Kind of a slow start this morning. We didn’t break camp till 7:30. After many miles of flat valley bottom hiking, we finally climbed out of the trees and up into the subalpine wonder below Mt.Lyell…tons of small tarns, creeks, meadows, huge granite domes…it really was as we expected - like Washington’s Enchantments, but on steroids. Up over Donahue Pass, 11,056ft, and we finally had some new views to the south, June Mountain, and the Mammoth ski area were visible in the distance.
On our hike up to the pass we met and passed fellow thru-hiker Frank. Frank’s approach to hiking was slow and steady and go ALL day. While we initially congratulated ourselves on being fast enough to pass other hikers, we found our energy sapped and our feet sore by early afternoon. As we lazed about, soaking our fatigued limbs in a lake later that afternoon we saw Frank slowly make his way past the lake, still cranking with three hours til sunset. We knew then that Frank had the right idea and we’d have to adopt his strategy if we were going to happily put in 15-20 miles a day for 14 days in a row. We referred to our new pace as “Franking it”.
While having a mid-morning snack on the top of Donahue, a mouthful of chocolate covered raisins provided just enough stickiness to loosen a temporary crown I had over one of my molars, and before I knew it, I had pulled off the crown and there it was in the palm of my hand. I’d heard horror stories of tooth pain hikers have had from losing fillings before, but fortunately a crown popping off a dead tooth that’s had a root canal only makes for awkward eating.
The warm morning gave way to a hot afternoon…we found a patch of shade near a stream for lunch, refilled our water reservoirs, wetted our bandanas and hats and headed towards Island Pass.
Just beyond Island Pass is Thousand Island Lake, a spot I’d been dying to see ever since I first started researching the JMT last year. There’s no way for me to describe it…it just looks so amazing, a deep blue lake below a huge black peak, and what truly seems like a thousand tiny islands dotting the water. It would’ve been easy to camp here, but we still needed to knock off a few more miles, so we continued on to the equally spectacular Garnet Lake where we had camp set up by 3:30.
The weather was still plenty warm for a relaxing afternoon of swimming and doing laundry on the lakeshore. We didn’t bring many changes of shorts and socks, so after three days our first set of socks were fairly caked with dust…it was nice to be able to get them cleaned and dried for the next day.
Becky and I both had been looking forward to tonight's dinner….we had a sealed package of pre-cooked bacon that we finally cracked open and added to our lentils and couscous…so nice to get some fat and salt!
The evening weather was warm and we didn’t need our down jackets after dark…made for a pleasant night of sleeping, but the next day was likely to be really hot.
Tarns below the Lyell Glacier
closing in on Donahue Pass
Thousand Island Lake
Damm that's beautiful!
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