Rourke's Random Musings

Jen and I were poking around looking at maps of the Desolation Wilderness in the REI in Berkeley on Sunday and identified this as a potential two day shuttle backpack. While procrastinating, I used Topo! to plot the route and see how long it would be and just how bad the elevation profile looked.

The route looks really nice. Not only does it pass lake after lake on the way south, but it also climbs almost to the top of Phipps Peak and then desceds through Philips Pass. This definately looks to be worth doing.

Day One is just under eight miles with 2150 feet of elevation gain and just about no loss.

Day Two is just over 8.5 miles with 1500 feet of elevation gain and just over 3000 feet of elevation loss.

While this is certainly doable, it’s not an easy two day backpack. With the added weight, this is a tough backpack and it will certainly be hard on the knees coming down the second day. The map to the right is clickable — the larger version shows good detail for the route. Underneath the map you should see the elevation profiles for both days. I’ve also made these clickable, as they’re rather hard to read in blog-size.

Rubicon Lake looks like an excellent spot to spend the night. The pictures I’ve seen are beautiful, and most people will not come this far in on a short backpacking trip.

Now I just need to get into shape so I can actually manage this.

By “shuttle backpack” I mean that you would need two cars: the first car is parked at Bayview and everyone piles into the second car, which you then park at Meek’s Bay. At the end of the trip everyone piles into the car parked at Bayview and you drive back up to Meek’s Bay.