A Journey Back in Time… Backpacking into an All-Time Favorite at 75 and 82: The Five Lakes Basin

/ Curt Mekemson
One of many lakes found in the Tahoe National Forest’s Grouse Ridge Non-Motorized Area where Peggy and I went backpacking last week. I’d asked Peggy what she wanted to do for her 75th Birthday. Her first answer was to visit our son Tony and his family in Florida, which we did and had a great time. The second thing was go backpacking! “I’ll pass on the 750 miles you did for your 75th, however, Curt,” she informed me. “I think 7.5 sounds more reasonable.” We laughed. At 82, I also gave a sigh of relief. Possibly you heard me.
Since we were visiting friends and family in Sacramento on a break from our five-month exploration of the Southwest, the Five Lakes Basin was a natural for our trip. This is a view from one of the lakes looking up at the Black Buttes. While there are several ways to enter the Grouse Ridge Non-Motorized area, our normal way is to follow I-80 from Sacramento and take the Highway 20 cutoff toward Nevada City for approximately 5 miles.  Turn right on Bowman Lake Road and continue on that road for 5 miles. Turn right on the unimproved, ultra-bouncy, dirt Grouse Ridge Road for 6 miles until you reach the Grouse Ridge Campground. The road has always been a challenge. This time it featured holes that would eat a VW bug! (Slight exaggeration but not much.)
I’ve been backpacking in the Grouse Ridge/Five Lakes Basin since 1969, 56 years ago. It’s an all time favorite of mine. I actually remember the exact day I started to backpack: July 20, 1969. The day Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon, I took my first step backpacking near Grouse Ridge. I made it into the Five Lake Basin in 1970 and camped just to the right of this little waterfall.
Twenty years later in 1990, a few months after I had met Peggy, I bought her a backpack for her 40th birthday and took her into my favorite lake. Her only requirement was that I carry in a water bottle full of Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry. I don’t know whether it was the beauty of the area or the sherry, but Peggy came to love backpacking and the Basin— almost as much as I do.
This map shows the trail system from Grouse Ridge Campground into Five Lakes Basin and Glacier Lake. Peggy and I followed the Glacier Lakes Trail for her 75th birthday, the Sand Ridge trail for her 40th. In the early 70s, off-road enthusiasts could follow the route I outlined here up to the first lake at the end of Sand Ridge. I did that once with my friends. The following year I watched an off-road dirt bike rider tear up a beautiful meadow doing brodies, which led me to join forces with the Nevada County Sierra Club in advocating for the non-motorized status, an effort that was successful.
Having just finished her 75th Birthday backpack trip, Peggy stands with a big smile at the Grouse Ridge Campground with the Black Buttes behind her. We camped just beneath the highest peak at Glacier Lake. The Five Lakes Basin lies just beneath Glacier Lake. (Her T-Shirt features Big Foot, the world’s hide and seek champion.) I’ll include more photos of our trip at the end of this blog.

I’ve done a number of posts on the area over the years. People researching the Basin are bound to come across them. In fact, I was amused a couple of days ago when I was trying to remember when glaciers carved the basin with its lakes and googled the question. 20,000 years ago was the AI response. I looked up the source, as I usually do with AI answers. It was Wandering-Through-Time-and-Place. A fairly reliable source, I’d say. Grin.

I noted in an earlier post that the Grouse Ridge Non-Motorized Area is well-loved. Maybe too much so, especially for someone like me who prefers his/her wilderness rugged, wild and relatively people-free. But I make an exception for this region. It’s an easy place for people to get to and is very backpacker-friendly for families and newcomers to the sport. It serves as a great introduction. There is considerable value in this— for the people of course— but also for our world. People who experience the wilderness in a positive way are much more likely to appreciate it, and want to protect it, which is critically important for ourselves, our children, and future generations. As I have emphasized over and over in this series.

Especially in this era when the Trump Administration wants to open up national forests, BLM lands, and national monuments for logging, mining and housing developments. His most recent target is roadless areas. Information this month suggests that the administration is moving to repeal the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, opening up approximately 58 million acres of national forest lands to road building and logging. I doubt it will include the Grouse Ridge area. But it could.

