Through Slide Canyon

Our next day was spent hiking up Slide Canyon to the benches below Mule Pass. This was a beautiful and lonely area. We didn't see anybody all day, and it was a bit like having Yosemite Valley to one's self.

It was a pretty easy day of hiking because we were walking through gentle terrain.  It started out in these big green meadows as you can see in the picture, before the canyon narrowed and we ended up strolling through forests, avalanche meadows strewn with tree trunks or willow thickets.

When we took lunch, it was very warm, so Dad and I jumped into Piute Creek to clean up a little.  We didn't stay very long, though, as it was viciously cold!  We also engineered a bridge to cross a creek coming in from the east, and Dad took a dip that time, too.  Unintentionally.

The unique feature of Slide Canyon is, of course, The Slide.  The Slide is an enormous rock-fall.  Apparently a big piece of Slide Mountain just collapsed and slide down into the valley.  The power of the fall is demonstrated by the fact that huge boulders actually continued travelling hundred of yards up the opposite side.  I'd never seen anything like it.

Piute Creek disappears for a while below the Slide, and forms a little pool on the uphill side.  After the Slide, it was meadows again until we decided to cross the creek.  When we did decide to cross the creek, we did it where it was deep and fast.  We used a rope to be safe as there were cataracts above and below the spot.  The water was running well above our knees on this one!

While we had hoped to find the trail, it turned out we couldn't find an easy ford of the creek coming down from the benches we were heading for, so we just went straight up the side of the canyon.  Thankfully, our route had no snow, and we just toiled our way up and up.

The reward for our effort was the most spectacular view from our campsite of the whole trip.

Of course, the camp was surrounded by a lot of snow.  We weren't really sure where the trail went, as it was buried, and as it got darker the snow started firming up and that made it hard to get water.  In fact, that night I had my worst slip on the snow of the whole trip.  I was carrying a bear can completely full of water and fell.  I may have landed flat on my face, but at least I barely spilled any water!

More pictures from the day are at Flickr.

Doe Lake

The next day of our backpack trip was our layover day, except it wasn't a real layover day.  Instead, we hiked from Sister Lake cross-country to Doe Lake.

We did get a late start, though.  When we woke up in the morning, it was cold.  The little ponds of melt water nestled among the rocky slopes around our camp had frozen over during the night.  Oh, and so did any open water on the lake.  Fortunately, the snow's surface froze in a rough texture that allowed us to move freely on it.  And, as soon as the sun came over the western ridge, the air warmed about 30 degrees in just moments.

We spent most of our long morning doing laundry.  Then, Dad and I hiked over to the outlet of Sister Lake to catch a glimpse of Smedberg Lake.  It was a very pretty lake.

 

After we got back, we packed up and headed out.  The route to Doe Lake is pretty simple, but we were confronted by a lot of snow and one creek crossing.  I elected to jump the creek, but everyone else waded through a quite deep pool.

 

The hardest part of the day was finding our way down the hill between the creek crossing and Doe Lake.  This was all cross-country, so we didn't expect to find a trail (though there was an occasional use trail), but the snow complicated a slippery wooded slope significantly.  Doe Lake itself is also somewhat difficult to navigate around because it's bounded by granite cliffs  We eventually found a campsite on the northern edge of the lake, near the route we'd take the next day into Slide Canyon.  After setting up camp, I broke out my fishing pole, and Libby cooled her heels in the lake.

Dad caught the biggest back-country fish he'd ever caught here when he was a young 'un, and so I had high hopes to repeat the feat.  I was a bit disappointed, though, as the fish were generally scarce.  I caught two, and they were big for the backcountry, but not very big over-all.  One was about 12".  From what I could see of the fish around the outlet, they were all above average in size, but none was enormous.

That afternoon after fishing, we were treated to the booming of a nearby Sooty Grouse!  We followed the deceptive sound, but couldn't locate the bird.  It seemed to be located atop a cliff above our camp.  We enjoyed the numerous Pine Grosbeaks around the camp, though, and Libby got some good looks at them while I was fishing.

