2N/3D Backpacking to Thousand Island Lake, Part 1 (2024)

D and I snagged some last-minute wilderness permits to hike to one of my bucket list destinations: Thousand Island Lake in the Ansel Adams Wilderness. I've dreamt about going even before I enjoyed hiking or being outdoors. I learned about it using a a very popular Chrome extension (back in my day) called Momentum, which would load beautiful photos every time you opened a new window or tab. Thousand Island Lake would often come up and I said to myself then, "someday I'm going to watch the sunrise there". And now we have!

If you're curious about how to get permits and what the shuttle system was like to get to the trailhead, you can read my post on logistics for Thousand Island Lake.

Honoring Indigenous history

You can't pass through a national park or walk the trails in the Eastern Sierras without recognizing the name John Muir. There's even a 210-mile trail that goes from Yosemite National Park, through the Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks, the Ansel Adams Wilderness, and ends at Tumanguya, the Newe (Shoshone) name for Mt. Whitney, that is named after him. However, long before the arrival of John Muir and other colonialists, the Paiute and many other tribes have known this trail as Nüümü Poyo ("The People's Trail"). Nüümü Poyo was the connecting roadway between many tribes of the region, like the Ahwahnechee, Paiute, Miwuk, and Mono, to just name a few.

While John Muir has been remembered as a pioneering environmental conservationist, he contributed to racist stereotypes and beliefs of the time, denigrating Native Americans with words such as "savages", "lazy", and "dirty". He maintained friendships with people like Henry Osborn -- who founded the American Eugenics Society -- and created a culture at the Sierra Club where leaders who followed him, such as Joseph LeConte and David Starr Jordan, pushed for forced-sterilization laws and programs and co-founded the Human Betterment Foundation, whose research and model laws were used to create Nazi Germany legislation. The idolization of John Muir has led to the erasure of indigenous history and their cultivation of the land for thousands of years before the first settlers' arrival. You can read more about John Muir's early history here and here.

Muir's writings influenced the establishment of Yosemite National Park and led to the removal of the Ahwahnechee people. By 1850, a California law legalized the enslavement of Indigenous peoples for their own "protection" and a concerted effort was made to eradicate Native tribes so the lands could be used for recreation, cattle lands, and gold by white settlers and tourists.

In 2018, a group called Indigenous Women Hike walked the same paths that their ancestors journeyed through for thousands of years as an act of reclamation for their history and for the trail known to them as Nüümü Poyo. Their extraordinary story can be read on REI's website here and on Project 562, a photography blog run by Matika Wilbur of Swinomish and Tulalip descent, here.

Day 1: Shadow and Ediza Lakes

There are a ton of ways to go about reaching Thousand Island Lake, but the trail we chose would take us on a huge loop through several lakes in the Ansel Adams Wilderness. You can find the route we mapped on AllTrails here.

The first day was meant to be pretty easy; my original plan was for us to camp at the Shadow Creek and Nüümü Poyo junction, which was only about 6 miles in, and day hike to Ediza Lake. But sometimes the "best laid plans of mice and men often go awry", as the saying goes.

First, I'm gonna rant a little. Guys have it so easy in the wilderness. When they need to pee, all they need to do is walk to the nearest tree, and turn around. To any passersby, it just looks like they're looking down at something near the tree while standing.

It is a pain in the ass, literally and figuratively, to go to the bathroom as a woman in the outdoors. It's always a gamble whether you're crouched low enough and have enough bush cover at the right angles so that you're not accidentally flashing every passing hiker on the trail. And it's fucking hard to find a spot with full coverage -- usually I'm bushwhacking halfway up the mountain before I find an okay spot. Secondly, you need to make sure that you're upslope of the fluids you'll be dispensing otherwise the pee runs all over your shoes. Thirdly, it is impossible to avoid splashing onto your legs and pants unless you're peeing on pine needles. And lastly, being bare exposes you to mosquitoes, flies, and sometimes very prickly grasses and branches. /endrant

