How to know a wild place
What does it mean to know a wild place? I’ve spent the months since the COVID-19 pandemic asking myself this question. As lockdowns intensified and were then lifted, I became familiar with and remained deeply interested in the places near me. I want to write about one such wild place, which I’ve come to know better in the past 18 months. The Desolation Wilderness, nearly 64,000 acres of stunning granite spread within the El Dorado National Forest and the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, so close, yet so far away from Sacramento. While the name must come from the imposing sheer or neatly rounded granite cliffs and boulders that abound in the area and particularly the Desolation Valley, the area covered by Lake Aloha presently, this wilderness is anything but desolate. In fact, Desolation is the heaviest used wilderness for its size, according to the National Forest Service, with numerous trails and trailheads facilitating access from the conspicuously close Bay Area and Sacramento. The convenience of this wild place notwithstanding, its beauty is what drew me first and has continued to draw me there. I’ve come to know Desolation in two distinct ways, first through the repeated climbing of one of its singular and easily accessible peaks — Mount Ralston; and second, through backpacking its more remote and less frequented trails. As the Caldor Fire threatens my beloved wild place as of this writing, I feel like penning it a love letter.
Ralston Fridays become Weekly Ralstons
In early June 2020 I had the idea of climbing Mount Ralston, a prominent peak on the southern border of the Desolation Wilderness, every single summer Friday. My Strava followers called me crazy and obsessed, following my weekly track up and down the steep trail nevertheless (the crazy and obsessed are popular on Strava). To be clear, while convenient, Mount Ralston isn’t an easy trek. The summit sits nearly 3,000 feet above Hwy 50 and is reached via a steep, eroded, well-worn trail. Few use this route to access Desolation for longer journeys as Echo Lakes is a much more welcoming start. So, the folks who go up Ralston, usually do so for the magnificent view from the peak; as my partner says, the best view around Tahoe, and a solid workout.
But do I go there for the workout? Perhaps, but mostly no, I don’t think so. I wasn’t there out of boredom either, although that would have been a legitimate excuse in the wake of COVID lockdowns. I miss easy and daily mountain access and a weekly dedication to make it to a mountain trailhead has been inspiring. I no longer live 20 minutes from legitimate peaks and in the summer our local foothill trails are hot and dusty, not conducive to a happy frolic in my book. So, I committed to travel for over an hour one way, to the base of a mountain, and climb it once a week, no matter what. This lead to Weekly Ralstons, because Fridays alone quickly became impossible. If I knew that I won’t be around due to a long weekend or lengthy faculty meetings, I’d fit in a climb any time during the week, early, late, in the middle of the day, as long as it happened.
During the summer weeks of 2020, and the 2021 continuation of the tradition, I’ve come to know Mount Ralston. I know every switchback (there aren’t many), every prominent root, every rock poking out to trip me. I know the plants along the path: when they leaf and when they bloom, and when they dry out. I am accustomed to the throaty call of the male sooty grouse in mid-summer and of the wind whispering through the pines. I am quite familiar with the occasional gun shots produced by what I imagine are local cabin owners (along Hwy 50 at the bottom of the mountain) who’ve made their backyard into a shooting range. To each their own. During the big city exodus in the summer of 2020, I was angered to find the biggest boulders along the trail tagged by an irresponsible trail user. I contemplated removing strategies and regret to inform you that I lack the craftiness and get up and go to have removed the paint off the rock. I see now, a year later, that it has faded, either due to removal attempts or the elements. I have finally figured out the easiest way through the scree maze guarding the very top, although I still lose it on the way down and end up having to jump off a big boulder at the bottom. I really don’t mind. I have named the chipmunks hungering for a snack at the top; they are Chip and Dale, of course, and they are brazen little critters. They like to play with butterflies early in the summer while the snow barely lingers. The summit belongs to Chip and Dale, it’s their home; I just visit every so often.
Past the scree, I’ve come to know my way back to the car, flying among the flowers and stunted pines at the saddle; it is perhaps a point in my weekly journey I savor the most — freshly relieved from making the summit one more time, sweaty and cooling off, ready to scream down the mountain that took an hour and 20 minutes to climb. If I see people on the trail, I revel in quietly knowing Ralston as “my mountain,” but responding to inquisitive trekkers that “I’ve been up here a few times before.” Nobody needs to know about our relationship. I scream down the worn out, sandy and slippery sections, briefly considering how torturous they are to climb up; how every breath hurts, hot and moist, how my quads cry, and how every single time it feels like I am dying. On the way down, the rare turns of the trail are perhaps most perceptible and so are the random steps I jump off as I go. You better watch where you are going here, so I rarely notice much but the path and my own elation that I am doing this, right now, for one more time.