That night we had fish for dinner, and enjoyed yet another campfire!

More pictures at Flickr.

Matterhorn Canyon to Sister Lake

The hike from Matterhorn Canyon to Sister Lake was a really hard one for Libby.  She was struggling with an energy-sapping cold that seemed to take the most out of her on that day.  Combined with some hot uphills and lots of snow, it was just tough.  Still, we all made it to the end of the day, and camped in a really beautiful place.

As we were packing up in the morning, we were visited by our neighborhood doe.  She showed no fear as she spent the early hours picking at grass anywhere and everywhere around our campsite.

 

Once we were hiking, it was only a couple of minutes before we were crossing Matterhorn Creek.

 

This was a nice, easy crossing with a wide ford, and it wasn't long before we were on our way.  That meant winding our way down the valley for a little while alongside the creek.  There was a lot of evidence of higher flow in the weeks ahead, including flooded areas along the trail.  I even saw a fish in a puddle persisting right in the middle of the trail at least a hundred yards from the creek!  I'm glad we missed the high point for the creeks.

Then it was up, up, up the side of the canyon.  This was a tough hike in the late morning because it was an east-facing slope and not heavily forested. It was the only place we heard an Olive-sided Flycatcher, though, singing its "Quick, Three Beers!" song.  Tell me about it.   At one point we left the trail at the corner of a switchback to view the dramatic cascades formed by Miller Creek as it hurried precipitously down to Matterhorn Canyon.

At the top of the slope, we crossed the creek, and then headed upstream in a more gentle climb.  Interestingly, the trail here didn't match the map, re-crossing the creek under snow sooner than indicated.  We decided to find our own way, walking in fairly easy meadows and forest until we came to a giant snow-bridge that took us across easily and safely.  At one point, as we were paralleling the visible trail on the far side of the creek, a young buck trotted along it.  You have to love the abundant wildlife of Yosemite!

We took lunch in the meadow where the trail took off for Benson Pass after re-crossing the creek yet again!  Each of these wet-feet crossings took us a good half-hour as we took time to dry our feet and put on our shoes.  Then it was up to Benson Pass, which turned out to be covered in snow.

 

Libby was not having a good time at this point, but you can tell she's an absolute trooper.  I was having personally very excited about all the snow, but it would wear off for me, too, later.

On the other side of the pass, we had a great view of Volunteer Peak.  Cool dome!

 

Volunteer Peak is just above Smedberg Lake.  Smedberg is a really pretty lake, but we opted to avoid it to avoid the crowds of the PCT.  Instead, we headed off-trail to Sister Lake above it.

That turns out to be pretty easy, actually, but once we got past a picturesque tarn that serves as a good landmark for the cross-country route, we hit thick sun-cupped snow that just didn't let up.  While I think the normal approach would be easy meadow, we were toiling on this difficult snow for a long time, discovering in the process that the lake was still frozen!  So much for fishing that night!

Eventually, we called a halt and Dad and I went ahead to scout out a campsite.  We were fortunate enough to find a suitable spot not far from the point we stopped, and everyone was happy to remove their wet boots at the end of the day.  While we were piling into the camp, we were blessed to see a beautiful Golden Eagle soaring overhead!

The dry area of our camp was pretty small, but the snow was just beautiful.  Here's that night's sunset:

 

More pictures are in the normal place.

Virginia Canyon to Matterhorn Canyon

After our typical late start in the morning, we made our way merrily down Virginia Canyon, pausing now and then to ooh and ahh at the beautiful streams and dramatic avalanche swathes flowing down from Excelsior Mountain.  One particularly attractive spot was a point just before we met the Pacific Crest Trail where Return Creek plunged into a granite fault for few dozen yards.

 

 Then we turned left, or north, onto the Pacific Crest Trail.  And we went up.  We spent the rest of the morning climbing fairly steep switchbacks through hemlock and lodgepole forest.  We had our first interesting water crossing, too, at Spiller Creek.  The water was only a bit above calf-deep, but it was fast and wide.

