JMT Day 16: A Good Day

Today was a good day. Long, hard, but everything seemed to be in my favor.

My camp last night was at the base of Glen Pass, so with a 6:20am start, I was at the top by 7:40. Luckily I was warned by the Colorado folks that there was a plateau 1/2 way up that was a 'false top', so instead of being bitterly disappointed at that point, I knew I had to keep slogging on up. It was tough, but doable.

Breakfast Spaghetti with a "Glen View!"

From then on the walking was easy. Very little of the talus shards (thanks my Claremont Southies for giving me the name of my rocky nemesis!), just nice hard-packed sandy trail for almost all the way. What a relief! I felt I could actually hike normally rather than stumbling and feeling like I was rolling backward with each step! Much of the middle of the day was through forest, alongside a creek,  so there was lovely shade and soft pine-needle footing. It turned out there was still tons of elevation, a lot of it at 1000'/mile, but without the dreaded steep stone steps.

I had intended to stop at 13 miles at Bubb's Creek origin, but I was feeling good and there were no clouds building yet on Forester so I decided to go for my second pass of the day. It turns out Bubb's lake looked pretty inhospitable at 12,217':

The trail was still nice sandy, graded switchbacks, but my breathing got labored and the legs started screaming above 12,000. Hike 10 yards, take a breather, take a picture, hike 10 yards. The Pass, like all so far, was impossible to determine from below. Even as I got closer I had no idea to which ridge the trail was taking me. It turned out to be a tiny one! What, 20' long?

The south side was not for the faint-of-heart as the trail had a sheer drop off and very tight corners. With my aching legs I had to take extra care to go nice and slow and carefully plant each step. Then I looked at my watch: 4pm! Get off the mountain! Grey clouds were building but as I hurried down to the ground and scurried by those lakes, the clouds happened to drift off to the west, leaving me scot-free.

(Who'd have thunk that little notch would be a good place for a Pass?)

The only problem of going over Forester in the afternoon, was that it meant I had another 4 miles before I could find a decent campsite and by that time it was 6pm. So this turned out to be an epic day: 2 passes, 12 hours and 18 miles.

Today's Miles: 18.4