Day 15 – 7/15/18
~12.6 miles
Iceberg Lake to Blue Lake

Holy day of slow route finding.

On the way up our first pass, our heads down, picking our own way up talus and ramps, Dan and I lost each other for a few terrifying minutes, both convinced the other must’ve slipped and knocked themself unconscious.  Better stay in sight!

Then it was over another pass to the west end of Thousand Island Lake, a pretty famous lake along the JMT (which passes the east end of this lake), so we weren’t surprised to find a group of people with fishing rods there.  But then we saw something like 10 more people throughout the day, which seemed kinda crazy, because we went through some tough route finding later on (3 were SOBO High Routers, 1 guy we saw at a distance but didn’t get to talk to, and then a dad and his 2 boys doing a little section of the High Route).

Leaving Thousand Island Lake (quite and exaggeration), we  headed up to Glacier Lake Pass, which brought us to beautiful Lake Catherine, with a lovely view of Mt Ritter and Banner Peak, and the col between them.  We even saw two climbers high on the col.

From there it was a long drop down with route finding around drop offs like 80′ waterfalls.  It was pretty and a fun new kind of terrain, but slow. Oh! And we got to wade through a lake just before the outlet (this is the prescribed route), about crotch deep, but no noticeable current. WEE!

Very very tired.