It rained lightly all night, but stopped just before we sat up to eat breakfast. It is still so dark in the early morning that it is really helping give us more hiking time if we eat in the dark, rather than waiting for it to be light enough to hike, then stopping just after sunrise, as was our plan before. And it was certainly nice to be able to pack up with nothing more than tree drip coming down this morning!

Once we started hiking, we noticed that the clouds looked a bit “looser”–not so dense and dark. We even saw a glimpse of blue sky for a tiny short while. And best of all, the clouds were much higher up, so we could actually see the nearby mountains–wow! They were rugged, granitic, very Sierra-ish, with lots of glaciers. Ribbons of white were running down every mountainside, and sometimes we could hear their faint roar. I speculated mentally as to whether that would add up to “fun” river crossings up ahead.

The trail itself had obviously been recently worked on, and still had ribbon tags that said things like, “Begin retread” or “End brushing.” And soon we did have to ford Lemah Creek. It wasn’t deep–only midcalf–but quite wide and very cold. I didn’t mind–my socks got rinsed as I walked across, and they needed it!

We soon began a climb that took till 10 am to finish, to the top of Escondido Ridge, where we did catch a few mountain views through gaps in the clouds. The nice thing about the climb was that it didn’t rain! But it was cold–50 degrees. On an uphill, that’s no problem, but then came the long downhill to the Waptus River. It’s harder to stay warm on a downhill. We stopped for lunch partway down, and oh joy, there were rocks that were DRY, with a BREEZE blowing (cold, yes, but a breeze!) so while we ate lunch, we could spread out our damp tarp, sleeping bags, etc. so that they dried off nicely. The clouds overhead were very loose and often would break up, leaving holes of blue sky. We could even see sunpatches across the valley from us.

Then came the climb up Cathedral Pass on reasonable trail–not as rough as the downhill had been. And the plants by the trail were nice and dry from the breeze, so we could hike along, pushing through overgrowth, without getting wet. We paused for a moment at beautiful Deep Lake. What a place! It has flat, beautiful meadows there, but we needed more miles, so after a couple of pictures, we climbed on up past Cathedral Peak, a well-named rocky sentinel. We did reach the top of the pass and headed down, now looking for a campsite (it was late!) The map showed a possible flat place not too far down, but when we got there, yikes! It was cramjammed full of backpacker tents! Now way could we have shoehorned ourselves in.

So now, really a bit worried (it was after 7 pm, and the sun had gone down), we hurried on through a very wet (due to low clouds) alpine environment. Every flat place we could see was sodden and exposed, but we finally found a spot in a tree grove that we could JUST barely squeeze into. We were up very high, it was very cold, and we were actually IN the clouds. Brrr!

But on the “way cool” side, the alpine scene here is awesome and unique, and we were were SO glad of very little actual rain today. We even had a a “sun moment’ at around 4 pm, when for an hour we were able to wear just “plain old hiking clothes” instead of layers and layers, trying to stay warm.