I hope The Signal publishes this picture.
Morning sunlight across Many Island Lake
Ben was pretty adept at finding "easy chair" rocks. We're just about ready to start walking
Early morning rock climbing, to start the day
Ah, a more open granite bowl
At the top of the bowl
Looking back over the bowl we just climbed, and the valley we climbed yesterday, and probably one or more of the ridges we crossed the day before!
Ah, big relief: at least one of the lakelets on the plateau does have water in it. Ben did some filtering here. See the log he's sitting on?
Here's a little garter snake I found, in a crack in the log that Ben (and then I) had just been sitting on, to filter water
He didn't seem to mind us too much, until I got too close. Then he jumped into the lake and slithered off.
Shortly after our long breakfast-and-water break, we encountered the trail. Pretty soon, we encountered a talkative volunteer ranger.
Zooming along the slightly-downhill trail, we passed another small lake
Here at Styx Pass, we exit Yosemite, and re-enter the Emigrant Wilderness
Ah, we finally get views north into the Emigrant. Lord's Meadow is the treed area below, on Cherry Creek, just upstream of where we'll meet the creek
A very rare sighting on this trip — Ben looking a teeny bit tired
Four of us, and Cherry Creek Canyon
All five of us (the timer worked!), and Cherry Creek Canyon
Nice pool on Cherry Creek
In normal years (and earlier in the summer), this is a wild, frothing cascade. This year, it's a series of disconnected pools.
Some of the caves and holes along here are amazingly deep
Nice deep pools, clear water
Here's another "easy-chair" spot
Ben found the "easy-chair" spot
It's mostly pretty easy walking, though the bright sun reflects off of all that granite
At the first brushy section, we took a break at this swimmin', sunnin', fishin' hole
Mark and Ben fishing. I saw an interesting duck with a red stripe on its neck, but didn't get a good enough picture of it
Down here, the creek is actually flowing a bit
Dead fuzzy tree
It's easy walking as the slope flattens a bit
Looking back at this promontory on the south side: it's probably one of the cliffs below and north of Mercur Peak
Just takin' it for granite
Big, deep pools
Mark adds some sense of scale to the big, deep pools
The creek's slope gets a bit steeper again, though it's not as steep as this picture makes it look
Group portrait (I'm looking upstream)
I like this crop of the group portrait
Ben, making tracks. Or not.
The creek's canyon meanders a bit, following the joints of weaker granite
A rare moment when I got ahead of most of the group
Along here, the creek is a trickle in spots ...
... and a bit more than a trickle in other spots. Makes for some nice little waterslides
Here's the spot where you have to leave the streamside, and climb up a ways southeast of it. Ben just sorta found it on his own
I think he just climbed up there because it looked like fun
Exfoliation in "action"
Before we were sure that Ben had found the right spot, Heather and Lindsay scouted downstream a little ways. We decided that even if we could make it through there this time of this year, it was unlikely that it was passable in a normal rain year. We filled up our water containers; it was getting late in the day
After the initial rocky slope, it got pretty steep and brushy for a while
So we decided that this was our Sunday night camp. Here's Ben and Lindsay. Ben cooked our dinner that night.
Last light, Sunday. Mark's looking out at H&L's tent