We had an easy day ahead of us on Day 3, so we took our time packing up in the morning. Pavla went for a swim, I wandered around with my camera looking for wildflowers, and David fished a bit. I think we hit the trail around 10 am and headed south along the JMT towards Shadow Creek. When I went through here in 2007 I was flying and barely noticed how amazing this stretch is. Ruby lake is a stunning deep turquoise color, Garnet Lake has a million little things that make it unique and different, and the wildflowers were just popping.
Once at Shadow Creek we left the JMT and headed up the Lake Ediza trail. The plan was to find a campsite somewhere in the area and stay for two nights, dayhiking some of the less popular lakes in the area. We found a nice legal site just before Lake Ediza where we could have campfires (so we could cook any fish we caught!), and set up.
After setting up, resting, and eating, we decided to dayhike up to Cabin Lake, which is a bit off the beaten track. It was stocked with golden trout in 2000 and David wanted to see if there were any left. Rumor had it there was an unmarked trail heading up to the lake, but we couldn’t find it on the way up. A bit of bushwhacking, scrambling around rock, and persistence finally got us to Cabin Lake. Of course, once we were there we saw the use trail. Figures.
Pavla and I soaked in the scenery while David fished. By about 6 pm we decided to head back to camp, this time following the trail we discovered near the lake. Well guess what – the trail, which, although not maintained was easy enough to follow, spit us out immediately across the river from our campsite. We waded and/or log hopped across and made a note of the crossing for our next visit.
We got back to camp and found a big group of people had pretty much camped on top of us. The site we had found had a lot of tent platforms surrounding it and we had taken our two favorites. They had set up in the others and built a new campfire ring behind the rock from ours. It was frustrating since we had walked by plenty of other (legal) empty sites and it’s not like they were running out of daylight and had to set up ASAP. Sure, it was a Saturday night in a busy area, but come on – a small amount of effort would have found you another site. Some people have absolutely no sense of trail etiquette. Luckily they were relatively quiet and stayed out of our hair.
David wandererd the 10 minutes up trail to Lake Ediza and came back with a tasty brook trout for dinner. Having planned on fish for dinner a few nights and not yet catching any, he was getting a bit sick of his granola bars and I could see that it was a big morale booster for him.
It looks a perfect place to camp and relax. The photos are great.