Another beautiful day on the trail today, starting off with a climb to Selden Pass that took us by the stunning Marie Lake. I regretted not making it all the way to Marie for camp the night before, but it was a bit windy up there so at least it wasn’t a perfect spot.
The climb to Selden was easy, as was the descent past Heart and Sallie Keys Lakes. The lakes in here were beautiful – I wish we’d been able to camp around there, but the schedule just didn’t work out. Next time. A couple of miles beyond Sallie Keys the trail spit us out onto a steep hillside covered in manzanita. I swear that the temperature instantly jumped 20 degrees. As we went down the long, never ending switchbacks I found myself desperately longing for the next small spot of shade. Unfortunately, as the trail descended to Muir Trail Ranch it just got dustier, sunnier, and hotter.
While the rest of the group headed down to MTR to pick up their resupply, I took the cutoff and headed up to the Piute Bridge to set up camp. It was miserably hot in the sun, but the only non-horse poopy site was sunny. I set up my tent and then went down to the creek where I could soak my feet. I camped at this same spot last year and the water was dangerously high and swift. This year it was a gentle flow, several feet lower. A few hours later the rest of the group showed up for our last night together on the trail.
This day’s stats:
- Mileage: 12.42 mi
- Ascending: 1244 ft
- Descending: 3186 ft
- Cumulative Mileage: 92.45 mi
- Cumulative Ascending: 15,898 ft
- Cumulative Descending: 16,424 ft