Here are some photos taken from my posts that emphasize what might be lost.

The serenity of the Five Lakes Basin’s ‘biggest little lake’ could be shattered by the sound of chainsaws. When I see this photo, I always think of Gary Snyder, the Nobel Prize winner, “poet laureate of Deep Ecology,” and who— along with his friends Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Alan Watts— was prominent in introducing Zen Buddhism to America. Living on San Juan Ridge near Nevada City, he fell in love with the Sierras and the Grouse Ridge area in much the same way I did. He even wrote a poem about the Five Lakes Basin:

Old Pond

Blue mountain, white snow gleam
Through pine bulk and slender needle-sprays;
little hemlock half in shade,
ragged rocky skyline,

single clear flat nuthatch call:
down from the tree trunks

up through time.

At Five Lakes Basin’s
Biggest little lake
after all day scrambling on the peaks,
a naked bug with a white body and brown hair

dives in the water,

Splash!

Like Snyder, my spiritual views of the world are more Eastern than Western, but it really doesn’t matter what your religious perspective is when it comes to the value gained by connecting with nature. I agree with John Muir’s statement: “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” Here, in this photo by Peggy, I am reading Hermann Hess’s classic about a young man’s spiritual journey at the time of Buddha, Siddhartha.
I suspect that Snyder would love this twisted manzanita I found near his biggest little lake.
And this ancient juniper.
I’m a fan of reflection shots. Every lake in the Five Lakes Basin provides examples of why. This is morning on a lake I once named Peggy’s since I couldn’t find a name for it.
Evening on the same lake.
Just for fun, I’ve discovered that turning reflection shots on their side can provide interesting results. This one had a wonderfully-fat-monster-insect look. Start with the feelers and work down.
Another example from a normal perspective.
Flipped it on its side. Beyond the monster look, there was the woman in a green dress with the long green hair.
The basin is filled with granite. I liked the green contrast of the manzanita growing on the boulder.
As you might imagine, Peggy and I have taken hundreds of photos of the Basin and Non-Motorized Area over the years, but I’ll conclude our quick tour of the basin with a sunset photo and move on to Peggy’s 75th Birthday trip to Glacier Lake.
Peggy poses for her ‘official’ backpacker photo looking snazzy. Note the hiking sticks (poles). ‘We don’t leave home without them’ when venturing into the woods. They are essential for balance, even more so as we age. My hips and knees were screaming at me as we made our way down Grouse Ridge, like “What the F are you doing.” (Growing older is so much fun.) The sticks assured we stayed upright.
The area was much drier than we had expected from previous trips in July, thus we were grateful when we came across this meadow. One look and we simultaneously thought CAMP!
One tired, but happy, puppy. Or maybe that should be old dog. That’s my food bag draped across my legs. Camp was set up. We’d had a cup of hot soup, cheese, a beef stick, and a celebratory shot of Irish liqueur. I still had to cook Peggy a post-birthday dinner, but that consisted of boiling water, pouring it into a container of freeze-dried backpacking food, letting it sit for five minutes, and eating. Mmmm, beef stroganoff. All was right with the world. Just don’t ask me to get up! Peggy managed to abandon her Therma-rest seat for this photo. Good thing I married a younger woman.
The next morning we found a snow bank on our way up to the lake. I don’t think Peggy has ever found snow without lobbing a snowball at me!
She followed up by carving a heart with P+C in it. Aw….
The trip up to the lake was relatively easy, considering we took two days to do what is normally a one day trip. (I’ll note here that some of these photos here are from earlier trips since we were only carrying our iPhone to save weight.)
An obligatory photo of camp. Looks peaceful, doesn’t it. Shortly afterwards, a group of 35 teenage girls and their adult leaders showed up and camped next to us. Must say they were relatively quiet, polite, and only spent the night. The most noise was their scream as they jumped into the lake’s snow fed water. While the group size was too large, I appreciated the effort their leaders put into introducing them to backpacking and the beautiful area. They left their camp immaculate.
After the girls packed up and left, we had the camp and lake to ourselves for the day.
While the moon was only partial, at 8000 feet it was like someone was shining a flashlight on our tent at night.
Bone, who had joined us on the trip, insisted on having his photo taken before we headed back for Grouse Ridge.
Naturally, we took a selfie when we made it back to our truck— happy to be back but ever so glad we had gone. That’s it for now. Peggy and I are in Albuquerque, New Mexico for a week before we begin our journey back East. Next up…
Canyon de Chelly National Monument

