Grandaddy Lake Basin

The last week of July I met my Dad and older brother Micah to start off a 3 day backpacking trip. We have been planning this for awhile now and had a course with all of the lakes that I wanted to fish. Thursday, July 28th I met the guys early in the morning and we drove up the canyon towards the trailhead; however we did not quite make it. There was a big barrier closing the dirt road and right next to the barrier was a sign that read, Grandview Trailhead 6 miles. Well, after a lot of discussion, searching the map, and a few unsaid profanities, we threw our packs on and hiked up this dirt road to the trail head. Little did we know that the road up to the trailhead was uphill the whole way with an elevation change from just under 8000 ft to just over 10,000 ft in 6 miles. 4 hours later we finally hit the trailhead and I thought for sure my dad was going to die. At the trailhead we ate lunch and rested for an hour before we hit the trail again. From the trailhead to the first lake, which is granddaddy lake, is 4 mile with the first 3 up hill again and another 1000 ft elevation gain. After a very long day with 9 miles straight up and 1 mile back down to 10,000 ish elevation we finally found a place to call home for the next few days.

Now the story of this stupid deer in the picture above. This deer and 2 of his buddies, every late afternoon would come into OUR camp and circle us all night long. These guys were fearless and would not run off even though we yelled and even resorted to throwing rock on occasion, they just kept circling. As soon as night came and we went into our tent, they decided to walk right through our camp and would knock over everything they possibly could. It was extremely difficult to sleep with big animals circling you tent all night. One of them even knocked over my spinning rod and stepped on it breaking it in a few pieces. Darn good thing I kept my fly rod in its case!

Grandaddy Lake

Betsy Lake

We camped next to Betsy Lake which is real close to Grandaddy lake. Betsy lake has some nice Cutts in it but they were fairly stubborn on what they wanted to eat.

View of the Grandaddy Basin

Well, day two we woke up somewhat refreshed and headed out with day packs to hike in to a bunch of lakes. Over all we saw lakes: Grandaddy, betsy, lost, rainbow, govn dern, pine island, lily pad, fish hatchery, mohawk and a few others that were smaller and thus not named. Below are a few of my favorite lakes.

Lost Lake

Governor Dern Lake
Pine Island Lake
(this one had about 5-6 pine tree covered islands)

On this day trip we hiked a 10 mile loop, fished a few of the lakes and one sweet stream. The majority of the fish caught were brookies on a new cicada pattern that I have been testing out and having great success on some of the local higher lakes. Below, if you look closely, is actually dinner. Lake Betsy held some actually big fish that would sip midges every night. I coaxed a few up to sip one of my midges and a couple even ate my cicada.

Saturday morning we got up and put our packs back onto our sore shoulders and hiked the 10 miles out. It took us 7 hours to hike the 10 miles in, but with 9 miles downhill it took us 3 hours and 45 mins to hike out.