The All-Dessert Dinner: Twenty Lakes Basin 2008 and 2018

Did we only get this far? I pause, unsure, reaching my mind back, casting about for some vestige of familiarity. It's a sunny, brilliant Sierra day in September, and I have set out to explore the Twenty Lakes Basin area just east of Yosemite. As I stride along the trail, it occurs to me that 10 years have passed since my last trip. Our last trip. 

"You've got the tent, right?", I asked Alistair. "No, I thought you had it", he replied. "No, I thought you packed it". We had reached the site of our first night out on our very first family backpacking trip. With Tenaya, age 7, and Tara, age 4 1/2, we had embarked on this pint-sized adventure at the tail end of a Yosemite camping trip. We had caught the boat taxi down Saddlebag Lake, and hiked into to one of the area's many lakes, this one a little off-trail, perhaps a mile and a half all told. "Hiked" was putting it strongly; it had taken us a good two hours, countless chocolate bribes, several multi-chapter made-up-on-the-fly stories, and much wheedling. Tara had carried her ladybug sleeping bag and Tenaya, a small pack of clothes; Alistair and I were laden like packhorses with the rest of the gear. But we had finally made it to a perfect slice of alpine paradise, a campsite on a grassy bench sitting above a gorgeous cliff-ringed lake. Splendid isolation. 

On the trail. Tara is sporting her ladybug sleeping bag pack.

Alistair and the girls en route

A rest stop for chocolate. I think we had covered perhaps half a mile.

Today, I can't fathom where it was that we left the main trail to find that first campsite. Surely we made it further than this? It seemed like we were on the trail for a long time. The view of the sheer east face of North Peak looming to the west jogs memories, however. The high alpine setting, beginning at Saddlebag Lake at about 10,000 feet, is superb and I am every bit as charmed as a decade earlier.

Further along the trail in 2018 than we made it in 2008. Just as stunning!

In the parking lot before starting out, Alistair had left me with the kids to go in search of the park ranger rumoured to be getting breakfast at the resort back down the road, to secure the requisite wilderness permit. I had been throwing food and equipment into my pack sorting the backpacking gear from the camping gear, whilst trying to keep an eye on the girls. Several hours, a boat ride, and an admittedly torturous hike later, the realization dawned that the tent was unequivocally back in the car. "How do you feel about sleeping under the stars?" Alistair asked Tenaya and Tara hopefully. 

This trip, the boat taxi is defunct. It was run by the Saddlebag Lake Resort, which was pummeled by the exceptionally snowy winter of 2016-2017 and is now up for sale. I paddle the length of the lake in our new kayak to avoid the lengthy additional hike along the lake. Partway along, the wind picks up and the water becomes choppy. I fight to keep the kayak on course, shoulders aching, feeling uncertain in my paddling skills.

The new boat taxi after paddling down Saddelbag Lake

The tent would have to be retrieved. I drew the short straw.  I scampered and skipped back across to the trail and jogged down to the boat dock. Having no money for the boat taxi fare, I pled our predicament to the driver. An hour later, I puffed back up the hill carrying the precious shelter, the altitude burning my unacclimatized lungs.  The tent up, we whiled away the golden afternoon. Tenaya and Tara shucked off their shoes and played in the lake and stream, inevitably getting soaked.  They leaped joyously and raucously from rock to rock and inspected wildflowers at the height of their glorious bloom. Tenaya was a bundle of contradiction, of highs and lows wrapped up in stubbornness. Tara was the mellow one, clinging to me, sweet and sturdy, perceiving the world so differently from the rest of us. Alistair and I reveled in their innocence, their enthusiasm, their playfulness, their curiosity.

Getting wet....

Tara age 4 1/2

Tenaya (7) and Tara (4 1/2)  climbing on rocks.

A decade on, so much has changed. That innocence is long gone, eroded by the inevitable march of time.  Tenaya is still fiery and feisty, but now, as a near-adult, her stubbornness manifests as a passion in her beliefs and in a desire to change the world. Tara, taller than me now and entering high school,  is quietly independent and sails on through life with an understated competence. I think that I mostly embarrass her now.

So grown up - Tara (14) and Tenaya (17) on Convict Lake

At dinner time, we realized another error resulting from the parking lot chaos: chocolate mousse had been substituted for the girls' freeze-dried mac & cheese. There was only one thing for it - fed them a dinner of chocolate mousse followed by berry cheesecake and hot chocolate. It was to become a meal of legend in the family history!

Preparing the All Dessert Dinner

The trip would become known in family lore as The One Where We Forgot The Tent And Had An All-Dessert Dinner. The family backpacking trip became an annual event, each foray added to the family treasure chest of memories, labeled roughly:

• The one where the girls out-climbed other grownups on Mt Hoffman
• The one where Tara impaled herself on an ice ax 
• The one with the snake in the jacket and the lizard on Tenaya's head when she was swimming
• The one where we swam in a lily pond and Dad caught a frog
• The one where Tara sliced her foot open swimming and there was a giant thunderstorm
• The one when Tenaya had chocolate fudge brownies for her 13th birthday 
• The one where Tara slid down the snow on her raincoat and ruined it.  

After a final sugar-induced burst of energy as alpenglow ignited the ramparts of North Peak, Alistair and the girls shoe-horned into our two-person backpacking tent. I volunteered to bivy under the stars, somewhat removed from the protests and squabbles about knees and elbows emanating from within the thin fabric. As the stars came up, and sleep overtook small weary limbs, I crept somewhat sheepishly back to the tent and lay down right outside it. It wasn't a night to feel alone.

Sleeping arrangements

I manage to miss a turn off the trail and instead follow what turns out to be an old mining road to a vantage point above Steelhead Lake. In the distance, I think I can pick out where we had camped. But the moment is bittersweet.




In a perfect narrative, the stuff of outdoor magazines and online trip report featuring intrepid families, my daughters would be strong, keen, confident outdoors people, forging off on their own after a decade of family adventures in the backcountry, reveling in the freedom and the challenge and the beauty of exploring the mountains. Alistair and I would look on as proud and slightly doting parents. Of course, the truth is different. Teenage rebellion has squelched family backpacking trips. Feet have been firmly planted in resistance and any suggestion of a 'hike' or even a 'walk' meets with vigorous protest. Yet, I think these experiences have shaped them, guided them, molded them in some way. Tenaya is determined to explore the world, expand her horizons, seek her own adventures. Tara's calm facade belies underlying grit. On rare occasion, she will scramble around on high rocky peaks, a mountain goat like her father, and a there is a fleeting glimpse of that innocent, joyful child of 10 years ago. I reflect that they will each choose their own path in life and that it will likely be very different from the path I have chosen. But that is what they must do. And as I love them, I must let them go.  After all, the mountains will always be there, should they choose to return.