"I've gotta ask"...... This is the question Tom and I got way too many times on our way up to Marmot Lake which is in Humphreys Basin, just north of the Sequoia/Kings NP border. Tom had six sections of PVC pipe strapped to his pack, over 8 meters of piping in all, that were part of an elaborate gadget to take sediment core samples from the lake bottom. As you can see in the picture, it's not exactly typical backcountry gear. We joked that it was for a teepee. We had gotten a late start so we got into camp in the basin after sun down. We were up early the next morning taking algae samples from Marmot Lake for a couple of hours, and then we began setting up the contraption. We blew up a float tube, which is meant for sitting in to fish from, put on some stylin' waders, and kicked out to the center of the lake (we went one at a time :). The enormous sections of pipe were pretty tricky to maneuver, especially because it was windy and all we had were dinky flippers to control the tube. Once it was upright and sunk to the lake bottom, we would push the end down into the sediment, pull up on a cord that created a vacuum in the tube, and then haul the whole thing up to the surface, cap it, and struggle back to the shore. Falling off of the float tube definitely crossed my mind. Many times.
The whole operation was actually really fun, and totally worth dragging 8 miles up into the basin. The fat and furry namesake of the lake also made an appearance.
After sleeping off my Gado Gado backcountry pasta (an intense peanut sauce pasta dish), doing some more algae survey work this morning, and capturing and euthanizing some tadpoles to be taken back to the lab, we packed up and headed out under a quickly darkening sky. The rain began to hit us harder and harder, then came the hail, and then the thunder and lightning, some even splashing off of the peaks overhead. I actually love hiking in the rain, and most importantly, we made it back to the car safe and sound.
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