When I first laid eyes on Little Bear Lake, it was a bird’s eye view from heaven. It was about a third the size of Big Bear, and much darker blue-green in color. It had the regal magnificence of a sparkling, priceless emerald mounted in a carved pendant of granite. There seemed to be a lot more trees on its shoreline, and a big white rock dominated a cove where it appeared the outlet creek might be. We were much higher above the lake than we’d expected, and the cool afternoon winds were blowing almost as hard as we were. Without complaint or commiseration, we accepted our nylon and aluminum yokes for the last time, and half-fell, half-slid 300 feet down the mountainside in our haste to make it to the lake. Further down, the slides broke up into ledges, platforms, and cliffs; so we had to slow down and pick the best route. Eventually, we joined up with a fishermen’s trail that led around the north shore of the lake to the outlet, which faced east. The intimate scale of the lake embraced us, and we scouted the best fishing and swimming spots, pointing excitedly to each other. Our fatigue dissipated in the thrill of discovering a pristine mountain lake with nobody else there! Pockets of unmelted snow still dotted the shady south wall of the lake’s rim. The setting sun burst like fireworks off the water. As we reached the heaps of cracked, slanting granite on the northeast shore, we were facing the broken edge of a huge, 20-foot high white granite monolith on the opposite side of a small cove. From that angle it bore a resemblance to a huge animal, so it was natural to christen it White Bear Rock. The ramp plunged down through impossibly clear, nearly phosphorescent water to a sandy bottom about 15 feet deep, punctuated here and there with sunken shards and logs like debris from a great naval battle.
The trail entered the shoreline forest and emerged suddenly on an inviting clearing with a fire ring. That was all the reception we needed. We ditched our packs immediately and headed around the cove to check out the other side of the big rock. We saw a better campsite on the way but never moved our things there, simply because we didn’t want to carry them another foot. A small, neat wash made a paved walkway to the south side of the big rock. Its pale bulk sloped up invitingly to a point where a tiny Ponderosa pine had wedged itself triumphantly in the cracks. We scrambled to the top on rubber legs that weren’t quite working the way they had been when we’d left the truck that morning.
Looking down the edge into the cove, the clear, swimming pool water was calling to our trail-weary bodies. The highest point of the rock was perched over the most tempting and deepest part of the cove for jumping, but there was a very large chip of white granite buried in the sand in a way that thrust it straight up like a knife blade. We prudently moved a few feet down the edge to where there were no rocks or logs – just a sandy bottom 15 feet down. Soon we were eyeing each other suspiciously to see who would try to throw in whom first. Splash! Splash! Splash! Three hot, dusty bodies hit the water like missiles, feet first and fully clothed; with our boots on. We were used to jumping off rocks into the creek near my home, but were wholly unprepared for what should have been obvious. This crystalline alpine lake, at about 6,500 feet in elevation, was full of recently melted snow and no more than 45 degrees.
“Yaaaaaah!” I screamed shamelessly like a girl, the top of my head exploding with icicles.
“Hoooooh!” Rob huffed with his eyes and cheeks bulging like a walrus, madly trying to climb out of the water back through the air the way he had come in, and almost succeeding.
“Gaaaaaak!” Dave squawked and thrashed his arms wildly, with all the gangly grace of an arctic albatross being attacked by a killer whale.
We liberally profaned the air with sharp, echoing expletives and splashed desperately across to the hot granite on the slanting ramp. Freezing clothes were torn off frantically from sluggish, numbed limbs, sopping and stiff with cold and sweat. Our pale bodies and piles of clothes drained down the rock’s channels into the lake while we shivered miserably in the disappearing sunlight.
“F-f-f-uckin’ cold!” Rob barked needlessly. “I can’t find my balls!”
“I’m not doin’ th-that again!” Dave squeaked through chattering teeth, gripping the granite with white-knuckled toes.
“M-maybe that would be fun in Aug-g-gust,” I proffered, with the timid wisdom gained from foolish experience.
By this time, the sun was vanishing over the cathedral-like west wall, and the late breezes were suddenly chilled with the snow that hunched in forgotten lumps on the shadowed ledges and pockets throughout the basin. We had laid our clothes out in the sun, and now had to move them several times up the slope as it disappeared behind the west rim. We realized with mild alarm that night was coming on, and we were nearly naked and ravenous. Staggering like waterlogged zombies, we dragged our filthy clothes and pallid corpses back to camp. The compressed supplies were pulled, dumped, and pried heedlessly from the depths of our abused backpacks, and we picked through them like untouchables at the dump, looking for food and drier clothes. Dave and I gloated over our salvage, because we’d had the foresight to pack an impressive assortment of dehydrated food, and Rob had foolishly carried extra pounds of canned goods all the way up the trail. Our glee turned to intense frustration when we discovered nobody had brought a pot for boiling water, or even a stove We hadn’t collected any firewood, either. But we had plenty of warm beer! Teeth chattering with hunger and anxiety, we clumsily scraped a few branches together in the fire ring.
“Where’s the matches?” I asked, and looked over at the sodden lump that used to be Dave’s pants. We had last used the matches to light his pipe up on the ridge. Now it was Rob’s turn to gloat, as he had the only dry book of matches left between us. He produced his flame with a flourish, and the fire caught on the dry, pitchy branches and rapidly made a bed of fine coals. Undaunted by the lack of a can opener, be beat his knife hilt with a rock to pry open the tops of 3 cans of ravioli.
“Can we use the cans when you’re done?” Dave and I hovered jealously, knowing we would have to wait to boil our water like tramps.
“Haw, haw, you’ll have to lick ‘em clean first!” Rob said magnanimously, making exaggerated culinary gesticulations over his clever cans, which were perched on the edge of a flat rock, half in the fire, with their labels burning off. To annoy us as much as possible, he even made up a little song about his luscious, simmering cans of hot ravioli, which I have thankfully forgotten.
The swift mountain karma didn’t wait long! The wind shifted just as he was turning his cans with a stick in the surprisingly hot fire, and a blast of smoke and embers blew into his face, singeing his hair and eyebrows. “Gack!” He staggered and his foot hit the flat rock, knocking off all 3 bubbling cans, and spilling their contents into the fire. In a brief moment of stunned silence, we all stared in shock where the tomato sauce hissed and bubbled like lava. Then Dave and I were rolling on the forest floor, hooting and gasping for air, while Rob frantically tried using two burning twigs as chopsticks to rescue his dinner from the smoky bowels of the fire pit. It wasn’t working, and we laughed louder, with tears making tracks down our dusty faces. Finally, not caring about the soot and ashes, he wrapped 2 pairs of crusty socks around his hands and pulled the cans out roughly. Rob alternately sucked and blew on the cans, slurping and glowering hurtfully at Dave and I, who were covered with dirt and pine needles and weak from laughter. We didn’t get the empty cans to boil our water until long after dark, but it was worth it for such a good laugh. After chewing and gulping partially rehydrated chili mac, accompanied by gritty, mashed up s’mores for dessert, we used flashlights to roll out our sleeping bags right on the ground. All night we slept like the dead, missing the greatest show of stars in our lives, while Dave and I still snickered in between snores.
“The spiritual journey is one of continuous learning and purification.
When you know this, you become humble.”
— Sogyal Rinpoche