I Didn't Go There

There was a red meadow at Spiller Lake, way up high above the canyon. I didn’t go there.

It was mid-July and Cameron and I were assigned to survey two lakes on the Northeast side of Yosemite National Park. Being the first official Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog work trip of the year, we were excited to explore these areas we had never been to before, and become acquainted with (and ultimately emotionally attached to) the endangered frog populations residing there. We had a dual purpose, though: to spend three days at each lake catching and processing as many frogs as we could find, and to wrap up our Yosemite Toad surveys for the season.

Our first stop was Upper Mattie Lake, which was a wonderful privilege because the frogs there had been translocated only one month prior to our visit. Therefore, our count would be crucial in determining how many survived the introduction to a new habitat. The lake was picturesque especially as we descended upon it at sunset. We took a wrong turn and managed to discover a dangerous but rewarding portal into the Mattie basin. The Mountain Hemlocks slumped like Christmas trees weighed down with too many ornaments, and the granite mountains beamed an orange luminescence. Glassy and brilliant, the lake gleamed back at us with the same amazement we expressed. This was to be my second home for the next three months.

The surveys over the first three days proved successful yet disappointing. We only found half of the relocated population, most of which resided in the inlet, outlet, and stealthily within a half submerged fallen tree along the edge of the lake. Each frog we captured already possessed a PIT tag, a very small pill-shaped device inserted between the two skin layers of the amphibian. When read by a hand held scanner, a unique twelve-digit number is registered in order to identify individual frogs. We scan, weigh, sex, and swab each frog before releasing it, in order to determine its health status and disease load (chytrid fungus is a main contributer to the species’ decline).

On the fourth day of our backpacking trip, we hiked out of beautiful, remote Mattie and headed north on the PCT to Miller Lake. It had been a frog lake for a couple years already, but the population has always been very low. Most PCT hikers stop here for a swim and some even to camp along it’s gorgeous sandy shore. Due to the low number of amphibians at Miller, Cam would survey the lake for frogs, and I would locate and survey all of the toad meadows in the area. Each day was exhausting, as I would hike all day looking for Yosemite Toad tadpoles and eggs in the meadows along the ridge west of Matterhorn Canyon. When I would arrive back at camp, I would usually find Cam lounging on a rock outcropping reading a book, or huddled in the tent to escape the rain. He would yawn and tell me that he walked three laps around the lake and caught only ten frogs and was finished surveying by the early afternoon. I would spill my day to him, the up and downs, the mountain faces I scaled, the mile-long meadows I walked, the tadpoles I discovered, and the deer I spooked. I’d tell him about the people I met along the trail on the way home and our rejuvenating conversations, and about running from the lightening. Each day of solo toad surveying filled me up with fear, excitement, joy, appreciation, and triumph all the same, as I felt like a true mountaineer visiting places very few people have gone before. This was my passion and I felt I was the perfect fit for the job, covering over fifteen miles per day mostly off-trail, simply to determine if a meadow contained toads or not. As a natural overachiever, I wanted to survey every meadow within a ten-mile radius of the lake and the trail back out to Tuolmne meadows.     

Cam’s third day of surveying Mattie would be my day to hike down the trail toward Tuolmne Meadows, taking off shoots to survey toad meadows. He had planned to survey the lake until noon, then hike to where Spiller Creek met the PCT. Here, he would either find my backpack on the side of the trail with a note indicating which meadows I was hiking up the creek to survey, or he would find nothing, indicating that I had already passed through and would meet him in Smokey Jack Meadow to locate three more toad meadows which we would survey together. When I arrived at this junction early in the morning, I threw down my pack, removed my bear-proof food canister (so bears don’t rip your backpack apart trying to remove it themselves), and scribbled a note to Cameron that I would survey the four meadows up near Spiller Lake, about a five-mile offshoot from the trail. On our maps, one of them was shaded blue (indicating toads have historically been found there and there is suitable habitat to sustain a toad population), two were shaded yellow (indicating these meadows had been visited in the past, but no tadpoles were found), and one was shaded red (indicating that it had never been surveyed before, but possibly has suitable habitat for toads). The red were the highest priority.