All this to say, the most unfortunate thing happened literally within the first two miles of the hike. I've been trying out pee technologies to make my outdoor bathroom experience better, and I bought this stupid device from REI: the Freshette Pee Funnel. I'm warning everyone now: don't get this piece of shit. It's not even that cheap, and I should've questioned it more when I realized that it has two separate parts (the funnel and a tube) instead of being one, single container. I've told this story to many friends in the days since we've returned, and all of them have given me the same, pitiful, "oh no" when I told them that there is no locking mechanism to indicate or prevent leakage. You can probably guess where this is going but I'm not gonna leave you to guess.

That's right, I got pee all over myself. The idea with the pee funnel is that you'll be able to pee like a man: standing up. I had been holding a lot for a long time because I didn't want to screw up our pacing. I was holding the pee funnel, and instead of seeing it come out of the tube and onto the ground, I realized just nanoseconds too late that I was feeling the liquid rush down my legs, drenching my underwear and pants. Being a woman is fucked up y'all.

What a way to start the first of three full days in the wilderness. I had to sacrifice two of our precious body wipes (we only had 16 total between me and D) to wipe myself down. The best I could do for my clothes was to "wash" them with the wet wipes.

D suggested we camp at the lake I'd planned for us to day hike to instead of the Nüümü Poyo junction so I could use the lake water to wash my underwear and maybe my pants. This meant doing extra miles and extra elevation with our backpacks, but our friend seemed to like the idea of camping at a lake more anyway.

The nice thing about investing in good hiking gear is that it makes unfortunate incidents like this bearable. I love my Icebreaker merino undies, which I've worn on 3-5 night backpacking trips and they never get smelly and always dry quickly. They were a saving grace. The REI Sahara pants I also swear by, because they also dry very quickly and do not retain smells. So all things considered, I was doing ok.

D and I have done backpacking trips and hikes at similar altitudes, but it felt a lot harder this time for some reason. Maybe it was the poor sleep the night before, I don't know. We were really feeling the altitude at just over 8,500-ft. Our friend, who is a strong bikepacker, but does not hike very often, was having an even harder time than we were. So we all took it pretty slow and stopped to smell the wildflowers often.

There was soooo much water along the whole trail. It was incredible to see, especially in California where we've been in perpetual drought for the past two decades. There were small and big waterfalls, the streams and rivers were gushing, and all the seasonal lakes were overflowing.

Shadow Lake was the first of many of the beautiful alpine lakes along this loop. As soon as you crest the trail over the waterfall (the outflow of the lake!), you're in this stunning lake basin with snow-capped mountains.

Wildflower season is in full swing up in the Sierras! The meadows and lakeshores were bursting with color.

The trail follows along the edge of the lake, so you get to stare at the water and the mountains the whole time.

There was honestly no shortage of water along the trail, so we didn't have to worry at all about running out at any point. A really nice bonus on a long hike!

Getting to Ediza was honestly a bit of slog once you pass the Nüümü Poyo junction. It's only a few hundred more feet of elevation gain, but it definitely compounded the shortness of breath we were already feeling.

The first view you get of the lake was awe-inspiring -- I actually gasped. You come over a tiny hill and then suddenly you're surrounded by 180-degrees of massive peaks exceeding 12,000-ft.

Views like this remind me of how lucky I am to be living in California. Sometimes I take it for granted when we go hiking elsewhere around the world and compare them to each other, which is silly since every place has something special to offer. I have so much gratitude for having access to so much beauty and wonder in my own backyard.

If there's one thing that really detracted from the experience, it was the mosquitoes. I really thought we would avoid them because the lake literally just thawed no fewer than four days before our arrival. We all wore long sleeves, long pants, hats, and bug nets, but they were mean-ass fuckers and we all got bites through our clothing. I'd even sprayed my clothing with permethrin the day before, and was also using topical bug spray!

