| During the first week of June
1977, my companion and I rolled into the trailhead parking lot at Florence
Lake, in California's southern Sierra Nevada. The state was two years into
its worst drought in modern history, but on the peaks in the area there
was a light dusting of week-old snow. That is where we wanted to go.
Our destination was Evolution Valley, near the crest of the Sierra. But to get there we had to make a dusty and unexciting five-mile hike around Florence Lake to get to a junction of trails where the San Joaquin River enters the reservoir. Since the lake was so low, we decided instead to hike over its exposed bottom. We completed the shortcut by jumping across a narrow stretch, barely dunking our heels in the process. Smug at having cut several miles from our trip, we continued on to Colby Meadows, and spent the next few days basking in warm sunshine and enjoying mild, clear nights. We were both pretty tired when we reached our farthest campsite, near McClure Meadow. My companion opted to stay there and rest, while I took a solo hike to the end of Darwin Canyon. I wanted to climb Lamarck Col, but went to the wrong saddle. As I admired the view on the other side, hundreds of feet below, I realized that the massive cornice beneath my feet was not the safest place to stand. It was a great dayhike! The return trip a week later was hurried by a desire for hot showers and clean clothes, and we counted on repeating the convenient shortcut across Florence Lake. We descended a small cliff to the lake bed and walked around a narrow beach to a granite ridge leading to the middle of the lake. A third of a mile out, with fearful suspicion growing in our hearts, we looked over a ten-yard-wide expanse of ten-foot-deep water, right where we had passed a week earlier. We frantically looked for an alternative route as we realized that the lake was filling. Just then we heard the growl of an outboard motor. It was the operators of the Florence Lake Resort and Muir Trail Ranch, making their first excursion of the season, as the lake had been too shallow up to that time. They picked us up and explained that Southern California Edison, the utility that owns the reservoir, had closed its dam to catch the late-season precipitation. As the boat pulled into the far shore, we peered underwater, and felt quite a bit more fortunate (and intelligent) than the owners of the Pontiac Bonneville and Ford Pinto and Chevy Nova, all parked serenely on the bottom of the lake. Frank R. Farmer A shorter version of this story was printed in the June 1983 issue of Outside Magazine. |