina parking lot at the NorthWest corner of the lake and started hiking clockwise. Our route was not exactly efficient, nor was any route on the trip for that matter, but this was beside the point. We were making great time and reached the creek on the NorthEast corner of the lake in a little over an hour. After filming my dad jump over the raging inlet, I put my camera back in its case (attached to my hip belt), but while attempting to zip it closed, I somehow managed to shimmy the camera out of its case, and helplessly watched it tumble into the water. So unfortunately for this trip, only a couple pictures from my cell phone...sorry. Anyways, the next hour or so consisted of a maze of boulder hopping and bushwacking as we tried to stay relatively pointed towards Stevenson Creek at the SouthEast corner of the lake. At 7:00PM we made camp up on the beach near the mouth of Stevenson Creek, built a fire, cooked dinner, and even managed to catch a rainbow and 4 smallmouth before dark.

After a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee in the morning, we packed up and started hiking again around 8:00AM. We soon discovered that we had to hike much further than the map indicated in order to safely cross Stevenson Creek. After some more boulder hopping, the opposite side seemed to be nothing but impenetrable thickets of Manzanita. The next hour was more bushwacking, and even a little bit of tromping through a few patches of rotten snow that still remained in the shade. Eventually we traveled far enough South that we hit Dinkey Creek Road about a half mile East of Swanson Meadows. Not too long afterwards we reached the town of Shaver Lake and simply followed HWY 168 to complete our loop, and we even managed to pass through town without stopping at the ever-so-tempting Hungry Hut burger joint.  Back to the truck shortly after 12:00PM, and headed down to the 90-degree Valley.

Despite me losing my camera, it was a very fun trip. It was not near as remote as I was expecting, but here's what made it work for us: the short 1-hour drive, access to 5,000-6,000 feet terrain despite this year's snowpack, and fishing opportunities. The image at the top of the page is a relatively direct route around the lake, and is generally what we tried to follow. After factoring in our zigging and zagging I would estimate the total distance traveled was between 22-23 miles.