We are in the heart of the High Sierra. No communication to the outside world for the week. I wonder how Ed and Craig are fairing. They should have made it to Granite Basin yesterday, if all went well. Hopefully, to Roads End today, if the 5500' of descent doesn't aggravate Ed's knee too much. I hope they are doing well.
We have Frozen Lake Pass to cross today, a 12,200' gap to climb through. The approach is through the remainder of Lake Basin, a glorious area of lakes, streams, meadows, glacial erratics and granite slabs.
We followed a ridge up to the basin below the pass and skirted on the south side of the lake it contains, at about 11,400', well above vegetation line. It is rock only. The snow has since melted off in this southwest facing cirque.
The German family was moving before us and is traversing the side of the cirque above us through broken talus and rock, making a beeline for the base of the cliffs that guard the pass and the ramp of broken rock that leads to the gap.
We start up from the lake after having obtained water. We are climbing over and around boulders, most the size of love seats, interspersed with car and house sized monsters. The size of the rock deminishes as we near the pass. Right at the entrance to the leftward sloping approach to the pass we meet up with Albert, Margret and Andy. We exchange "Gooten Morgans" as we climb the final 150 vertical feet to the pass together. German-American high fives are exchanged upon reaching the top. We enjoy the view, have a bit to eat, drink some water and talk with our new friends for 15 minutes, then they head down and we hold our position for the next 15 minutes until they are out of the way of any rocks we may knock loose when we make our descent down the northeast facing skree and boulder slope that makes up this side of the pass.
After we see them 300' below us walking out on the less steep boulder field we begin our descent. A choice presents itself. We can shuffle down the steep scree slope, or hop from boulder to boulder down the steep slope. Did I mention steep? Once at the bottom, the boulder hopping continued for another hour as we descended further, until our quads were aching from carefully lowering our weight from one boulder to the next during the 1000' descent.
We stopped next to a small tarn for lunch and rested our tired legs.
From the tarn we climbed a low ridge and began our traverse to the JMT. From Frozen Lake Pass we could see people moving on the trail. Now that we were closer it was getting easier to spot them.
We intersected the Muir trail about a mile and a half south of Mather Pass. We turned northward on the trail and were able to set a lively pace now that we weren't hopping from boulder to boulder.
We took bets on the number of people we would meet on the trail during our 4.5 miles on it today. Noah picked 55, I took 60. Dave low balled at 35. Up to the pass we hiked, meeting 10 in the mile and a half distance. At the pass there were 10. We stopped for a bite and a drink then headed down. We descended 2.5 miles of trail, meeting 13 more people. Dave owned the day.
We scouted around for a place camp. It was about 3:30 pm, putting us a little ahead of the crowds. We found a grassy plateau and flopped down, all three of us tired from the days climbs and descents.
A daily ritual is to unfurl the solar panel and plug in iPhones and batteries to recharge. We did this, then relaxed on our pads in the shade. I soon went down to the creek to soak my feet ( they were sore) and wash the dirt off my legs. As I approached the creek, I noticed a late twenties-mid thirties man kneeling by the steam washing his clothing. The sock he was scrubbing was bubbling with soap. This alarmed me as he was clearly rinsing his soapy sock in the stream. I gave him and the woman he was with a carefree greeting, asked where they were from (Darby,England), and then told them we don't use soap in the stream. There contenance told me they were ignoring my admonishing. I said again "Please keep your soap out of the stream." and walked on to soak my feet. They continued their laundering the whole time I soaked my feet.
When I got back to camp, I mentioned it to Dave and Noah. Noah said he needed to go get water and he would talk to them. Off he went with an empty poly bottle. He returned to tell us he told them they shouldn't was there clothes in the stream because their sop will kill the fish. They stopped! Way to go Noah!!!! I suspect two random, seemingly unassociated people telling them the same thing within 15 minutes convinced them that what they were doing was not done in America. Dinner of hamburger and mashed potatoes and then into the bag. The moon rose almost immediately after sunset. It was nearly as bright as day. Beautiful night!
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