This is a little late I suppose, but I came back from the woods with lotsa work and a chest infection, so posting had to sit for a bit. I'll embed some pics, but the majority of the shots I took and videos can be found HERE
Here goes:
Two hammockers, one tenter. Six days, five nights planned. Started with a beautiful drive to 8000'+ at Lake Thomas Edison. Took the ferry across (paddled this in a kayak 8 years ago) and set up camp after a 50 yard walk. Yeah we had ribeyes and baked potatoes, all in the name of acclimatization.
Ferry Across:
Set up camp, sat down to test my hammock hang, and heard a distinct creaking and grumble from the Earth.Felt the hammock "lower" a bit, jumped out like a cat and braced the tree that was now falling over in the direction of my buddy the tenter and his borrowed tent. I called for my cohorts to move our crap and disconnect my WBBBB while I braced the tree at about a 15-20 degree lean off vertical; two minutes later coast was clear and I let it crash.
The casualty:
It was about 30 ft. tall (and burned GREAT later) and I've got a good shot of my buddy glad to have his life left in front of him. I admit I did NOT inspect that tree well enough when I hooked up to it. In my defense, the top was camouflaged in with all the other green trees, and the trunk looked similarly to the trunk of all the other trees around it. Lesson learned.
Night one spent at Edison. My view from morning one:
Moving up the next day to what turned out to be respectably over 10K feet. Found Golden Trout in a meadow on the way:
Made our way up to Mott Lake:
We had layover days built in, but the climb to Mott was taxing, so we decided to stay there a day instead.
Nights 2 and 3 spent here at Mott:
We had a full moon for our trip. Hurt the stargazing, but it was pretty cool. Here's mildly retouched photo just to bring out the detail:
After our layover day we made our way down from Mott, up Silver Pass on the JMT (there's a good video in the album of me naively talking about nearing the top of Silver Pass.... yeah, not so much. We still quite a bit of "UP" to do.). For perspective, Mott Lake (where we'd just come from) is in the valley at the top left-center of this shot:
Marmot at Silver Pass lake:
We had talked to a girl at VVR who said we'd have some snow on the backside of Silver Pass, including a slide. Didn't make sense till we got there, and there were befuddled JMTers trying to pussyfoot down the edge. I figured, "what the heck" and went for it. That's my butt track in the snow; note the wary JMTer peering over the edge. Got the camera out to film my tenting buddy (it's in the album). Good fun.
We turned off the JMT to head to Goodale Pass, which was when it got hairy. This was the last shot I took in daylight at Lake of the Lone Indian
Prophetic shot because the day had turned into a cluster. That day was 12.5 hrs on trail, one missed trail cutoff due to water and snow (complete with superfluous elevation gain / loss). Goodale pass on the North face was filled with snow (no trail); being stubborn we pushed on and did it in the dark. Did I mention SERIOUS dehydration? When I finally stumbled and bent a trekking pole my good judgement set back in and I put my foot down about calling it a day in the first decent place we could find. My resting pulse was 90 all night. Yuck. Our elevation profile for the day was, loosely: 10+K to 8900 to 10700+ to 10K+ to 9800 to 10K+ to up and over 11K (in the dark) back down to 9600 or so. I know I'm leaving stuff out. Night 4 spent off trail in a meadow below Goodale pass but well above Upper Graveyard Meadow. No energy, no pics.
Based on our recent a$$-whuppin, we decided to forgo a spur to a cluster of lakes we were gonna stay at and push all the way out to Edison and VVR for out last night's stay.
VVR on our last evening:
We grabbed a real campsite for our last night. Waking the final morning above Lake Edison:
On the way out we stopped at Mono Hot Springs for a 102 degree sulfuric dip and a jump in the river before hittin the road:
The trip lost it's "casual backwoods" feeling for a bit, and morphed into "adventure". But we came out fine, lessons learned, and I've already received my replacement trekking pole section from Black Diamond. So life's good.
There's a bunch more pictures and some entertaining video in THE ALBUM, feel free to check it out. Thanks for the space to report HF!
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- Anyways - 6/9/13 
Originally Posted by Sluggie
H.Y.O.H.
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