The hail that fell last evening was now a congealed, frozen mass on the ground, and even the tarp had chunks of ice on it.
Craig got up to eat his breakfast of a Pop Tart, I'm more of a "if you can do it from the comfort of your sleeping bag, do it" kind of guy, so I ate mine in bed and cooked some hot water from my sleeping bag under the tarp.
We headed north on the John Muir Trail, rounding the end of Evolution Lake and heading toward the point where the trail starts to drop toward Evolution Valley, about a mile and a quarter away. Here we left the trail, knowing we had three miles of traversing through forested terrain, punctuated with granitic bands of cliff, streams and swamps. Our guide book told us the best traversing, that is, the least number of impassable cliff and such, would be found between 10,800' and 11,000'. We were about 200' below these recommended elevations, so we angled upward as we moved forward along the ridge.
The brush was still wet from the rain and hail of the night before, so before long we were both wet up to mid-thigh.
The bands of bed rock tended to slope downward in our direction of travel, meaning all the benches and shelves we were following kept causing us to lose altitude below our recommended values.
This meant we had to clamber up steep granite outcrops or wet, brushy inclines to maintain altitude. The guide book says the last mile of the three mile traverse is frought with swampy ground. When we read this we tried to imagine how swamps could cling to very steeply inclined slopes. We found out they can. By the time we finished the traverse our feet were totally soaked, as were our pants, not to mention most of the gear in our packs from the drenching dew from the night before.
Thankfully, the California sun was shining brightly providing good heat. When we finally cleared the trees and brush and began traversing easterly and upward we
stopped on an open meadow and laid all our gear and clothing in the hot sun to dry. It looked like a yard sale. 45 minutes later we repacked and continued up the slope toward the scariest part of the high route, Snow Tongue Gap, at 12,176'.
The climb up the west side is a boulder field, until the last 100' vertical feet, where it changes to steep solid rock. But, foot and handholds are plentiful and it is easily scaled. However, the east side is a near vertical 300' cliff composed of jagged, loose bedrock jutting out of the slope surrounded with loose scree and rocks.
Before descending this nightmarish slope, we had lunch. I scrambled 50 vertical feet up the ridge to find a better beginning to the descent and soon we were on our way down with full packs, carefully testing each rock before we trusted it with our weight. The rain of the night before had erased any previous parties foot prints, but numerous choices of routes to take presented themselves. About 20 minutes later we were down the worst of it. We were now faced with about a mile and a half of boulder hopping to get out of the Wahoo Lakes basin and out onto Humphrey Basin. It took a good two hours to negotiate the boulder field. In the process, I broke one of my new Black Diamond trekking poles. I was able to cobble it together. A good thing, because I am very dependent on having two poles to take the load off my knees, especially when descending and boulder hopping.
Once clear of the boulders, we decided to traverse Humphrey Basin, a broad, 2 mile wide area and camp at lower Desolation Lake. I dropped a waypoint on my GPS on my phone on what appeared to be Lower Desolation Lake and we headed out. Within five minutes we came upon a 84 year old man out by himself, walking very slowly cross country. We stopped and talked for ten minutes, finding him very interesting. He was part of Mountain Rescue and had been hiking in the area since the 1950's. We broke away and continued on toward our destination, arriving about 5:00 pm. But, the lake I assigned the waypoint to was Desolation Lake, not the lower one and so we traveled about a mile further than we had planned.
The lake lives up to its name. There are no trees and only a couple bushes. The wind was blowing steadily, although the sun was still shining. We dropped our packs behind a 3' high boulder, the only one in the desolate plain on the west side of the lake, and went fishing. For an hour's effort, we caught one. Returning to our packs, now about 6:30 pm, we cooked dinner, including the fish, then laid out our ground pads and sleeping bags on the tundra like ground under the clear skies, building a wind block with our packs, and slipped into our sleeping bags. I had my iPhone playing Nora Jones, and I fell asleep to the music, probably about 8:30 pm. I woke about 12:00 am to find a sky filled with stars and frost all over the outside of my sleeping bag. At 11,400', no moon and no ambient light from nearby cities, the stars were incredible. The milky way spanned across sky. I was warm under my new frost covered quilt, and quickly fell back to sleep.
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