Day 4
8/19/17
14? miles
(53.2 miles total)

What a tough day! We worked for our miles. The morning was easy enough, dropping down to Golden Lakes, where we saw a few campers and a fisherman, and I snapped my trekking pole. 

We had decent trail from there to a lake below Douglas Peak. Off trail again, we scrambled up along the bottom of a cliff band, lots of pikas meeping at us. Towards the top, we thought we heard voices. 

After posing for a photo, we definitely heard voices, followed by seeing them. Another pair of high routers were right behind us! And wouldn’t you know, they’re from Portland too, ha!
We chatted a few minutes and determined we’d likely be leap frogging with them the rest of our trip. They have very similar eclipse viewing plans!

Dropping down from the pass we had another whole string of beautiful lakes to work our way past, some still with icebergs floating around. Definitely no trail this time. 

The going was slow, alternating snow and talus. At the final lake before ascending to Alpine Pass, there was a section to “sneak below” or go above. At current lake levels, sneaking below would’ve required scuba gear, which we did not pack. So we went up. Except it turns out we went up too much. Way too much up. Way too much up a bunch of laborious talus. We backtracked, did some sketchy downclimbing and eventually found our way. But we wasted a long time and a lot of energy. 

Upon getting back on track we saw our high route friends high up on Alpine Pass. They disappeared from view as we climbed over a moraine and when we could see the Pass again, we saw 2 people…coming down! They were just tiny specks, much too far as way to identify them, but I became very paranoid our high route friends from this morning had for some reason decided to turn around and come back!  

We pushed on and then noticed our friends continuing up the Pass. The folks we saw coming down were yet another pair of hikers, likely doing the same route in reverse (we didn’t get to talk to them – different routes across the trailless terrian). 

We made it up the pass and down the other side easily enough, but were tired. Just before camp, I snapped my other trekking pole. They both broke about 6″ above te tips, so I can actually extend them long enough to still sorta work, just without tips to take the abuse of extended use. They should still be ok for a little hiking, but no longer can be made long enough to set up our tent. Good thing Bubs still has 2 functional poles! We snagged the first campable area we came to and called it a night, our high route friends not far away.