It genuinely made it hard to just sit by the lake and enjoy the scenery because we were constantly swatting them off. Within the first hour, I felt a cluster of bumps forming from the bites (8!! on one shoulder!!), as well as parts of my face (not my moneymaker, noo!!).

Another annoying thing about camping at Ediza (as beautiful as it was) so early in the season was that because of the heavy snowmelt, everything was super muddy and mushy and marshy. There were basically no good spots to set up a tent, and some of the flat areas had already become marmot and deer poop spots. (Like, sooo much marmot and deer poop).

We walked as far as we could along the south shore of the lake, but got to a point where the trail was cut off by a fast-moving creek that was a little too wide to cross.

We eventually found a very small clearing at the junction of the Ediza and Iceberg lake trails and pitched up there. The ground was a little wet, but not too bad, and there was no visible poop. It was also right next to a fast-moving stream, which made it very convenient to get water.

We met a pair of hikers hoping to camp at Iceberg Lake and later saw that they decided to set up at Ediza instead. Probably a good decision, because the trail going up to Iceberg was also cut off by a big creek, and it looked completely iced out further up the trail too.

My original goal was to take a dip at each of the lakes we'd be passing, but I chickened out at Ediza. If I was getting ravaged by mosquitoes with clothes on, I can't imagine what I'd look like after coming out of the water.

Instead, I washed my poor, pee-soaked undies from earlier in the day and changed into clean ones. If there's one thing I never skimp on while camping, it's undies and socks. I always bring two days' extra just in case. D came up with the genius idea of using our empty Liquid I.V. bag as a sort of wash bucket. It was absolutely brilliant because the bag is thick, it can stand up on its own, and you can also zip it up and pack it down real easy when you're done. We had a little bottle of Dr. Bronner's that we always bring to wash cooking gear and it was perfect for washing my dirty laundry.

The snowmelt and running water also made it really difficult to follow LNT (Leave No Trace) principles precisely. You're supposed to be at least 200 feet from a water source when it comes to disposing of dirty water or using the bathroom. (If you're unfamiliar with LNT principles, I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with them on the National Park Services' webpage before heading out on your next outdoor trip). I hiked all around the lake, maybe a quarter-mile up the rocky slopes and to the snowline, but there were little streams no matter where you went. We always put in the effort to do our best though!

Dinner was a "pad thai" from Backpacker's Pantry, which I probably won't get again. All of us climbed onto the big boulder next to our campsite to eat our rehydrated meals and watched the sun set perfectly nestled in the saddle between Mt. Ritter and Banner Peak.

As the light slowly started to fade, I suddenly a pang and rumble in my tummy. Noooooooo! Honestly didn't think I'd need to poop so early in the trip, but what can you do? Nature calls.

I took out my little shovel, put my headlamp on, grabbed my TP and plastic baggy for trash, and started bushwhacking towards a spot. Y'all there was so little coverage at Ediza. The bushes are too low and there aren't enough big boulders to hide behind. I had to go so far to find a spot and I couldn't be sure if people camped higher up from the lake could see me when I stood up straight.

It was a horrifying experience because of the swarms mosquitoes swirling around the exposed parts of me. I tried so hard to relax to do my business, but I couldn't!! I was feeling them land and bite in those most intimate and sacred of body parts. It was way too fucking stressful. I spent 10 minutes digging that hole and I ultimately had to abandon it and the mission altogether. I could only hope that I'd be able to sleep through the night and hold the business until the next morning.

I also realized that I was spotting. My fresh undies -- which I literally changed into two hours before -- now had blood on them. 'Cause fuck me for having a vagina.

I trudged back to camp, still uncomfortable from the bloating and the questionable rumblies, cleaned myself up as best as I could, and went to bed eagerly waiting for a new day.

Next up

You can read the next leg of the adventure in Day 2: Garnet and Thousand Island Lakes.