Field Note 015 — When the Trip Falls Apart
The plan was simple enough.
Five days at Leavitt Lake over Memorial Day weekend. The 4Runner was loaded with the yurt, hot stove, fishing gear, folding kayak, inflatable kayak, food, camp gear, and enough supplies to stay put for a while. I had already tried to make it to Leavitt twice before and failed both times, so this was supposed to be the trip where it finally happened.
We left after work and drove through the night. A fire around Mono had changed the route, forcing us west and over Sonora Pass instead of taking the easier eastern approach. By the time we were climbing into the mountains, we were exhausted. Sonora Pass in the dark while sleep-deprived was not particularly fun, but we had checked everything we could beforehand. Weather looked workable. Roads looked open. Nothing we had found suggested there was a problem.
Then we got to the road for Leavitt Lake.
Gate closed.
There was no giant warning sign explaining why. No obvious information telling us what we had missed. Just a closed gate sitting between us and the trip we had spent months talking about.
My lady had done a bunch of the research before we left, and the closure hit her hard. We were both exhausted, but she was taking it personally, like somehow the trip had fallen apart because she had missed something. Nothing she had found said the road would be closed, but when you are running on almost no sleep and staring at a locked gate after driving more than eight hours, logic does not always get the first vote.
I kept telling her the same thing in different ways. We were already there. The truck was loaded. We had everything we needed to camp. One closed road was not taking the whole trip from us.
The plan could fail. The trip didn’t have to.
The First Pivot
We headed back down toward Bridgeport, which naturally was having a power outage. No coffee. No food. Gas was a problem. Exactly what you want after driving through the night and having your destination disappear before breakfast.
So we kept moving north toward Topaz Lake. Somewhere along the way we found a tiny gas station that looked like the kind of place you stop because you have to, not because you expect anything good to happen there. We got gas and discovered they had homemade breakfast burritos.
They were excellent.
While we were heading toward Topaz, my lady finally found the answer buried on the Nevada-based Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest information.
Snow.
The vehicle road to Leavitt was closed because of snow.
That would have been useful information several hours earlier.
Topaz did not solve much either. The campsites we found were mostly RV-oriented, and while neither of us had enough energy left to be especially picky, it still was not what we wanted. We had planned on being off-grid, tucked away somewhere in the mountains, not lined up next to motorhomes.
So we doubled back again and eventually landed at Chris Flat Campground. I am not much of a campground person, and neither of us had planned on spending the trip in one. By that point, though, preference had lost the argument to exhaustion. We set up camp and knocked out in the middle of the day.
When we woke up, the world was considerably less offensive. We had some drinks, did some fishing, and started accepting that maybe the trip was just going to be weird.
Then my original Ronco Pocket Fisherman exploded in my lady’s hands.
A loss was suffered.
Leavitt Was Still Up There
The next morning, Leavitt was still sitting up there. The road was closed, but nothing said we could not hike it.
So we found a place off the road not too far from the trailhead, set up another camp, threw some basic gear into the 4Runner, and drove back up. We grabbed fishing gear, water gear, pistols, and light clothing.
There was no snow at the trailhead.
That detail matters.
My lady was in hiking shoes. I was wearing western boots. We were dressed for a mountain hike, not a snow slog, because standing at the trailhead there was no obvious reason to expect what we were about to walk into.
The trail to Leavitt crosses two rivers. Not little trickles. Actual rivers. At the trail they were probably eight to ten feet across, rocky, full of logs, and deep enough that walking straight through would have put the water somewhere around hip height on me. I am six feet tall.
On the way up, we took our time. We hiked a little upstream, found rocks and logs, and leapfrogged across where we could keep the soaking to a minimum.
Then we started gaining elevation.
At first the snow was manageable. Patches here and there. Sections you could work around. Then it became something else entirely.
Eventually we were moving through more than two feet of hardpacked snow in places. Roughly a third of the hike ended up being snow travel, and neither of us was equipped for it.
Somewhere past the second river, probably around sixty percent of the way to the lake, I stepped wrong. My right leg wrenched hard enough that both of us heard my ankle pop.
Not felt. Heard.
I got up, took maybe ten feet, and went down again. It hurt badly enough that stopping would have been completely reasonable. Probably smarter, too.
