14.5 PCT miles.
Last night and this morning were both very cold. It had been a while since we had camped this high, just under 10,000 ft. We were also sleeping next to a creek fed by snowmelt. It made the area extra cold, but drinking the snowmelt water is one of my favorite things about this Sierra section. I do not think I will ever taste better water than filtered snowmelt.
Our first task for the day was to cross Benson Pass, a 10,000 ft pass about a mile away from where we camped. As we went uphill, the snow started to cover the trail in places, making navigation a challenge.
At one point, Phoenix, Sage, and I thought we saw the pass just up a snow chute. I put my crampons on and started up it, only to see Songbeard zipping along dry trail on the rocks above us. I took my crampons off and took the mostly exposed trail to the pass. I had to stop along the way to catch my breath. I'm not great at uphill and at 10,000 ft I was having trouble getting oxygen to my legs.
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| Snow chute to the pass? |
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| Nope, this is the pass. |
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| Looking back at the ascent. |
Up at the pass we had a nice view of the descent. We took our time on the pass because today was going to be an “easy day.” Eventually we moved on, but had to navigate the snow and bushwhack around it at times to get to the exposed trail.
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| Beautiful view of the descent. |
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| Descending Benson Pass. |
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| Crossing a snowfield. |
We then headed downhill for a long time. The views of the granite mountains were beautiful and we were passing by lakes and waterfalls. The trail was incredibly steep, however. I was glad I was going down it and not up it.
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| Taking a water break. |
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| Wildflowers by a stream. |
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| Meadow crossing. |
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| Passing a lake. |
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| Passing a waterfall. |
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| View from the trail. |
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| Another view from the trail. |
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| Walking the trail through northern Yosemite. |
A couple of the people in the group were taking about bushwhacking down the side of a creek so that we would only have to cross it once instead of 3 times. I didn't think it was worth it, but when I addressed it with Songbeard, he told me that we had already finished those crossings. They were so ordinary that I hadn't even registered that those were on the “difficult creek” list.
When we got to the bottom of a canyon, we had to cross Piute Creek. This creek looked swift and deep in parts. We crossed the first fork by walking on a submerged log and hopping to a sandbar. For the second fork we found a log jam near the trail crossing and used that.
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| Julia and Phoenix crossing the first fork. |
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| Songbeard crossing the log jam on the second fork. |
We walked a little further and ate lunch. Because it was an easy day, we also napped for about an hour.
By the time we left, the smokey forest fire haze rolled in again. Since this has happened the past couple afternoons we speculated maybe they are controlled burns. Unfortunately, it totally ruined the view. Everything was washed out in smoke.
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| Smoke ruining the day. |
We then started the climb to Seavy Pass. That was a steep uphill climb for about 3 miles. It would have been a beautiful climb with nice views, but the smoke washed it out. There was a pretty little lake at the top, but it was diminished by the smoke as well.
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| Smoked out lake. |
Getting to the pass itself was trickier than we thought. There was quite a bit of snow remaining and navigation was difficult. We had to pull out our GPSs multiple times to find the route.
If navigation of the Seavy Pass approach was unexpected, the descent was even more so. A lot of it was snow covered, but one section ran in a narrow space next to a creek. We had to kick traverse steps into a steep snow bank over the creek, and the snow was kind of slushy. My heart hadn't beaten like that since those early, high passes I had done a while ago. I had thought the tricky traverses were over.
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| The trail on the left eventually became a steep snowbank. |
It took us a long time to work our way through the snow section of the descent, and everyone was exhausted. We still had about 4 more miles to go to our next water crossing challenge, Kerrick Creek.
It took what seemed like forever to get to Kerrick Creek. It was a long descent. I met everyone by the trail crossing of the creek and saw right away that it would be a difficult crossing. It was deeper and swifter than anything we had previously crossed.
The water report had mentioned a log upstream, so we went in search of it. We found the log, which was huge and it ended up being a somewhat easy crossing.
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| Sage and Songbeard crossing the log at Kerrick Creek. |
Even though we didn't do that many miles, everyone was exhausted from the day and we set our tents up right next to the creek.
Such gorgeous scenery!
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