68 miles hike at Ansel Adams Wilderness - Day 3
Additional days Blog Posts:
Day 3:
Start: Ediza Lake, Ansel
Adams Wilderness
End: Davis Lakes, Ansel Adams
Wilderness
Statistics: 16 miles, +4020ft
/ -3360ft
6am early
morning wake up, it was still half dark but I went to the other side of the lake
to take some sunrise pictures. As the sun went up it start to light the mountain
peaks and slowly going down to the lake below. The panoramic view was amazing.
We packed all
our stuff into the backpacks and hike to the nearby trail junction.
We want to take
a side-trip, hike up and back to Iceberg Lake, so we stash our backpacks near
the trail junction and hike without all the weight up the trail. Additional one
mile climbing brought us to Iceberg Lake.
From here we took
an un-maintained but clear trail start to climb the mountain on the left side
of the lake. After 0.6 mile of climbing on a relatively decent trail we went
straight up in a narrow gorge. This was an extremely steep bolder sloop climbing
section, after half an hour of difficult climb we arrived to Cecile Lake.
The small Cecile
Lake is nested right on the top of the mountain ridge, nested below the cliffs
of the peaks on both sides.
We gave ourselves
a few minutes to relax and enjoy the view and soon after we start our way down.
It was even more
difficult and slightly dangerous to take the same way down, the rocks were unstable
creating mini landslides, it took us a lot of time to go back down.
Later we saw
another less challenging way that climb up (no need to take the gorge section),
for next time we will take this easier and safer rout 😊
We hiked back
all the way down to the trail junction near Ediza Lake and took our hidden backpacks.
On our way down we saw a team of forest rangers with volunteers that build a new wooden bridge crossing the river and other group that are doing boulders trail maintenance.
I
think that as part of the wilderness regulations even the maintenance crew
can’t use any motorized mechanical tools, so they need to cut the huge tree
trunk with two man Crosscut Saw, looks like a hard “old school” labor.
Later we asked another
group about their work routine, they told us that they usually spend 2 weeks
working in the wilderness and in between getting one week off.
We keep hiking
down the trail near the stream up to the junction with John Muir Trail, at this
junction we turned left (north) and start our hike on the JMT.
From the trail
junction we hiked up the mountain and down to Garnet Lake (2.7 miles section).
The large
Garnet Lake has many small islands that are covered with trees, where the Banker
Peak Mountain is towering high up on the far west side of the lake, a
picturesque view.
After Garnet
Lake we keep heading north on the JMT, climbing another mountain range, and
arriving on the other side to Thousand Island Lake.
It was still
relatively early (around 4pm), and we hiked until now only 12 miles, so we
decided not to stay for the night here but to keep going north (+ many campers
do stay here for the night, and they can probably enjoy the morning sunrise
view).
From Thousand
Island Lake heading north the JMT trail is connect to the PCT trail, we will
hike this trail the way back to Yosemite.
After
additional of almost 3 miles and another mountain range crossing, we arrived
the trail junction that will take us to Davis Lakes. Additional 0.8-mile-long side
trail up the stream brought us to Davis Lakes. Two lakes nested at the shadow
of mount Davis (12,310ft).
As we preferred
it, no one else except us was here for the night.
The view was
amazing, small pools of water, no wind, perfect reflection and amazing sunset
light, perfect way to finish the day.
More picture from the same day:
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