| “Going to the mountains is going home.” --John Muir I was ALMOST willing to give up today and go home. Thankfully my husband reminded me that he wasn't going to let me! |
We enjoyed the view from camp before starting our day. We were near the trail and were able to visit with fellow hikers who had already started their day. We were on the trail at 9am. Today was the Golden Staircase on the way up to Mather Pass but we wouldn't have an actual pass today.
The hiking just never gets old
A new type of sign so thought I'd have some fun!
Crossing a bridge somewhere near Le Conte Canyon
We have passed by the Middle Fork Trail Junction
which is the lowest point until after Mt. Whitney.
We were going to hike up the Golden Staircase so we decided to take a
lunch break along Palisade Creek and soak our feet.
Looking back towards Deer Meadow and some of the switchbacks we just came up.
I am still waiting for the Golden Staircase to start..so far it has just been just the graded trail.
I take it we are now above 10,000 feet!
There was a rock with some bright flags on it...we took a picture
but still have yet to figure out what was so special about the view!
So we finally found some 'stairs'
Hard to believe how far we climbed in the last two hours!
The plan with the fellow hikers that we were leap-frogging with was to camp at
Lower Palisades Lake, but when we got there there really wasn't any cover
and it wasn't even 3pm. We decided to push on to Upper Palisades Lake.
Views of Upper Palisade's Lake. I should
have known that sky was going to create a problem for us.
Upper Palisade's Lake was very popular--it is the last stop before Mather Pass.
We did find a perfect spot around 4pm and put the tent up...but water wasn't nearby.
We had to hike back about 5 minutes to the stream.
Some views from camp before we went to filter water around 4:30pm.
We went down to the stream. I was rinsing off and getting into my camp clothes while Jason was filtering water. I only had my hiking clothes and my camp clothes which were also my sleeping clothes. We had brought our rain jackets but left our rain pants back at camp. I was all rinsed off and in my camp clothes when it started to sprinkle. We had become used to the sprinkles and it either would sprinkle and quit...or it would sprinkle and the skies would open up. Tonight the skies opened up. It poured within minutes. I was soaked before I could even get my raincoat on. Thankfully, Jason was done with filtering water and we quickly grabbed everything and ran back to camp.
I forgot that everything was outside back at camp too. So not only was I physically soaked--my camp clothes..my hiking skirt...my hiking shirt were all soaked along with my backpack. And I was cold and shivering. The one good thing was that the sleeping bags were in the tent (along with my down coat and pants) and the tent had the rain fly on so at least the tent was dry.
What Jason didn't know is that his birthday was tomorrow. I had been telling him since the beginning of the hike that after Muir Trail Ranch, there were no desserts. We just didn't have room in the bear cans. Except I did dehydrate a white cake (his favorite) and brought dehydrated strawberries and vanilla pudding hidden in my bear can. I managed to keep it a secret during resupply even!!
And here I was....soaked and freezing. Jason convinced me to figure out how to get in the tent and get into my dry gear that was in there. What was wonderful is that I was dry but still cold. I was in the tent thinking about tomorrow--his birthday. I wasn't going to be able to surprise him with birthday cake in the morning and I was going to have to hike in wet clothes. I had a female moment...I started crying...he was awesome thru all of it. Said everything would dry out...I decided that if his birthday cake wouldn't happen in the morning, it would happen some other day.
At 6pm, it had stopped raining and he looked out. The sky looked promising. We quickly got everything under the rainfly and had dinner. It wasn't meant to be though as it started raining again. We were back in the tent with lights out at 8pm. It was a rough day...I told myself if we had more days like this, I was done. This wasn't enjoyable tonight but we will see what tomorrow brings!
Miles Hiked Today: 12.7 Total Miles Hiked: 183.7 Total JMT Miles Hiked: 147.6
Elevation: 9,000 down to 8070 back up to camp around 10800.
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