Re: High country creeks

It seems this is shaping up to be a fairly dry winter. Do any of you know how reliable creeks are in drier conditions? We don't want to carry full water bottles, ideally just fill as needed. Our hike seems like it won't ever be too far from water sources....mainly wondering about the echo creek drainage/cathedral fork area to Merced lake. I know it's early, but if it stays mostly dry all spring what might I expect in mid June?

I like to have my water bottle half full.


Mid June... you'll be fine...

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Thanks, trying to be as light as possible, just wanted some reassurance. High hopes for this trip, as it was delayed from last summer!

You might have some further info...I'm only looking at topo maps and google earth, and going by other trip reports I've found to look at options for our route from near sunrise lakes to merced lake... Do you know if it's doable (reasonable) to go off trail from the cathedral fork/echo creek junction and cut XC over to babcock lake, then follolw fletcher creek to Lewis creek, then on to Merced lake?

Ok.

So you're taking the trail to the Cath Fork/Echo Creek confluence?

It COULD snow enough between now and then that you would want to use the footbridge.

Have you done the trail to Echo Valley?

Why do you want to go to Babcock? That way?

Maybe draw your route on a map and post it and then I can comment.

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I will post the route entirely, my thinking is if we followed echo creek all the way to Clark Canyon we'd then have to go back east to Merced lake...,just considering a different approach, that may have different views of some peaks in the far eastern edges of the park. I haven't hiked this specific area yet. Only hikes north of 120 and and the valley, north rim, parts of Tenaya canyon (been in both very dry and very wet years).

Well... you're going to go either east to Merced Lake or west to Merced Lake...
Unless you come straight down from 9890 (I've considered this... but haven't done it yet)
(have done from there to Babcock ... and up from Echo Valley to 7891)
Anywho... from confluence is up 1600 ft... which you may or may not regret ... slash
question your sanity...
The Echo Creek trail is pretty nice. It's part of the High Sierra Camps loop...
so it's nice. I've said this many times... since you haven't done the trail... then
I'd recommend doing the trail...
Even I usually mostly almost entirely more or less sorta kinda do the trail if I've
never been in the area before. More or less. Kinda.
Why not just do the loop? Down to Echo Valley and then back up to Fletcher.
In a normal year getting over Fletcher (and Echo) would be interesting in
June. Who knows... you may hit it "right" and it be "fun".
It's a great area with loads of domes.
Have fun

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Maybe this works.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/tpwGy2XSqOK4xtml1

Even so... It's all good baby... and the trail is pretty nice too

(even link doesn't work.. you can blame google ... it's in Picasa... )
(there's a crappy TR I wrote back then with link... that no longer works)

Anywho... if no worky... u can let me know ...

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/2018 04:25PM by chick-on.

Wonderful photos..We will certainly see some of those exact sites. Our route is going to be from the cathedral head to Budd creek and Budd Lake, then cut around Cathedral peak to upper cathedral lake before going through Cathedral pass to the cathedral fork creek to Echo and Mathes lakes (spending a night beneath Mathes Crest). From there, we will follow the outflowing creek from Mathes lake back to the main cathedral fork and follow it south to it's confluence with echo creek, and on to clark canyon and eventually Merced lake. Our 3rd day will simply follow the Merced all the way to Happy Isles. I think I can see now that the idea of going over to Emeric/Babcock from echo creek is a bit more climbing than we'll want to tackle, maybe if we started from Rafferty creek initially, but that's a different trip altogether.

It's doable. Your best bet thought is to head up to Emeric lake from the confluence, then down to Babcock. That's a lot less steep than the slopes above Babcock.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2018 05:11PM by balzaccom.

Yes, I see exactly where you mean now, that looks to be the only way that makes physical sense....we will see. May just be content to follow echo creek, it's a new area for us anyway. The idea of emeric and Babcock mainly came from discussions with my uncle about that area and his hikes from Ireland lake and Vogelsang, but that was probably out of Lyell canyon.