Rich and Matt, aside from being generally pretty nice guys to travel with, had a bottomless stash of all the food groups we had foolishly forgotten, namely salt and grease. This morning, they generously shared their hash browns with us, and they were exquisite. Just one day after eating my fill of the same at Red's Meadow, here I was, wolfing those things down like a parched man finding an oasis in the desert. Old habits die hard.
Stepping over the carnage of several thousand recently-deceased bugs in our wet Smartwool socks, we were on the trail by 9:00. We had filled up on water because of the long dry spell ahead.
Our hike began on an easy grade, continuing along the west flank of a wooded ridge before crossing a saddle to the upper edge of Cascade Valley - a nice view. After a stop for water and minor foot surgery at Duck Creek, we continued across a low ridge to the shore of pretty Purple Lake, where we had lunch in a meadow covered with wildflowers.
There were interesting people on the trail that day, starting with the self-proclaimed "Grandmothers Running Club," four fortiesh-year-old women out for a little eighteen-mile jog from the trailhead below Duck Pass to Mammoth, and ending with a gentleman who huffed by us en route to a seven day sprint of the entire JMT. Though we are certainly big fans of machismo, we wondered why one would do a thing like that. We also wondered just how one could do a thing like that.
The entire JMT passes through country with lots of big rock formations, but those in the pass between Purple Lake and Lake Virginia were particularly amazing, and we took a lot of pictures and video. In one section, a massive slab of well over a hundred feet tall had peeled off the side of the mountain, crashing into the pile of rubble below. One of my pictures shows Julian standing next to an unusual triangular-shaped rock of 15 feet on a side that looks more like a giant wedge of bleu cheese than a creation of nature. Its interesting to walk through sections of trail with so much to see - I find myself walking backwards, turning in circles and stopping over and over to take it all in.
Downhill from the pass, we entered the stunning hanging bowl that contains Virginia Lake. The trail comes in at the east end of the lake, and the picture before us was truly breathtaking. The lake sits in a gentle valley, with a peak rising above it in the middle of the far end, opposite our vantage point. On either side of the peak, the ridge falls away, leaving the view open to ranges of snow capped peaks far in the distance. White fluffy clouds and a deep blue sky completed the picture, which was as beautiful as any we would see on the trip.
Rich and Matt had gone ahead and secured a nice camp on the south side of the lake so they could start fishing. They left us a cryptic note in the sand and a flag made of Matt's hideous yellow pants (on sale in the bargain bin for $5) to help us find the way.
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