After a tough hike along the creek and then up the steep and wild terrain of the canyon, I walked transects across the two yellow meadows that I had located. Fortunately, one had tadpoles, an encouraging sign for the species! A little further up the mountainside, I emerged into a pristine meadow with a stream flowing through the center and pools scattered amongst its greenness. This was a blue meadow on the map, and I was eager to count tadpoles and perhaps even see some juvenile toads. As I was walking careful transects through the meadow, I was keeping a close and cautious eye on the dark clouds looming overhead. We had gotten mild thundershowers late in the week and they seemed to all be building up to something monstrous. I was just crossing my fingers that that beast wouldn’t manifest itself today. Halfway through the meadow I had already estimated over a thousand tadpoles, and several subadults (small toads one to three years old), when I stumbled upon a puddle with hundreds of metamorphs! These are jet black baby toads no bigger than a dime that had just transformed from tadpole stage to toad stage, some still possessing a long flat tail. As the cutest creatures I had seen in a while, I couldn’t help but try to capture some photos of them. I was so consumed by this amazing and fleeting phenomenon of amphibian metamorphosis that I forgot to keep an eye on the clouds, until I was suddenly quickened by a powerful clap of thunder. I immediately estimated the amount of baby toads I had discovered, entered the meadow attributes into my data-collecting device (a handy, government issued iPod Touch), and pondered whether it was worth my life to ascend to the exposed ridge of the mountain to survey the red meadow at Spiller Lake. The deciding factor was the next clap of thunder and the brooding gray clouds above the target meadow. A treeless lake above 10,600 ft was nowhere to be in a lightening storm, so I scampered the five frightful miles down the mountainside to Spiller Creek, then down Spiller Creek to the trail. In my haste I stumbled and slipped and submerged both boots in water in two separate creek crossings. Fatigued from log hopping and sliding down granite slabs, and ashamed that I hadn’t surveyed the red meadow at Spiller Lake, I reached the trail at the exact moment Cam was passing through. To this day I am not sure if it was coincidence or fate that brought us to the same lonely location along the trail in the same panicked desperation to flee from the storm.

As we hiked down the trail together in the rain, I felt a pang of guilt that I hadn’t surveyed that red meadow. I wanted to impress, and I wanted to collect concrete data that was significant to wrapping up the final season of the Yosemite Toad project. Most of all, I felt I missed out on a spectacular view that I had already painted in my head in anticipation. From Spiller Lake, I would look north and see the stunning spectacle of Matterhorn Peak and all the tallus cones aspiring to be as mighty someday. Panning west, I would gawk at the amazing jagged ridge that made up Finger Peaks against a background of all the shapes that comprised of Yosemite’s northwest border. To the southwest, I would try to name the bodies of water collecting in the basins of the mountains and the plateaus of the canyons. I might even catch a glance of Tenaya Lake guarded tenaciously by Cathedral Peak and Mount Watkins. Bowing to the great peaks, the many glorious white domes along the roadside would be protruding out of the dense forest. To the southeast I would see Mt. Dana and Lyell amongst other hungry giants with clouds skirting their pinnacles. Lastly it would have been an amazing view to peer across the park’s eastern border into the vast lakes that silently worshiping the underappreciated crest of white granite wedges hungry for the sky.

But I didn’t go there, and I don’t know of the true mystique the view from Spiller Lake holds.

Fortunately, I made the smart choice because only a mile down the trail Cam and I were stripping off our backpacks and fleeing into the denser trees down slope of the crest we were about to surmount. The lightening was flickering directly above us and we helplessly squatted under a thicket of young firs, wondering if we would ever find our discarded packs and the trail when the storm passed. We debated the seconds-to-mile ratio of a lightening strike and thunder roar, and concluded that it was best we didn’t know how close it really was to us. After a half hour the lightening advanced east and we were able to find our gear and timidly hike over the pass to the other side of the mountain, where the ground was thick with marble-sized hail balls. With soaked gear, we decided to hike the last ten miles to the truck in the pouring rain rather than set up camp at Glen Aulin. We navigated the final three miles of the trail by headlamp, and were too tired to complain about our aching bodies when we reached the roadside just after 9:00 PM. 

On the long car ride home, I gazed into the distance where the sky would briefly flicker like a fading candle, and hoped there were toads up at Spiller, happily staring up into the lightening storm like it was a star spangled sky.