Yellowjacket Lake: Garbage and Bugs, Still a Lot of Fun

Yellowjacket Lake: Garbage and Bugs, Still a Lot of Fun

Here’s the 2018 edition of me getting off the grid, in the mountains in Idaho. This year in particular, I was looking forward to no Internet, no news, essentially no people.

There was the makings of a campfire story shortly after landing in Boise. I tossed my baggage claim ticket in the trash while I was waiting for my body bag, I mean army bag. You see, I put my backpack and hiking gear in a canvas army bag to protect the straps, etc. on my backpack. I also put my hiking boots in the bottom of the bag. This will be important later. After the last bag came off the conveyor belt, I realized I jinxed myself by tossing my baggage claim ticket. No body bag, I mean army bag. A Southwest agent starts collecting bags that haven’t been claimed yet. I ask if that’s all and she says yes. She asked if I have my claim ticket. I said, I had just tossed it as I thought I saw my bag on the conveyor belt.

As I’m carefully digging through the trash for my claim ticket, my buddy shows up and has the look of “dare I ask?”. He helps guard the trash from further additions while I explain to the agent that I can’t find my claim ticket even though it should be on the top of the trash heap. She said she could look it up so we stop digging. They file a lost-baggage claim and off we go. We decide that we could probably get by if we car-camp instead of backpack. The only problem is that I can’t even day-hike without my hiking boots. I need ankle support. So off we go to Sierra Trading Post for boots.

A lot of the cheaper boots weren’t in my size. BTW, I was looking forward to trying my new (but broken-in) La Sportiva Nucleo High GTX boots. They are super lightweight but still supportive (there’s a picture of them next to my new titanium Snowpeak mug). Anyway, we find a pair of Asolo GTX boots in my size. I forgot my Carhartt cargo pants so we needed to go to REI to get hiking pants. I needed to get more camping food and GU (energy gel) as well. The trip to REI was planned but I realized I needed boots after we left. However, about 30 minutes after buying replacement boots, Southwest calls and says my bag is at the airport. Most likely it got left on the plane (continuing on to Orange County, CA) and the bag was rerouted to Boise. The new tag on the bag showed a stopover in Denver.

Now we are relieved no gear was lost but we decide to stick with the car-camping plan. Yellowjacket Lake is about 5 hours northeast of Boise near the Bighorn Crags, in the Salmon National Forest. It’s about 8,000 ft (~2,400 m) above sea-level. I wasn’t the only one who forgot gear. One person forgot a sleeping bag. Car-camping meant he could sleep in the truck. Not very comfortable but at least it was warm. Another guy grabbed a second tent instead of his cot.

Critters

We saw two sheep, maybe they were goats, along the side of the road on the way to the campsite. Alas, no bighorn sheep were seen (well except for the stuffed one in the restaurant, after camping). We did run into (not literally) a bunch of cows blocking the road, complete with cowboys, a cowgirl, and border collies. When we first arrived, there were a ton of mosquitoes and horse flies. At least 3 of us got big welts from a horse fly bite. The mosquitoes were annoying even after putting on bug repellent. The second and third day weren’t as bad. Maybe we smelled too bad for the mosquitoes. On the last morning at Yellowjacket Lake, I heard heavy breathing not far away, like a big elk or something. Sorry no Big Foot. We did hear buzzing a lot in the mornings so maybe that’s why it’s called Yellowjacket Lake. On the third day, we had decided to move to Beaver Creek for the night. Sophie, a yellow lab from the neighboring site, came to visit us a few times. We also saw a bat but my photo isn’t that clear.

Traffic

On the way up to Yellowjacket Lake, there was a long section of dirt road that was very difficult to pass cars. An old guy, who looked like Santa Claus, was in a big yellow Dodge truck coming down the mountain. He was fishing and broke his reel. He said the mosquitoes were bad where he was at. We found that to be true where we were camping. We bumped into the same guy on our way down the mountain. We had ham radios (there were 3 cars in our group) so we could warn each other when another vehicle was approaching. There were a group of 3 motorcycles at one point. The first guy was a jerk because he made no effort to communicate or acknowledge that we knew he was going to pass us from behind. The other two guys with him were a lot better. On the way out, we came across ten 4-wheeler/ATVs (some were Polaris RZRs and some were just quads). The first guy slowed down and told us that there were 9 total. The 7th guy said there were two more but showed 3 fingers. The next guy said there were two more and showed 2 fingers. Math is hard.

We stopped by hot springs near Pine Flat on the way home. There were too many people so we just dipped our feet in the freezing river (south fork of the Payette River). Most of the photos are from my new Sony a5100 camera. The night-mode photos are from my buddy’s a6000. The slow motion videos are from my Sony Xperia cell phone. BTW, while deciding whether or not to keep the Asolo boots, I noticed they were wide. So we returned them.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Peb2nFQ9RpsxXuG8A