SEVILLE LAKE

         Although the memories of the Avalanche trips seem to mostly evoke people, as I write, the stories seem most easily evoked by campsites and the stretches of trail between. Like the reminiscences of Dylan Thomas, the memories seem to have neither order nor end. But the trail itself, the walking and the camping, had a definite sequence, setting down an order in my mind that I am bound to follow. Thus, the story of Avalanche must begin at Seville Lake.

       Seville Lake is a smallish glacial lake that sits about 9,200 feet approximately mid-way between Sequoia and Kings Canyon. It is in the Jennie Lakes Wilderness. The approach to Seville is a good one, as an access road brings you about 9 miles into the backcountry before any packing begins. It is a particularly good start point for taking novice hikers out, as there is a pack station about 2mi before the trail head. Though it is closed for the season by October, there is usually someone there. Thus it represents a handy fallback option in case something goes terribly wrong. Over the years, there were only two occasions when the pack station was utilized, once due to weather, another due to fire; yet I knew that, moving quickly on my own, I could reach it in half-a day from almost anywhere on the trip.

From a trailhead at over 8,000 feet, the hike into Seville is not a particularly rigorous one, except for the fact that, a) most hikers were new to the experience, b) most packs and boots were new, broken in on a short shake-down weekend near Ojai, but not entirely tested, c) lugging a week’s worth of food for 12, the packs were at the heaviest they would be, and finally, d) no one was yet acclimated to the altitude. All this is to say that the first day was often a slow one, filled with stops for pack adjustments and the doubts and trepidations that come with looking down the trail to 5 more days and 40 more miles. These initial misgivings were heightened by the fact that the rail rises rather aggressively for the first 2 miles to Rowell Meadow.

In the first years, Rowell Meadow was as far as we got on the first day and we considered ourselves lucky at that. Our early equipment was bad, as was our packing, so Rowell Meadow seemed just fine. The meadow also had the comfort of a “snow gauging cabin”, or so the sign said, which somehow helped to assuage the fear of being too far from civilization. I never saw the cabin open, nor did I ever determine what a snow gauging cabin was really for, but it did sit prettily on the edge of a large, but slowly disappearing meadow, surrounded by Lodgepole pines. And it had a nice fire pit. Our first year there, we saw a large black bear saunter across the open field, which gave us all a thrill and a few second thoughts. We hung the food particularly high that night, which was no small feat, given the massive quantities we had dragged along. The kids seemed to sleep very close together that night. I never saw a bear around there again.

Running on a small school budget, we could not afford to pack those freeze dried gourmet dishes that REI or Patagonia then offered. Additionally, we had not refined our pack menu, which began in early years as stupidly bulky and was refined each year until we had developed a remarkably tasty, sufficiently cheap, and surprisingly compact menu. The goal was to arrive at base camp with nothing but trash. If something remained at the end, that item was often deleted from the next-year’s menu. Of course, one had to gauge the appetites of the group, but no one ever went too hungry, even when some morally corrupt young hiker secretly delved into his pack to sample tidbits from the meal he was allotted to carry.

I am a little proud to recall that the Avalanche Pass trip never lost a meal to a bear, though not for lack of their efforts. We learned the art of hanging a food bag…actually several food bags…by the trusted counterbalancing technique. This consisted of tying a rock to a line and tossing it over the highest extended branch. A stuff sack full of food was then secured to the line and hoisted into the canopy above. But before hoisting it, a second line would be passed through the bag with both ends dangling loosely to the ground. A second bag of similar bulk was then attached to the first rope and, by grabbing both tag ends of the dangling rope, one could hoist both bags high into the tree. In order to get them down, an enterprising bear would have to grasp both of the rope ends simultaneously and pull…a notion that never occurred to even the most determined bear.

The only glitch to the counterbalance technique would come with the occasional loud crack, as 40 lbs of food would become more than a branch could bear:  limb and sacks would come plummeting out of the sky and we would run like hell as two stuff sacks of pasta, dried fruit, granola bars, cheese and salami cratered into the needles beneath the tree, followed by a large chunk of tree. While this only happened a couple of times, the memory stands firm as the realization of just how fast we could move after a day of backpacking. Thankfully, by the late ‘80s, the Forest Service, in a true act of service, dropped bear boxes at each campsite throughout our trek. Solid steel and resembling small coffins, it is astounding to imagine how these boxes were delivered, but they certainly made life easier and gave us one less thing to worry about.

Of course, there was the night in Lodgepole Camp when a bear accosted our box so enthusiastically and single-mindedly that we shuddered in our tents, taking quiet mental surveys as to whether any of us had left any scrap of nut or candy bar in our pockets, and woke in the morning to find the entire box, still bolted to a cement slab, standing on end. This same bear, completely frustrated and pissed off, went on to demolish a hatchback car near the man lodge, which I am certain earned him some sort of time-out with the local rangers.

