John Muir Trail 2012 Day 6 7-19-12
Excitement ran high this morning, we were officially starting our JMT hike! We were up at 6:30, temps were in the upper 30's. We had a bit of rain as we packed up our site, but it stopped pretty quickly. We walked out of the campground and headed to the Cathedral Lake Trailhead.
We were to the trailhead at 8:30 after a big breakfast and packing. It started to rain immediately upon our arrival and kept up a steady pace all morning.
We climbed up to Cathedral Lake, chilled by the combination of rain and wind. We decided to bypass Lower Cathedral Lake and continued to the Upper Lake for a lunch stop under some trees. We finished the climb up to Cathedral Pass and the weather improved some.
There is a really nice high meadow past Cathedral Pass. Wild flowers, Cathedral Peak, Tressider Peak and Echo Peaks all add to the natural beauty. We saw a couple of deer, some marmots and a buch of Pika. I had never seen a Pika before, they are very cute and quite plump. They bounce everywhere they go!
We hiked through Long Meadow towards Sunrise High Sierra Camp, passing Columbia Finger. The southern portion of Long Meadow is amazing, a lush carpet of red grass waved in the breeze and ponds dotted the meadow floor.
We arrived at the Sunrise High Sierra Camp and found a spot among the backpackers sites. The sites are free and there is a pit toilet and running (brown) water, but the sites are a bit exposed to the weather. I had gotten a bit hungry and pretty grumpy towards the end of the hike so we made some bean burritos for lunch. Powdered refried beans, cheese powder, instant rice and Tapatio made for an awesome meal and I felt MUCH better. We went down to the store and grabbed a couple of postcards then relaxed by the fireplace. The store had free hot tea and we sat at the tables and wrote until they kicked us out for dinner. A cool feature of the High Sierra Camps is that they take your mail out by mule and stamp all of your letters. We had some awesome neighbors, an ROTC group from Georgia. The kids had collected a huge pile of wood and they invited us to join their fire. Mr Erwin (aka Gunny) was a retired drill Sgt and took a group of kids out on the trail every year, this was his first trip to California. We had a great time hanging out by the fire and talking.
The total for our hike was:
13 miles
13 miles