I did not stop.
After two failed attempts to reach Leavitt, I was close enough that stubbornness had taken over. I pushed it off and kept us moving. Not long after that, my lady went down and twisted her knee.
Now both of us were hurt.
We were hours into a climb, crossing rivers, moving through snow we had not expected, wearing the wrong footwear for the conditions, and still going uphill.
There is a difference between persistence and good judgment. That day, the line got blurry.
I Did It
Eventually the trees opened up and there it was.
Leavitt Lake.
Frozen solid.
Of course it was.
After three attempts, I had finally made it. I remember looking across that frozen lake and having one clear thought.
I did it.
That feeling lasted maybe a few seconds before the next thought took over.
Let’s get her back to safety.
We pumped water, ate something, took a little time to recover, and looked around. Then we turned around. There was no reason to linger. The objective had been met. Now we had to undo every mile we had just climbed.
The descent was easier on the lungs and worse on everything else. At one point we heard movement off the trail to our left. Smaller trees and branches started swaying, and I caught flashes of something moving through the brush.
My lady had taken her pistol off earlier because it was bothering her, so by then I had both pistols on me. I told her to move straight down the trail, move fast, do not wait for me, and stop looking back.
I unholstered the .44 and stayed behind long enough to figure out what was moving beside us. I caught another glimpse and saw the back end of a bear moving through the trees. I made some noise and held my ground.
The bear had absolutely no interest in dealing with me.
Good. That made two of us.
It kept moving through the brush while I watched long enough to make sure it was not coming toward us. My lady looked back more than once, clearly concerned, and I kept telling her the same thing: stop looking back and keep moving.
Eventually the movement faded off and I caught up with her. We kept the pace up until we were below the snow and past the first river crossing.
By the final river, staying dry was no longer part of the mission. We had just moved away from a bear, our knees and ankles hurt, we were below the snow, and camp was downhill.
We crossed the damn river.
Back at camp, we made dinner, poured drinks, and sat down. Technically, we had succeeded. We had reached Leavitt.
It just looked nothing like the success I had imagined.
Stop Trying to Save the Original Trip
The next morning, we packed up again.
At that point, the original idea of spending the whole trip at Leavitt was dead, and I think that finally helped. Instead of trying to rescue the itinerary, we started looking for somewhere else to be.
The new plan was simple: find water, find a decent place to camp, and see what happened.
We checked areas around Bridgeport, followed roads, followed trails, hit dead ends, turned around, and tried again. Hours went by without anything really clicking.
Eventually we regrouped and looked at the map.
Twin Lakes.
Whatever the hell that was, it could not be worse.
So we went.
The first part of Twin Lakes we found was much more developed than what we usually look for. There was a dock, campsites, cabins, a restaurant, people, and enough tourist infrastructure that under normal circumstances I probably would have kept driving.
But we were hungry.
Restaurant won.
We ate, got on the Wi-Fi, and started looking around for camping. Lower Twin Lakes Campground showed first-come, first-served availability.
Maybe.
Long shot.
Screw it.
We drove over.
One site was open.
Ours.
The Place We Weren’t Supposed to Find
That was probably the point where the trip started changing.
Twin Lakes was just cool. Not dramatic. Not some giant revelation. Just one of those little mountain places that feels tucked away from everything else.
The campground had a river running straight through it. The lake was seconds away. People were fly-fishing the river. There were cabins scattered around the area, a dock, a tiny general store, and a little grill tucked into the back of it. Calling it a bar would be generous, but they served alcohol, so close enough.
It was small, quiet, and comfortable without feeling overbuilt.
We started meeting people. One of them was an older veteran who had gone through a divorce and was now living, willingly, out of his camper with his two dogs. He loved it. Super cool guy.
We cooked steaks, got pizza from the little general store, had drinks, and watched people fish. I bought my lady a sweater.
I also definitely did not back into some old man’s vehicle that was somehow parked behind me at a forty-five-degree angle where I could not see it.
Definitely not.
Twin Lakes also gave us something neither of us expected.
It was my lady’s first time kayaking.
She is not a boat person. She is definitely not a deep-water person.
We had the Challenger K1 inflatable with us and my Tucktec. At the launch, she was nervous and kept asking what she was supposed to do. I basically told her not to worry about it.
