Canoeists in California don’t generally have access to the
sort of trips that those in the upper Midwest do. We have no “Land of 10,000
Lakes”, no Algonquin or Boundary Waters or Quetico, and save for the Lower
Colorado no long lazy rivers through deep wilderness. I’ve long held a desire
for a multi-day trip that would take me through a number of lakes but that’s
pretty tough to find. Most lakes in California are either man-made water
storage reservoirs in the foothills around urban areas or in the low Sierras or
man-made reservoirs for power generation in the high Sierras. The latter has
provided a for a few of my trips in the past ( Hell Hole & Iron Canyon )
but given the terrain that they reside in most do not allow one to paddle a
lake, hoist your canoe onto your shoulders and hike a reasonable distance to
the next lake and repeat.
But there are a few exceptions if you look really high into
the Sierras. In areas where glacial forces long ago carved divots out of the
landscape that now hold runoff from winter snows. I’ve found a few chains of
these glacial lakes that I wanted to check out and when some unexpected time
off presented itself last year I jumped at the chance for a few days away from
the Valley, email, cellphones and noise.
