Reflection lake yosemite2/28/2024 ![]() Nothing a handful of chocolate couldn’t cure though (let me tell you… Trader Joe’s Powerberries, combined with their choco-covered espresso beans, will cure anything).Īt the juncture were signs leading to several different destinations. Amazing what a difference a pack makes at altitude).īy the time we reached the top at the trail juncture, I was a sweaty and sun-baked mess. (And as I came to discover over the course of that week, even a measly 2 miles would feel like a strenuous 5 miles in the end. In the hot afternoon sun with hardly any shade, we trudged up a thousand feet vertical in a single mile. ![]() But after skipping along without a sweat, we reached a series of steep switchbacks that was so brutal, I was trying to conjure a sherpa to carry my pack to the top. It was fairly flat, with some downhill, and we were already used to the high altitude. I knew this day would be the most challenging of the whole week, due to the elevation gain and the pack weight, but the first mile and a half of our trail was quite deceiving. It quickly fell out of view as we headed deeper into the forest toward Sunrise Lakes. The lake level was much lower this year after an unseasonably dry winter, but stunning nonetheless. What was normally a rock hop over the Tenaya outlet turned into a lake ford that year, with some sections waist deep.Īs we set out for Sunrise Lakes, I found it so interesting that we were on the same trail I’d paddled over that summer, while watching other hikers wade across with their backpacks over their heads. Some of the smaller lakes, like Tioga, were still frozen, and rainstorms caused other lakes to overflow. Just two summers ago on a road trip, I went kayaking on Tenaya Lake after a particularly heavy winter. It’s the largest lake in the High Country, and being right off the road, it’s also one of the most visited. You could walk right out into the lake and still be knee-deep in water for at least 50 feet. Tenaya is a Yosemite classic: a glassy, pristine pool of water surrounded by massive granite domes and pine forests. We passed Tenaya Lake at the start and it was tempting to just park it on the side and camp right on the lake. But I resisted, which I was thankful for in my final days when I made the world’s best pasta for dinner (at least, it seemed like the world’s best pasta at the time, complete with sun-dried tomatoes, porcini mushrooms, and grated Parmesan). My pack weighed at least 45 pounds and my first thought as I took off from the trailhead was… Damn, I need to start eating all this food.įor a quick moment I considered gorging myself the first day, losing all the pack weight, and suffering with starvation the rest of the trip. Being quite the lavish backcountry cook, it was nearly comical. Another friend was meeting us for this leg of the trip, so our threesome soon became a foursome.įrom the parking lot at May Lake, we drove to the trailhead at Tenaya Lake early Friday morning with our backpacks full of the next five days’ worth of food. After acclimatizing at Raisin Lake for two days, we were rested, relaxed, and excited to begin (like, truly begin) our backpacking journey from Yosemite High Country to Yosemite Valley.
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