Star Lake Backpacking Adventure - Day 1

I had a great time this weekend, backpacking about 25 miles with a nearly 4,000 foot elevation gain over two days. A couple friends and I hiked the Kingsbury South to Big Meadow section of the Tahoe Rim Trail and stayed at Star Lake overnight. (Here's my AllTrails tracking info)

The first day was a ton of fun! My new insoles for my shoes felt great, and I really wasn't that sore after the 9 mile trip to the beautiful little lake. Here's a selfie at the start, all smiles and no sweat yet.

We had many views of Lake Tahoe along the way. I brought the Canon 5DS R but it was packed away in the backpack and there was a bit of haze in the air that wasn't very photogenic. I took many many cell phone photos but only a few with the big camera. It was worth the weight though as I eventually ended up with some nice keeper images.

More of the Tahoe Rim Trail.

Snack break.

This short but wide tree caught my eye and motivated me to take off my backpack and get out my gear. I'm glad I did and my friends used the moment as an excuse to sit down and take another break.

We made it! 9 miles later and we were treated with this scene. I got the camera out again and fired off a few shots before sitting back with a flask of tequila and throughly enjoying the afternoon.

The lake was cold!!! I tried taking a dip to rinse off but didn't make it past my knees, oh well, I'd rather be stinky than cold... My buddy made it all the way in but it didn't last longer than a couple seconds. Painfully cold...

But there were tons of fish in that cold water! They were jumping all over the place all afternoon. I brought my lightweight Yoyito hand reel and caught and vibrantly colored Brook Trout. I didn't bring gear to cook it and no camp fires are allowed in this area so it was a catch and release.

We had a pretty nice spot, with our own little "beach".

I went with a tarp shelter instead of a tent. Using my tripod as a frame for the shelter, I had enough space and kept plenty warm even though the forecast was for a temperature of about 38f overnight. There was enough of a small gap at the bottom of the tent that condensation under the tarp was never an issue. The mosquitos and bugs aren't bad this time of year so I din't have to wear the bug net on my head. The food was was hung in a nearby tree at night so the bears and other critters couldn't get it. The tarp and tripod worked great and saved me about 3 pounds compared to my tent.

Before I went to bed. I got out the Canon one more time. The moon was pretty much full and was lighting up the landscape incredibly well. I had a small headlamp on my beanie, but I didn't really need to use it as the moon was so bright.

The photo below was shot with a Canon 5DS R and a 24-105mm lens, on a tripod. It's actually many photos stitched together to create one very wide angle and very high resolution image. Shot at ISO 1600, an aperture of f/9, and each of the 11 frames were 30 second long exposures. Stitched together using PTGui and fine tuned in Adobe Photoshop.

"Full Moon Over Star lake"

Thank you for looking and I hope you all had a great weekend too! (Stay tuned for Day 2...)

Scott Thompson
www.ScottShotsPhoto.com