Overcast Skies

7/23/15 Thursday 9 miles

The sky was clear at 2:15 am when I woke up but by this morning it was once again overcast.  On the trail by 8:15 we'll get better at breaking camp as we put more miles on us.  

Peggy along the trail notice the clouds building in the background.

We passed Purple Lake, crossed into another valley and ended the day at Virginia Lake, 10,350' elevation, after 9 miles.

This is Virginia Lake, so beautiful with the clouds overhead.

  We're taking it slow until we feel more acclimated and breathing is easier. 

I stopped often to rest my legs and lungs.we filtered water, rinsed out dusty socks, found a nice campsite away from the trail.  We watched 2 mule teams

set up camp and we're glad there was some distance between us.  A large group of Korean backpackers were gathered around us, lots of visiting going on. We had dinner at 6:30pm then played Farkle in the dirt until we got too cold.  

Panorama of Virginia Lake.

7/24/15 Friday. 12 miles

We started hiking at 7:30am, chilly under clear skies. 

Virginia Lake in the morning light.

Among other things, there will be a 3 mile hike up to Silver Pass, then 5 miles down with some noodling in between.  First we descended into a drainage passing small freshets running down to a stream in the canyon below. Moist areas hosted wild onion that you could smell as you passed by.  An impressive bridge spanned Fish Creek & the trail wound beside it for awhile before it charged uphill to Silver Pass.  Switchbacks, loose rocks, boulders, then large stone water bars that challenged my short legs to step higher & higher.  I was stopping often to lower my heart rate & catch my breath as we climbed to the 11,000' level to go over the pass.  Rubble littered the mountainside, boulders larger than houses lay in piles.  Water cascaded downhill and when we reached the plateau we passed Squaw Lake, Warrior Lake & Chief Lake.  

The sun was out, the air clear, as I huffed & puffed higher. A day hiker passed me and we had a quick chat, she said she'd come from Mammoth today, going to Duck Lake on a day hike but she hadn't seen her friends.  I stopped her, she was 7 miles off her trail, no map. I offered to give her my maps from yesterday, she had almost climbed the pass but needed to go back to another trail intersection where she'd taken a wrong turn.  No problem she said, turned around & went back down the pass.

Reaching the pass, Peggy & I had a great rest on top looking at the lakes below us.

Going down the other side of the pass we stopped at this small pond to soak our feet and rest. It was full of tadpoles!

First we made good time going downhill but before long the trail was rocky with higher & higher water bars made of big boulders. It's easy to turn an ankle carrying pack weight, I had to use my poles to lower myself carefully. We stopped to filter water then moved on beside a meadow following a stream that just disappeared over a rock ledge. We followed around a corner and the view opened up into a huge glacial valley, peaks soaring over us, the water literally plunging over sheets of granite  tumbling to the valley.  What an incredible sight.  We carefully made our way around switchbacks steeply following the water as it fell to the valley below.  We crossed the stream carefully at a ledge where it pooled before falling over the edge again. Under deep forest, over rock ledges we went deeper into the canyon until finally coming out under tall ponderosa & bristlecone pines that created soft carpeting underneath for our tents. We set up, got water, ate dinner & chatted with a couple camped nearby from New Zealand before crawling into our tents for the night.  This was a good mileage day for us.