The Outdoor Bloggers Hike to Brookie Heaven

The Outdoor Blogger Ho Down continued Saturday with a hike I cleverly selected because it would take me to some alpine lakes I’d never seen before. To whit:

If you don’t want to fish here, better check your pulse.

What amounted to a seven-mile (round trip hike) lead us along a spectacular ridgetop trail and down to this small lake, complete with steep, rocky cliffs on one end.

These alpine lakes are jewels, and Wally the Wonderdog even spotted a dead brook trout in the shallow water, confirming what I’d guessed about the resident trout population.

The question now is this: will I make it back (float tube stuffed in my pack) before the cold weather kills the fishing?

Stay tuned.

Outdoor Bloggers are Outdoor People

A pride of Bloggers (note the handsome guy holding the dog). L&T Nancy photo

As I write this, the outdoor bloggers attending the First Annual Ho Down are dragging their butts around Mt. Shasta – a worthy endeavor even considering the absence of trout.

Still, with the last couple weeks winking by so quickly that the L&T Nancy and I seem to have barely had the chance to say hello, I opted to stay home and experience wedded bliss at the household level.

Marvey stuff.

Still, the bloggers were an interesting bunch, and yesterday’s hike confirmed that none were of the “Internet Expert” variety.

Indeed, though most don’t fish (tragically), they were knowledgeable and obviously love being in the outdoors, and to experience their mixed perspectives cast some interesting new light on my corner of the outdoors, which I tend to view pretty exclusively through the lens of fly fishing.

Cool stuff. More on this thinking in an upcoming post.

For now, I leave you with a photographic moment of “alpine lake in the fall” zen. (Note the rise ring in the middle.)

See you at an alpine brookie lake near you, Tom Chandler

[tags]blogging, alpine, hiking, shasta[/tags]