Two fairly big back to back days. I said we were planning to ramp up a bit but this was a lot. I think we left camp around 7:30 and didn’t get into our current camp until 19:00.
We woke up to smoke. The winds blew in smoke overnight and we have no idea from where. We don’t have any knowledge about fires and no idea where to go to find out. Something to do the next time we’re in town. Hopefully we don’t forget.
We were the last of the 3 tents into camp but the first ones out this morning. We had a brutal, nearly vertical at times, pass to do first thing. Thankfully, we had done a portion of it the night before. We were fresh though, and nothing painful in the morning lasts too long. When we got to the top, we could see the smoke behind us. Initially it looked like we might be walking away from it, but at the top of the pass we saw more in front of us. I put on my N-95 mask on the descent, and one of the two straps immediately broke. I hate gear. A little while later, it seemed like the smoke had lessened and I took off the mask, which was making my face pretty sweaty.
At one point we passed a guy, who stepped off the trail to let us by. When I passed him, he made a shushing sound as he lifted a finger to his lips, said something in French that I didn’t understand, and pointed down to the ground. I looked down to see a lump of a dead plant, that could easily be confused for a marmot. I assumed that’s the word he said and I started cracking up. He laughed too. I told Zoë about the joke, since she was a bit behind me and didn’t get the same treatment. She said that was my kind of humor. I like that guy.
We got to a dammed lake around 12:30. We were hungry for lunch, but there was a better lake another hour away. We compromised by having a quick lunch in the direct sun, and then planned to break at the better lake. The upside of the dammed lake was, it looked nearly as blue as Tahoe or Crater Lake. It was crazy.
The better lake was better, but there was a group of 12 on one part of the shore. We found a patch to ourselves and I quickly jumped in. The bottom of the lake was awful: sharp rocks, slippery mud on top, and a relatively slow drop off. It made for a painful entry and exit. We talked about what we wanted to do next. We could walk another half an hour, to another lake and camp there, or we’d have to walk another 4 hours more to the next campsite. We decided to hike the next half hour and see.
We made it to the last listed campsite and were debating whether or not to call it an early day. At 15:00, we decided we would go for the additional 4 hour section. We’d only done 5.5 hours, but our choices were either 5.5 or 9.5. We wanted 8, but if we did more today, it had the added benefit of only leaving us one pass for tomorrow, rather than two. As soon as we started climbing I regretted leaving. I knew I’d be glad when it was over, but just after we left, I wanted to be seated.
The first pass was fairly steep and the descent from the second minor pass into our campsite seemed to go on forever. The alpine scenery was really good. There were quite a few snowfields still up here, so we walked on the flat ones and avoided all the steeply sloped ones. While we walked I wondered if we’d see any of our friends we’d met. We were a day behind them but at this point we were making up that lost day. So it’s possible we might have run into someone. No such luck. Plenty of people out, but no one we knew.
We found a campsite, and instantly went to work setting everything up. I set up the tent, Zoë went to get water. We cooked, and now I need to get as much sleep as I can before tomorrow morning arrives.