Get out there. You will figure it out.
Then I pushed her away from shore.
I turned around, grabbed my Tucktec, dragged it down to the water, and started getting myself ready. When I looked back, she was maybe thirty feet offshore just staring at me with an ear-to-ear grin.
That was enough.
I launched and paddled out to her, then decided I needed to actually paddle for a while. Twin Lakes looked smaller from shore than it felt once you were on it, so I put my head down and crossed toward the far side.
Eventually I turned around and went looking for her. When I found her, the paddle was laying across her lap. She was leaned back in the kayak, smiling, doing absolutely nothing.
Just floating there and enjoying the quiet.
Before the gear from that trip was completely put away, I had ordered her a Tucktec of her own.
The Trout
We still were not catching any fish.
The camp host noticed.
She was from Idyllwild, which is local-ish to us, and at some point she offered to catch us one.
Sure. Why not.
She disappeared in her golf cart and came back about ten minutes later with a trout that was still breathing.
Damnit.
So now I had a fish to clean.
That trout became dinner, and the whole thing became one more piece of a trip that had stopped resembling anything we had planned.
This Trip Had Not Failed
By the second night at Twin Lakes, we finally slowed down.
The first few days had been a fever dream of movement: drive, detour, closed road, blackout, different campground, move camp, hike Leavitt, snow, injuries, bear, move again, dead ends, more driving, another campsite.
We had spent days reacting to whatever happened next.
At Twin Lakes, for the first time, there was nothing urgent to solve. The weather had been cool and generally good, with patchy clouds rolling through now and then. The river was moving beside camp. The lake was right there. We had food, drinks, people we had met, and nowhere we had to be.
That was when we finally had enough space to look backward at what had actually happened.
We had done a ridiculous amount in four days.
This trip had not failed.
It just wasn’t the trip we thought we were taking.
That realization changed the rest of it.
Instead of trying to salvage anything, we started exploring.
When it was time to leave Twin Lakes, we packed up and spent the day poking around the greater Bridgeport area. We looked at land. Drove around Mono. Saw the remains of a horrible crash over a ledge.
Eventually we realized we still had fuel, daylight, and nowhere we needed to be immediately.
So we went looking for an old mining town.
That is how we ended up in Bodie.
Bodie
Bodie is weird in the best possible way. Old buildings. Mining equipment. Church. Houses. Rusted machinery. A whole town sitting out in the high desert looking like everyone left and forgot to come back.
We wandered around for a while, looked at the history, took pictures, and generally enjoyed the fact that none of it had been part of the plan.
If you are anywhere near Bodie, it is worth the detour.
From there, we started heading home.
The fire around Mono no longer forced us back over Sonora Pass, so we could take the eastern route instead.
Which meant Bishop.
Which meant Erick Schat’s Bakkerÿ.
If you are ever in Bishop, go.
That is all.
When the Trip Falls Apart
By the time we finally made it home, we had not spent five days at Leavitt Lake. We had barely spent any time there at all.
But we knew Bridgeport. We knew Twin Lakes. My lady had discovered she loved kayaking. We had finally reached Leavitt after three attempts. We had crossed rivers, hiked through snow, found Bodie, met people, found places we wanted to return to, and learned a whole region we probably never would have explored if the original plan had worked perfectly.
We have already talked about going back to Twin Lakes. We still want to camp at Leavitt. We have even looked at land around Bridgeport since.
That is the thing I keep coming back to when I think about this trip. Preparation is not just what helps the plan succeed. It is what gives you options when the plan fails.
Because the 4Runner was loaded, because we had shelter, cooking gear, water capability, boats, food, and enough of a system to stay mobile, we could keep changing direction without the whole trip collapsing. Every time something stopped working, we still had another move available.
But there was another lesson buried in Leavitt.
Flexibility saved the trip. Stubbornness nearly made one part of it worse. Both things can be true.
There is value in pushing when something matters to you, but there is also value in recognizing when an objective has started costing more than it should. Sometimes turning around is not failure. Sometimes changing the destination is the thing that saves the trip.
And sometimes the place you were so determined to reach will still be sitting there when you are ready to try again.
Leavitt isn’t going anywhere.
— Dane Justus
Founder, Weekend Route
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