July 28, 2010

JMT Day 3


Garnet Lake

Date:Friday , July 16
Miles: ~23
Cumulative Total: 67.5 miles
Camp: Two miles past Deer Creek

I opened the tent door on morning number 3 to see... clouds? Its not supposed to be cloudy in the Sierras in the summertime! The theme for the morning was FLAT LEGS. We both probably were experiencing a bit of a calorie deficit by this point, and it started to catch up with us. Small climbs, like the switchbacks past Garnet Lake, made us pretty tired.

After lunch, however, things started to turn around and we started to feel good hiking towards Devil's Postpile National Monument. We detoured off the JMT to check out the postpile, which was a really cool geologic formation. After the postpile, we entered a long gradual climb through a forest that had been devastated by a fire. It was kind of an eerie place.

Around 5pm we started hearing lots of thunder... it hailed and rained for 20-30 minutes, but not really enough to be troublesome. We heard from hikers heading in the opposite direction that they had been experiencing bad weather all day, and hoped that we wouldn't have to deal with anymore storms.

Since mosquitoes continued to be a problem, we hiked for a few more miles after dinner, figuring that it was better to keep moving than get eaten alive by the little buggers. Having covered almost 68 miles in the first 3 days on the trail, we fell asleep easily.


Ruby Lake


Garnet Lake


We were tired, but still smiling!


More alpine lake scenery


Reaching Devil's Postpile


The skies started to clear


Devil's Postpile


Another shot of the postpile


The forest that had been burnt twice in the past 20 years


First time we broke out the rain gear on the trip. It was only a 30 minute shower, but it foreshadowed what we were going to hit the following afternoon.

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