Day 2, September 7, 2017 - Alger Lakes to Garnet Lake

Fortunately day 2 began much better than day 1 ended.  We both felt poor in the morning but felt much better when we got some food in us. It took three hours to get out of camp in the morning.  And we thought younger scouts were slow.

View looking back toward our camp at Alger Lakes and Koip Pass

Our itinerary had us heading to Thousand Islands Lake for the night's camp.  As we began hiking, we agreed in a change of itinerary and decided to head to Garnet lake instead.
Our route took us past Gem Lake, which Susan and I had visited a few summers ago.  We ate lunch near the inlet of the lake and enjoyed the sound of the babbling creek.  If I recall correctly, we played our first game of Sierra corn cup here, which was won by Mark.

Our day 2 lunch spot 

After lunch, we began to climb Agnew Pass.  Just past Agnew Pass we had a decision to make - Take the direct route to Garnet Lake, around 2.5 miles which included a 500' descent and 700' climb, or take the longer flatter route which was about 5 miles.  Mark's feet really wanted to follow the contour lines and take the longer route, but he stepped up and agreed to take the direct route.


View toward Mt. Banner and Ritter from an unnamed lake near Agnew Pass

The adventure of going up and down was a lot of fun. We got to the middle fork of the San Joaquin River and realized we were not sure how we would cross.  A bit of investigation revealed a very interesting stream crossing.  A miss step here would certainly end your trip prematurely!

After the successful stream crossing, we had the 700' climb up an unmaintained trail to Garnet Lake.  Fortunately, we ran into a group who had just come down the trail and gave us a couple tips going up.  Basically straight up. 

We reached the top of the gully around 5:30 to discover the small bridge over the outlet of Garnet Lake.




We picked a camp around six that evening.  The lake was rather crowded, but we found a great camp spot about half mile from the outlet. We ate the rest of the salmon pasta we did not finish from the night at Alger Lakes and made the first loaf of bacon cheese bread.  Our appetites had recovered from the first night, and we powered through the bread, which came out perfectly.


Once the sun set, the wind, which had been blowing all afternoon, died. Great evening, so glad we got over our altitude sickness.

  

Our inreach location for the day is here

Day 3 page is here

Daily Statistics
Miles hiked  10.8
Elevation gain  
Elevation lost
Precipitation:  None
Morning low temperature:  Not recorded, estimate low 40s to high 30s

Day 1, September 6, 2017 - Dana Meadows to Alger Lakes

Our trip started innocently enough in the small parking lot for the Dana Meadows trailhead, elevation 9700'.  We were escorted to the trailhead by Mark's wife Rhonda and their two foreign exchange students Elena and Annette.  It might mb hard to tell from the photo below, but my observation is that they don't take well to temperatures below 60F.  This picture was before breakfast at Tuolumne Meadows.

And here are Matt and Mark at the beginning of the trip. 


They would not look that clean again for three weeks. 

The first day's itinerary had us going over two passes, Parker and Koip.  Parker Pass (elevation 11,100') was the first of two passess we would go over that day.  The trip up toward Parker Pass and the surrounding terrain were very pretty and a great way to start the trip.

As most passes are, Parker Pass was rather barren.




Once over Parker Pass we got into a dramatic change of scenery.  After a small drop in elevation, we began to climb in elevation, and the terrain also changed. More rocks, snow and water, and some vegetation. 

After passing several streams and small lakes, we began our climb up Koip Pass.  Elevation at the pass is 12,250'.  The climb up the pass was very strenuous, like perhaps more strenuous than we should have elected to take on day one of our trip.  The view back toward the small lake pictured above from near Koip Pass.  



Mark and Matt at Koip Pass



Looking down from just below Koip Pass as we descend toward Alger Lakes (lower right)



If the hike up Koip Pass did not take it out of us, then the hike down to our camp spot at Alger Lakes did.  We descended over 2000' to camp near the closest of the larger lakes.  We go into camp at 6pm.   You may have noticed the clouds in the picture above.  We encountered a couple of hours of off and on light rain during our descent to camp and while setting up camp and making dinner. We both had minor altitude sickness and did not eat all the salmon pasta I prepared, did not take the time to bake bacon cheese bread, and ate no dessert. 


This was definitely a one off for the trip, as food played a central role for all of our days on the trail.  We both set up tents and got to bed as soon as possible. 


I felt terrible all night.  It was windy off and on all night and into the morning.  I remember laying in my tent in the middle of the night and wondering what I had gotten myself into.  I just wanted to go home.  That sentiment fortunately did not last beyond the night of day 1. 

There is no inreach location for this day.

Day 2 page is here

Daily Statistics
Miles hiked:  11
Elevation gain:   2500'  
Elevation lost :  2150'
Precipitation:  2 hours light rain in the eveining
Morning low temperature:  Not recorded, estimate mid 40s 

Introduction

This blog is to share my thoughts and experiences during a three week Sierra backpacking trip in September, 2017.  The participants were Matt Swider and Mark Shaw.  The blog is primarily generated for family members, but anyone with an interest in backpacking may enjoy this.  During the trip I (Matt Swider) wrote a journal each day.  I will illustrate the journal with some of the pictures which Mark (the nice ones) and I took along the way.  Most day's posts include the camp location from our inreach transmissions.  Unfortunately, a few days did not make it to the recipients for some reason.

Sunrise view from camp at Garnet Lake

As a bit of background, The original idea was to hike the "official" John Muir Trail (JMT) from north to south, or from Happy Isles in Yosemite National Park to the summit of Mount Whitney.  We were unable to get a back country permit leaving from any trail head which took us over Donahue Pass, as YNP allows only 45 people a day to go southbound over this pass.  We were not disappointed, as we had both hiked this section of trail multiple times.  But of course, we must end on top of Mt. Whitney, right?   Well, we both spent the night on top of Mt. Whitney last summer, and the hike down from there is not very enjoyable.  Not just the 6000' of elevation drop, but the 6000 unprepared hikers coming up from Whitney Portal, and leaving their trash everywhere.  So we obtained a permit to leave from Dana Meadows, which is just east of Tuolumne Meadows.  And our exit point target was Horseshoe Meadows, roughly 200 miles away.  So since we did not cover the whole JMT, maybe you could call this JMT lite.

Several months of planning went into executing the trip.  The one item that consumed the most time was food.  Both Mark and I like to eat well.  We spent about 6 hours a week before the trip laying out, labeling, and packaging most of the food for shipment.

And sampling our hands down favorite food item for the trip, bacon cheese bread.

There was a small mistake made during food packaging.  After several hours of dealing with this task, my brain was getting pretty fried.  When looking at the mix for the bacon cheese bread, I thought I had failed to add the bacon already.  Well, I was mistaken, but my kind wife brought over more bacon to add to the mix.  So instead of 1/3 cup bacon in each loaf, we ended up with 2/3 cup bacon.  It was not such a bad thing .  .  . .  😁  😁

Day 1 page is here