25 thoughts on “A Journey Back in Time… Backpacking into an All-Time Favorite at 75 and 82: The Five Lakes Basin”

  1. Aww.. the heart❤️is so lovely!!

    I can also attest that Wandering-Through-Time-and-Place, its an absolutely reliable reference!😍

    You guys are terrific! xx

    Reply

    • Thanks for commenting. It was a great hike indeed. Both my knees and hips had a discussion with me about it, however. As for my wife, she’s always game for a walk in the woods. I’m lucky!

      Reply

  7. Congrats and Happy Birthday to Peggy. Curt, keep your voice down, I do believe I heard that relieved sigh of yours!
    Got a kick out of your giant insect, and God help us if we lose our National Forests!

    Reply

    • Believe me, G, my body appreciated it. Even then, it whined a lot. Grin. Always enjoy playing with reflection shots.
      The majority of Americans, including some of the presidents staunchest followers in the west, want to preserve our forests. Hopefully, we’ll succeed.

      Reply

  9. Happy 75th to Peggy, and you guys are amazing, Curt! The photos are incredible, and just seeing your tent set up and you sitting up against a tree makes me want to ‘be there.’ The photo of Peggy with her walking sticks is wonderful! My health may hinder us from going again. I have spinal stenosis that doesn’t allow me to carry heavy stuff. And I’ve had nerve issues in my feet though I’m not diabetic – the issues are most likely from the stenosis. The nerve issues are mild though as long as I wear my Hokas. My hubby has arthritis in one knee. So in our mid sixties, I’m not sure if we’ll be able to go again. It bothers us because we love it. And I didn’t start until I was 56! Before then, I had no interest. But he’s backpacked all of his life. I wish I had begun earlier too. Anyway, who knows. We’re doing more bike riding (better for the spine) than walking, except for light hiking. As much as I wanted to hike on the PCT this summer, it’s not going to happen. Maybe next year? And if we’re done, then we have to be grateful for our trips in the past. Your photos remind me of some places we backpacked: Spider Lake and Shealor Lake. Lastly, I hope the national parks win! So much for a short comment. Take good care! 🥾

    Reply

    • As I recall, Lauren, you still have your beautiful lake off of Highway 50 up in the Sierras.
      Very sorry to hear about the challenges though. I know how lucky Peggy and I have been.
      You live in a beautiful area for bicycling. I led a few bicycle treks over there in the 70s and 80s. And the new electric bikes can help. I had a good friend (now passed)who had backpacked in the 80s with me until his hips no longer allowed it, and then continued to bike for another 25 years.
      Take care my friend. –Curt

      Reply

  10. Really loved the picture of you two! Your adventures are always amazing and especially the knobby trees and the faces! Also liked your little camping site! I found out many years ago that I am a Best Western camper. My dad was the camper. He always made a pilgrimage to Mt. Adams to pick huckleberries each year. Mom was more into the gardening and we had a beautiful home and surroundings. Blessings to you both!

    Reply

    • Thanks. We like it both ways, Wendy and have no problems ‘camping’ in our RV. Grin. Which we are doing right now! We are at a woodsy site in Oklahoma listening to the doves chattering away.
      I think my father would have camped a lot more had it not been for my mother’s thoughts on camping out. Fortunately I had nearby woods that I could disappear into when ever the opportunity presented itself.

      Reply

  11. I just added this one to my bucket list, Curt. How beautiful!!! I love the added feature of water. I like deserts and rocks, but water… can’t resist. The reflections are exquisite. And love the fun you had playing with your photographs. Thanks for sharing!!!

    Reply

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