Rocky Basin Lakes & Big Whitney Meadow 7 Day Backpack

Gary and I had another great 7 day backpack trip in the Golden Trout Wilderness. This year we looped thru Rocky Basin Lakes again but also made it to Johnson Peak, Big Whitney Meadow, Volcano Meadow & Cold Meadow. We did see one bear in Volcano Meadow, it was early morning and hew was scratching his back on a pine tree..he took off running after he got wind of us though. This was also the first time we took bear canisters, normally we double hang our food but last year we felt hindered by camp site locations since we were always looking for that perfect tree. Can't say I liked the size or weight of the canisters but we were able to camp anywhere we wanted this time. We had good timing this year, there was plenty of water, green meadows and the cowboys were bringing in the cows on the last day we were leaving. I had 6 rolls of 120 Fuji Velvia 50 film in the refrigerator that was getting kinda old so took that and shoot all of them (Film scanned on an Epson v750). We stopped off at a few rock arts sites on the way to the trailhead, some petroglyphs and pictograph sites. Taker a look at the map, it was a great route and I would recommend it to anybody thinking about where to go.





Guzzler out near Squaw Spring


Petroglyphs at Squaw Spring





We camped out near the Golden Valley Wilderness area to check out more petroglyphs in the morning before heading off to Blackrock Trailhead



Steam Well Petroglyphs













Here are a few pictographs we found after looking at some old BLM maps









Here is the same shot with Gary for size comparison, I took this with my phone and the amazing DStretch app


Johnson Creek / Meadow at the bottom of Johnson Peak


Johnson Lake


Gary on top of Johnson Peak


Peak register box..only a few entries per year, mostly June-August. Can't believe Bob Burd's entry was only as recent as 2015..


Cold Meadows which is just below Kern Peak and not often visited is my guess, beautiful meadow


Redrock Meadows & Indian Head, I way over exposed this by accident and lost all the beautiful color on Indian Head. It was deep lava red with lots of yellow & orange lichen


This is somewhere near Long Canyon & Redrock Meadows junction


Big Whitney Meadow and part of Cirque Peak in the background, water was cold and some snow was still up on the peaks and ridges


We had Big Whitney meadow to ourselves, in fact we only saw a few people the whole trip




Casa Vieja was green and there were several folks out there fishing




Somewhere along the Golden Trout Creek headoing towards Big Whitney Meadow




Moonrise over Templeton Mountain, we had a full moon almost every night and I don't think we really used our headlamps at all


Wildlife along the way




Found a nice biface at one of our campsites


Total Mylar Balloons this trip - 2


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