Backpacking to Blue Lake, Part II

I put the rest of the photos from the weekend up in the gallery!

Sunday morning dawned bright and clear. I had one of the best nights of sleep while backpacking that night. I think it supports my theory that I am not capable of sleeping at 11,000ft. Our camp was closer to 10,000ft this weekend, and I felt much better all night. I woke before Mark, grabbed my camera and dog, and hiked back up to the lakes for morning photography. I was not early enough to catch any alpin-glow, but the reflections on hang lake were incredible.

I wandered back to camp and got Mark up. We made breakfast (thank goodness for that mosquito netting again), and Mark had an adventure in backpacker’s biscuits and gravy. Liv ended up eating half a roll of self-rising biscuit dough that morning. We packed water and snacks into Mark’s bag and then hiked up to Blue Lake.

Sunday, the weather seemed much better. Mark and I were quickly able to hike to the top of the nearby pass. From there, we had to decide if we wanted to hike to Island and Timber Lakes on the far side of the pass, or hike up to the summit of Cameron Peak from there. I’m a sucker for peaks, and Mark calculated that the elevation loss/gain would be about 2,000ft less if we just went up, so we headed into the trees.

The trail we found wound up around the lower slopes of the peak to a wide grassy saddle on the north side of Cameron Peak. From there, it was straight up over the hill, over the first false summit, and then on to the true one at 12,194ft. The views were awesome.

Another great thing about this little peak, we were the only ones there. We hung out on the summit, which we had all to ourselves, for about half an hour, and then took off down the hill. We decided to descend the south side, on a more direct route to the pass. This worked great until we got a little lost in the trees, and I did end up leading us into a bit of a swamp towards the end, but we popped out into the grass again quickly without much bushwacking.

From there, we hiked back to camp, packed up, and headed back to the car. It took us about 3.5 hours to hike down from the pass to the car that afternoon. It felt grueling, and I found myself horribly sunburnt by the end of the day. As of writing, my nose and back are kind of peeling. But it was a really fun weekend!