Day 75- July 3rd

This morning we were out on trail by 7:09am! The morning was particularly cold and our tent had horrible condensation! Sometimes the only thing you can do about it is wrap up the soaking wet tai fly in with the tent and air it out later in the day. 

Gorgeous views as we headed up our last 5 miles to Muir Pass. The trail was extremely tough, as we were to gain 2,600 feet in elevation till the pass. Whew, talk about a morning work out!

About half way up we hit the snow. Yup, 2.5 miles up in snow! There were crazy snowdrifts and snow bridges over rivers and for the most part we had to make our own way up not on the normal trail. 

Literally some ice cold river crossings

This particular snow bridge we decided not to cross!! Others had deemed it safe. If the quickly melting snow were to crumble, it'd be a 15 foot drop onto rocks and then an icy scary water tunnel ride for a few hundred feet...

Frozen lakes as still as possible made reflections across their surfaces. Mix that with the surrounding rocky landscape and you get something other-worldly.

The last mile took FOREVER to climb up. Going straight up a mountain in a straight line through snow is tough! 

At the very tip top of Muir Pass there is Muir hut. The hut is a neat little stone shelter in case you run into bad weather at the top. 

For us, the weather was perfect. I must've applied sunscreen to my neck 4 times in 4 hours! We got to the top at 11am, an hour earlier than I predicted. Headed down we hopped across boulder fields and trudged through softening snow intermittently.

We dropped down onto Wanda lake. A lake so beautiful and calm I can't quite put into words. If the most learned and vocabularied person on earth tried their hardest to describe the beauty of the Sierra, I still wouldn't understand until I saw it like this. Pictures don't do justice. Believe us, it's BEAUTIFUL...

We stopped at Wanda lake and had  Mexican rice burritos for lunch, YUM! (We're been totally stepping up our lunch game...) 

A perfect place for lunch

Again we started down down and down some more. Out of the snow, down through some lakes, back into the tree line, down through some swampy terrain, and finally stopped to camp near a beautiful river. 

We did 15.2 miles and are soooo pooped. Today's Muir Pass was the last huuuuge pass to go up and over, going from 8,000 feet to 12,000, and then back down to 8,000. There are still 5 major passes before the John Muir Trail splits from the PCT and goes down into Yosemite. 

-Thanks for reading!