Sunday Sierrablogging

Photo by Bill Kobrin

We hiked up here on a layover day while camped at a nameless lake in the nameless basin below Finger Peak. Upper Goddard Creek canyon is an extraordinary place: the east wall is all dark twisted metavolcanics, the west wall clean rectilinear granite, the canyon cut stright along the contact zone. As you move up-canyon the scattered trees give way to a mile-long meadow cut by a long sinuous 'lake' snaking through it, really just a widening of the creek. The lake at the canyon head is spectacular, with a thousand-foot headwall looming over it. You're four days' hike from anywhere, three if you're a lunatic power hiker, and it feels every bit as remote as it really is.