A neat feature of the trail were old blazes made by the United States Cavalry when they were in charge of patrolling the park back around 1900.  It made me think about how old these trees were, to stand there, scarred, for a hundred or so years.  How long had they been standing before that, and how long will they linger?

 

Of course, we were hitting snow in the upper reaches of the climb.  We took a moment to rest, and Dad and I climbed a little promontory to get a view to the south, where we think we saw Ritter and Banner!

 

I'm not too familiar with the mountains around Tuolomne Meadows, so I'm not sure what else we were looking at.

Oh, along this stretch, we were meeting some PCT thru-hikers.  They zipped along quite a bit faster than us, of course.  And we got to Miller Lake, the first still body of water we'd encountered since Summit Lake the afternoon before.  We stopped to pump water, and Libby and I pulled out the head-nets for the mild swarms of mosquitoes that gathered to welcome us.

 

You can see in the photo that the meadow is still brown, and the water still high from the recent melt. Miller Lake was nearly the highest point we reached during the day, and not far past it we were standing on the dramatic edge of Matterhorn Canyon.  We drank in the view, appreciating the craggy heights of the Sawtooths, Finger Peaks, several large waterfalls cascading down the far side of the canyon, and that heady feeling you have when you look down on verdant meadows a thousand feet below.

The route to said meadows was a bit difficult, with snow obscuring much of the trail.  That meant we weren't able to take advantage of many of the switchbacks, but instead scrambled around and down duff, snow and dirt.  At the bottom, we turned up Matterhorn Canyon to leave the PCT and find a campsite.  It didn't take long, and we found a nice big one near the creek.

That night we enjoyed a fire, I tried fishing the stream, unsuccessfully, and we were visited several times by a very friendly deer.  All in all, a very nice day.  There are, of course, more pictures.

Frog Lakes to Virginia Canyon

The first full day of our pack trip dawned in tingly expectation of facing the challenges of a snowy pass.  We got a late start, a pattern that proved to be typical (and beneficial, as it allowed the snow to soften) on this trip, and started out for the pass.  The pass above Frog Lakes is a little over 11,000', but it's not over the main crest.  Our path would take us up and over this unnamed pass, down into a valley to meet up with the trail from Green Lake, and then up and over the crest at Summit Lake -- much lower at about 10,200' -- before plunking us down for the night in Virginia Canyon.

The way up wasn't too hard.  There was snow, but there were also footprints to follow, and the trail was often visible between snow patches.  Both factors were very nice for route finding.  The biggest patch of snow was right at the base of the pass, and we cut at least one switchback in the steep ascent there.

The view to the west from the top was awesome.

We switchbacked down from the top of the pass on dry trail, but below the switchbacks we hit pretty solid snow.  We were forced to climb down and around to cross a creek on a waterfall, and then the trail disappeared completely for a half-mile or so.  We ended up scrambling down a sandy embankment, slogging through mud, and pushing through willows to get to a nice snow free meadow at the edge of Summit Lake's outlet.  It was a lot of work!

After lunch at the meadow, still yellow from the winter but mostly dry, we had our first shoes-off creek crossing, something undoubtedly usually unnecessary here, and then were up to Summit Lake.  Summit Lake drains both ways from the crest, and as we sloshed past it, I mused at which direction the water in the trail was running.

Then we entered Yosemite.

From there it was a pretty easy snow-free downhill hike to Virginia Canyon.  There had been some avalanches in the area, so I think we had to go around some trees, but otherwise it was nice.

At the bottom of the canyon, we met Return Creek, which was running fast and high, but we were able to cross it on a log.  We made camp a mile or so down the canyon from the creek crossing, a good distance from the creek.  It was hard to find a dry spot with all the pools of water around, but the mosquitoes were thankfully quite light.

That evening, a deer and a hare walked past the camp.  We thought maybe we'd have a game parade, but that turned out to be all.  There were a few birds, though, including some Gray-crowned Rosy Finches.  Those always seem out of place in forested areas, but I suspect the persistent snow in their normal high elevation haunts pushed them down where food was more abundant.

Lots more pictures on Flickr.