The trail to Seville is mid-alpine, lined with mostly Lodgepole pines, clusters of red and white fir, and occasional Jeffrey and Ponderosa pines. As mentioned, the first leg of the trail rises abruptly in its climb to the meadow, affording some nice westward views and a beautiful moraine ridge, left behind when the glaciers ground their way through the area about a million years ago.  Once past the meadow, the trail veers sharply to the south and begins to gently climb up to a low pass, about 9,200 feet and then down the far side to meet the actual Seville Lake trail. By then, the hiker has descended about 1000 feet and has to regain that elevation on the last mile up to the lake. The sense that the Lake is near would cheer even the sourest packer and the last mile was usually walked in quiet anticipation. After we did the descend/ascend thing a few times, it occurred to us that we could head west from the pass and, staying on elevation, could hit Seville with less effort. Besides it was fun to go off trail and have people feel like we were really out there. The fact is that we discovered a packer’s shortcut that had occasional ducks and tree slashes that let us walk out of a dense wood right into the lake, to the appreciation and amazement of all. Except for one year.

When the Seville trail leaves Rowell, there is a fork in the trail. The right fork leads up the pass toward Seville, the left, over another pass to Comanche Meadow, not all together a bad place, just not the place that we were headed. Upon reaching the Seville pass, we waited for quite awhile for two Korean boys who somehow got behind us. As it got darker and colder, we decided that Lane would lead the group to the lake and I would head back to see what the problem was. I dropped my pack and took off at a jog back down the trail, expecting to find the boys at every turn. When I got all the way down to Rowell, I saw that their tracks had clearly headed up the wrong pass. Not only that, they were moving quickly, trying to catch up. I began to run along the trail after them, up the trail, over the pass, and down the other side. At Comanche Meadow there was a sign pointing up to Seville Lake and I could clearly see that they read it and headed in the right direction. Then I had to get my pack. I was pretty sure that I could probably go cross country and find my pack, but I chose to stick to the trail. I was running a lot in those days and felt reasonably fit, so back along the trail I jogged…back to Rowell, back up the pass, hitting my pack at half-past dark. At that point, I had covered about 17 miles that day, much of it at a run, and I made the dubious decision to take the shorter packer’s trail to the lake. It did not take me long to lose the trail in the dark and I spent the next two hours stumbling around in some pretty dense woods. These were not pleasant, strolling woods; it was forest, littered with fallen trees, bogs, rocks, and most irksome, false trails. By about nine, I had about had it. I came out on a sandy point, dropped my pack, unrolled my bag, and decided to reach the lake in the morning. I laid there on my gravel patch listening to the sounds of the forest around me. I must have dozed, but not for long. I woke to a bright moon rising over a rock pinnacle to the east. I recognized the rock. It was Ball Dome, an impressive monolith that sits about a mile to the east of Seville. I knew just where I was. As I lay there, a huge shadow passed above me, an owl, and landed on a branch to my left. As he perched and looked down to study me, the moon struck his eyes and they lit like two torches in the dark. As I lay there in my bag, all I could feel was gratitude. As the moon rose, the forest became like daylight, so stuffing my bag back in its sack, I shouldered my pack and had a very pleasant walk along the ridge and down (I had misjudged and gained too much elevation) to the Lake. Lane and a few kids were still hovered around a late fire and they were pretty pleased to see me. The Korean boys had hit camp about two hours before and were fast asleep, as was I before long, having put in nearly a twenty mile day of packing, running and scrambling and feeling blessed by an owl and a moon rise, as well as a little luck.

Seville is as pretty a little lake as there is in the Sierras. It sits at about 9,000 feet and is graced by a rock face hovering another few hundred feet on its south shoreline. The effect of arriving on the trail entering the north edge is one of splendor: a glassy, wooded lake, rings of rising trout, and a great east facing campsite that would easily accommodate a dozen packers. The reward for not stopping at Rowell for the first night was a layover day on Monday, time to relax, mend equipment, acclimate, explore, and devour some of the food we packed. Oh, yes, there was time to fish as well. There were several peripheral lakes in the area, Sheep Lake, Lost Lake, and they were full of brook trout. So my partner, Lane, would keep an eye on the kids and I would scoot off into the bushes for a free hour or two of catch and release heaven.

There was a huge fallen tree that ran across the camp and it made the perfect camp kitchen. We would set out our stoves and cook without bending and serve the masses in an assembly line along the old trunk. Spirits always rose on a layover day, which never passed without someone attempting to swim the lake, despite being warned that it is very cold indeed. Often a raft was crafted or perhaps one was found at the shore, left over from other adventurers. A huge rock on the north side always attracted the girls, who would strip as far as the situation would allow and sprawl on the rock to sunbathe while the boys did the raft thing or braved a scramble up the rock face across the water… conveniently situated so that the girls could marvel at the demonstration of their manhood. Only once or twice did I look up from my book to plead for the girls to please put their tops back on before I got arrested.

Of all the various lakes and camps that I came to know in the Sierras, Seville holds a special place in my heart, for its still beauty, of course, but also as a place where many a young packer first discovered the wonder, power, and serenity of the wilderness. From Seville, their attitudes changed. The group began to weave its identity, which would build the rest of the trip. It was the place where they sensed they could do it after all. And, it was familiar: a milestone in my year and in my life. It was a place where I could annually return and breathe in the passing of another year, like the trout, caught and released until next year.