Day 18 - The Minarets

Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Stats for the day: started at Reds Meadow (7750') at 7:30 - ended at Ice Berg Lake (9,834') at 5:45 Total ascent 4406'. Total Descent 2720'. Total Distance 13.0 miles. 6 hrs 39 mins walking.

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. True, if we line in the world of planar geometry. If we existed in a curved universe then the shortest distance is the great circle. So what universe does the Sierra exist in? We do a lot of cross country travel and spend a fair amount of time calculating the distance between our location and destination on the map, yet when we travel that distance the two numbers never coincide. Conclusion? We are in an alternate universe.

Lots of evidence exists to support this conclusion besides the discrepancy between distances. Up here there are no strip malls, no 8am garbage trucks, no freeways, quickie marts, billboards, road rage, Rush Limbaugh, or TV ads. Just meadows, rushing streams, rock fields, talus, glacial cirque headwalls, mosquitoes and snowfields. A different geometry.

Today my planning did not match our map. Where I had us hiking up the trail to Minaret Lake, our map showed us hiking up toward the Minarets one valley south then cross country across Nancy Pass into another cirque and then reaching Minaret Lake. We chose the more circuitous route adding much to the distance for the day.

8 miles of trail hiking brought us to Superior Lake. Above it, the low spot in the ridge, stood Nancy Pass. Although 11:30, we decided to have lunch on top where we could survey the route.

The rock in the Minarets is not the granite we had been traipsing across the previous two weeks, rather it is metamorphic in origin, therefore more crumbly and broken. The route up Nancy Pass was steep scree, dirt and rocks in-between rock ribs. An hour of kicking steps in scree, carefully avoiding sending rocks down on each other and climbing on rock ribs we reached the pass. The view northward showed Minaret Lake a mile or two away, nestled on it's perch of rock below the towering rock peaks of the Minarets.

Following lunch we descended 600' into the intervening valley, traversed it's floor and then ascended on rock slabs and ribs to Minaret Lake.

What a unbelievably gorgeous place! Nestled right against the towering Minaret spires, snow, rock, lake, meadows and trees create a picture perfect scene.

But our destination lay beyond, so we gawked our way past the lake, climbed the steep use trail to Cecilie Lake and then dropped 450' into Iceberg Lake for the night. We had to push ahead because we wanted to travel the snow slopes that drop straight into Iceberg Lake in the evening while soft from the days heating rather than traverse them in the morning when they are frozen rock hard.

At 13 miles (4 cross-country) and 4,400 feet of elevation gain it was a much more strenuous day than we had anticipated. But, we are on schedule and ready for tomorrow's route to Twin Island Lakes.