Once I hit the final stretch of trail, the switchbackiest of the entire route, through a clear, tall pine forest, shady and cool, I am acutely aware of the power of forests. Being here makes me feel content in a way nothing else does. The accomplishment of tagging yet another Ralston, as meaningless as it might be to anyone following on Strava, is only a tad more meaningful to me. Being here, experiencing this place with all of my senses, is everything. Doing so repetitively, every week, makes me feel like I belong to it, which in turn makes me want to preserve this little slice of happiness, forever. Any attack on it, by human or nature, feels deeply personal. From tagging the rock in red paint to wildfire scouring these slopes, my soul is tattered along the 3,000 feet to the top.
At the tail end of this summer, I can’t go to Mount Ralston anymore. Just like last year, the National Forests in Northern California closed to visitors due to extreme fire danger. Today, Ralston’s trees, plants, rocks, chipmunks and sooty grouse are threatened by the Caldor Fire, which burns through the El Dorado National Forest and is already on the outskirts of the Desolation Wilderness. Earlier this year, I volunteered for the Forest Service and planted baby native pines in an old burn scar, not too far from my favorite peak. The forecast that day was for a stormy and cold evening. We hurried to plant the saplings in hopes that this final storm for the winter season would give them a decent chance of survival. Earlier this week, I watched satellite images of the Caldor Fire burning right through our planting area. My heart broke and I cried. This is what it means to know a place.
Backpacking: Is it worth it if you can drive home for the night?
I used to have a rule about backpacking: It isn’t worth it if I can drive home for the night. I rescinded this rule after moving out of the Salt Lake Valley a few years ago and resettling in the Sacramento Valley. My decision was entirely influenced by the nearby Desolation Wilderness, so rugged, so beautiful, that its proximity didn’t matter. Desolation has come to feel like home; I know the place so well that I am no longer scared of it. Nevertheless, in endurance sports we have a saying, “Respect the distance,” and I am deeply respectful of the precariousness a wilderness holds. Still, I am not scared of it. I’ve roamed this granite so often now that I am finally able to feel at peace among it.
Although I’ve ventured on numerous day hikes and endurance runs in the Desolation Wilderness, it is the backpacking that has cultivated the deepest knowledge of this wild place. Between the summers of 2020 and 2021, I’ve crisscrossed Desolation from west to east and from east to west, and north to south and south to north. There are a few small spots where I haven’t been to yet, the busy northeast corner being the biggest of those. In 2020 I started my forays in the Wilderness from its western edges, off of Ice House Road and Wrights Lake Road, because they are closest to my home. In 2021 I traveled further to start from Echo Lakes (the Chalet at the end of the trail, coming back, is a huge incentive). I’ve slept on the shores of Rockbound Lake, 4Q Lakes, and Lake Aloha. I’ve traversed the snaking Rubicon River from its start in Clyde Lake to where it crosses the eponymous trail (and exits the wilderness) and I’ve swam in all of the above, plus Tamarack Lake, Lake of the Woods, and Fontanillis Lake. I’ve huffed and puffed my way up and down the Desolation’s passes: Rockbound Pass, Mosquito Pass, and Dick’s Pass. I’ve marveled at all of Desolation’s numerous lakes but a few. Coming back to these remote places and recognizing that I’ve been here before (and they look the same; or different) holds magic for me.
There is something quite special about carrying everything you need on your back too, especially in a place one keeps returning to. It is a tired metaphor, I know, but it holds descriptive power all the same. The adventures in the Desolation Wilderness have given new meaning to pretty much everything I do and feel while backpacking. Desolation has the best sunsets; alpenglow is real here, likely due to the stark granite foreground. The freeze-dried food tastes better (trust me, I’ve tried eating it on the regular), straight from the package of course, I carry only a spork. For the first time two weeks ago, after close to 100 cumulative nights spent backpacking around the USA, I slept in a tent without the fly. For two nights I was blanketed by stars, instead of a plastic privacy and weather cover. The forest is as private as it gets and there is no “weather” in the Sierra Nevada during the summer. Falling asleep to critter noises (or lack thereof) — mice, and birds, and lizards, and grouse, and marmots has always been a challenge for me, regardless of time spent on the trails or level of tiredness. Yet, the more I sleep in this other home I have made, the more I come to terms with the possibility that we are not meant to have a good night’s sleep in the wilderness — the place is by definition unsettling and our ancestors didn’t make it out alive by sleeping soundly. When morning comes, I wake up and make a hot black coffee in a tiny green cup I’ve been backpacking with for years, placing my stove on the expanse of granite and letting the sun warm me up. Then I pack up and walk among the rocks and trees and lakes and streams of this wild place I’ve come to know as my home away from home.
For volunteering opportunities with the El Dorado National Forest: https://www.fs.usda.gov/main/eldorado/workingtogether/volunteering
To donate to wildfire human and animal victims: https://www.californiawildfirerelief.org
