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.