Thomas and Mark in the John Muir Wilderness
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Day One
| This pooch sat on the bow of the Lake Thomas A. Edison ferry for the whole ride. The man to the dog's left was hiking the entire John Muir Trail, about 200 miles from Yosemite to Mount Whitney. Lake Thomas is at 7700 feet altitude. The original photo was color, but it looked right in black and white, somehow. |
| After the ferry, Mark and I began hiking to the John Muir Trail. This was one of our early views of Mono Creek, which feeds Lake Thomas. |
| A twisted tree (perhaps a bristlecone pine?) |
| Mark, crossing a stream. |
| We turned north on the John Muir Trail and followed it up towards Silver Pass Lake. That's Mark standing next to one of the many falls we passed on the way up. |
| We stopped briefly at this point. |
| At numerous points, we were required to cross streams, and most of the time Mark hopped across like a gazelle while Thomas took his time. |
| What started as a beautiful day soon became dark and cloudy. This was the view back just as we reached Silver Pass Lake. Shortly after we arrived, we were hurriedly setting up our tent and camp in pouring rain. |
| We were a little wet and cold by the time camp was all set up. These pictures were taken during a brief respite in the rain, during which Mark set up the stove and made some tea. We spent most of the next 12 hours sitting in our tent while the rain fell. |
Day Two
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| Mark headed towards the lake to filter some water. I took this picture of the lake, from our campsite, with Mark in it, to give you a sense of the scale. Can you find him? |
| Mark took this picture from the lake, looking back at our campsite and me. Again, I'm tiny, but it gives a good sense of scale. This is one of the only pictures of the wall of rock to our east, blocking the sun. |
| I joined Mark at the Lake and we watched sun finally sneak above the wall and through the clouds. |
| We spread our wet belongings on rocks, and we waited. Mark took the opportunity to take a stroll around the lake. These two pictures look across the lake towards Silver Pass, our first destination for the day. |
| By the time we got moving, the clouds had a decidely less friendly. This our last view of Silver Pass Lake. |
| Our first snow bank crossing. |
| This was a nice lake right before Silver Pass, with Mark in the left side of the frame. |
| When we reached Silver Pass, it had started drizzling. Silver Pass, at close to 11,000 feet, was one of our two peaks during the hike. This was the view north from the pass. |
| This is Mark, crossing a wide slope of snow. Or check out the black and white version. |
| We took a snack break at Chief Lake, and propped the camera up on a rock for this picture. |
| We had to put the camera away, as it began to rain in
earnest as we headed up towards Goodale Pass. We donned our ponchos,
and headed on. The trail, as two people had warned us, nearly vanished, but
we ventured on, and found ourself at the pass in a hard rain.
We didn't linger at the pass - if there was a view there, the clouds did not to reveal it. The rain became hail. By the time we reached the meadows below, we were wet to the knees, our boots fairly well soaked through. We were required to cross a couple of streams which were running hard. I fell in the first, Mark fell in the second. Most of our stuff remained dry, thankfully, but we did not. We almost considered bypassing the last leg of our trip, the hike up to Graveyard Lakes, but we decided to continue with our plan. At first, it seemed like we had made the wrong decision. Almost immediately, we reached a stream which was too wide to cross without removing our boots - we crossed barefoot, our feet already pruned from rain. We had a more pleasant evening than the previous night, with hot food and a real campsite. We hung our wet things on a line, and hoped it did not rain overnight. Mark mistook a low moon for a distant campfire. | |
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Day Three
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| We woke up to find the lake where we camped shimmering. While we saw many lakes in the morning, this was by far the most photogenic. It also had many faces - in fact, this same lake occurs in the next photo, and the day's header photo, above. |
| We decided to explore the lakes, but let our boots dry, so we put on our sandals and began a short hike. This is a view of the same lake, from the north side. |
| This lake was the first we came across. |
| Sadly, many of the pictures from this walk did not come out. This is one of the more successful pictures. To the lower right, behind the trees, there is a campsite near the lake. The guys who were camping there told us there was an alternate route back down to our camp. |
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We climbed a little higher, finished our film (our last picture
being the one above, of the two of us,) and then descended back to
camp along a stream.
We rested up some more, letting our drying belongings catch some sun, then we headed down, towards the Graveyard Meadows. Remember the stream we crossed barefoot the day before? We had to cross it three times on the last day. The weather gods weren't done with us. The sky again clouded up, and again we got rained on. But it was not as bad as previous days, and we got back to the car in decent shape. | |