Friday, August 26, 2011

The Range of Light

It's hard to write a single blog entry about such an epic adventure as 2 weeks on the John Muir Trail, but i'll try. Susanna and I began our hike at South Lake trailhead, which is close to Bishop in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. It was well past sunset when we began backpacking up into the John Muir Wilderness. We hiked under the stars for a little over a mile, just because we couldn't wait for the adventure to begin! The next morning, we woke up in the heart of the "Range of Light" as the Sierra Nevada is called. Ten miles later, we joined the John Muir Trail and began backpacking north with a destination of Yosemite Valley.

We ended up spending 13 nights on the trail and backpacked a full 13 days plus the evening under the stars. By the time we arrived in Yosemite Valley, we had backpacked nearly 150 miles and had more adventures than we could count. Simply put, it was one of the best two weeks of my life.



Below, I put a single photo taken from each of our 13 campsites.


Night 1: Milky Way Knob (10,180')



Night 2: Glacial Cirque View (9,800")
Night 3: Snow Level Lake (10700')



Night 4: Evolution Lake (10,880')



Night 5: Piute Creek (8,050')



Night 6: Rosemarie Meadow (9,960')



Night 7: Quail Meadows (7,920')



Night 8: Lake Virginia (10,370')



Night 9: Red Cone (8,645')



Night 10: Lower Trinity Lake (9,250')



Night 11: Garnet Lake (9,700')



Night 12: Lyell Canyon Rapids (8,940')



Night 13: Sunrise (9,340')