First off I need to say thanks again for all the advice we got prior to the trip, it was immensely helpful.
My 11yr old son and I, live in Templeton (about a four hour drive from the south entrance), so we decided to come up Wednesday night and get the permit, and then get an early start on Thursday. OK, early for me… We got to the Hill’s Studio Permit Office about 4:30p and then we checked out the Ostrander TH, then backtracked a mile to the Bridalveil Campground and set up camp. Now, I remember why I shy away from car campgrounds… It was nice enough, but not exactly a LNT environment.
We got to the Ostrander TH around 7:30, and with the exception of a couple of large horse trailers , it was nearly empty. We got on the trail around 8:00a headed toward Ostrander Lake, and had a pretty easy hike for the first few miles, seeing no one else on the trail. The elevation changes, and the air quality started to get to me around the 4 mile mark. That last section is a tough one. We did finally see who left the trailers at the TH, coming down one of the steepest sections we ran across three teams of mules be led by horses. For the most part they seem to be loaded down with tools, etc., but one mule had a 250 plastic water tank strapped on top… At the time it was empty, but I was stunned thinking about how heavy that would have been, even partially filled, on the way up. Anyone know what they would be doing? Survey team? Trail maintenance?
We arrived at the lake just after noon, and found a place on the north east side of the lake. I wanted a nap, but Jake wanted to fish, so after cleaning up, we set out to the west side with rods in hand. This was Jakes first chance to fish, and so I brought both fly and spin rods (he has played with the fly rod in casting on our driveway, and is not too bad, but the trees at the lake are so close to the edge, well, it’s not beginners material). So I strung him up and gave him some power bait and let him go. He had a fish on in 20 minutes, and he named it Fred (a cute 12” brookie)… we put Fred on a stringer for later, and he kept on fishing (he decided C&R after Fred, but he did keep naming them). We had instant mash potatoes and Fred for dinner, yum.
We had talked about hiking Horse Ridge on Friday, but Jake was having too much fun fishing, and asked to just hang out at the lake. I was good with that, and even got a short swim in, later in the day… though the water was a bit chilly for me. He caught about seven fish over the two days. Later when the wind picked up we moved camp to a site on the east side, up in the rocks – with a real flat tent area, and a big slab of granite Jake named the “lounge chair”. We had a great evening talking and stargazing.
Saturday morning we packed up and headed out about 9a, and had a great hike downhill. The air was also much clearer on Saturday (you could see down into the valley from spots on the trail that we could not see anything from on Thursday. We met a lot of weekender traffic coming in as we were leaving, but still made great time on the trail, reaching the trailhead by 11:30a. Jake said it was the best backpacking trip ever.