Trout Master of the Sierras!

Meysan Lake was the hardest hike I have ever done but as soon as we began pulling wild golden trout out of gorgeous Meysan Lake every thirty seconds I forgot about the switch backs in the hot summer sun. It’s funny how gorgeous (not to mention delicious) wild trout make you forget about the six-mile scramble practically all uphill on a trail that is barely a trail. As I held one red and pink speckled trout after another and admired their almost fluorescent red gills sparkling in the July sunshine I almost forgot that we had hiked almost 3,000 feet uphill to get to this pristine mountain lake. (And that was mostly without water BTW)
I have never caught so many fish, one after another ever in my life! It was absolutely unbelievable ! I never thought I would utter the words

“Fishing is easy” until Meysan Lake.

We didn’t even start fishing until the middle of the day as the hike took us three and a half hours to get to gorgeous Meysan Lake at just under 12,000 feet. There is a reason most people have never heard of this trail. It is extremely hard and one of the least traveled hikes in the sierras.

But the fish, oh lord the fish!

The hike scrambling at times on a trail that could barely be called a trail had so many shear drop offs and it had to be close to eighty degrees as we hiked all uphill in the hot summer sunshine. The whole time I was dreaming of those rainbow trout and cursing my boyfriends name if this was not the best fishing trip of our lives.

Don’t worry, it was!

The hike all uphill in the hot, hot July sunshine was hard but somehow I was surviving until I realized we had a major problem.

I realized about four miles in that my camelback had sprung a leak and I was down to half a liter of water.

Not good, not at all. I was willing to still try to summit and go into camel mode and save my remaining half a liter for the hike out. We had to be so close to Meysan Lake, the point of all these miserable switchbacks so I just kept going, plodding slowly uphill, placing one foot in front of an other.

My boyfriend actually offered to give me all his water and take his chances drinking the crystal clear stream water filtering down our of the mountains.

Giardia.

Now that is true love. Well, hopefully it does not come to that and the eastern sierras don’t give us butt soup as a souvenir.