A few months ago Sharkin e-mailed our core group of friends from Wash U, as he knew he'd have a bit of a break in August. As the only one with a dependent, I convinced Sharkin and Louie to come down so we can go backpacking in the Sierras. Something I really haven't done in the past few years. Given our time restraint (5 days...) I figured we'd go on a 30+ mile loop somewhere. The evolutions loop have been in my radar for quite some time now, so I sold the trip to Lou & Shark.
The goal was to go light and have fun. So we took off Wed evening and drove up to Yosemite where we bunked for the night. We woke up the next morning, picked up permits at the Mono Lake Visitor Center, ate a big breakfast in Bishop and arrived at the trailhead by 12 or so... we were antsy to hit the trail, so once we did, we charged up the trail and didn't take many breaks until we were already over Bishop Pass...
here's the approximate route... (click for a bigger view)
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| At the South Lake Trailhead, we ran into these folks who were hiking out from North Lake. After chatting with them for 10 seconds, we figured they were trust worthy enough and handed them the keys to Louie's volvo so they could shuttle themselves back to their car... and the Volvo would be waiting for us at the finish... in theory... |
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| Entering the wilderness... eating stone fruit... Louie was obsessed with having "normal" stools in the backcountry, so we brought a grocery bag full of fresh fruit/veggies. So much for saving ounces... |
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| Fireweed, Chamerion angustifolium |
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| Dizzying zig zags on our way up to Bishop Pass... |
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| and a collection of silhouette pics... starting off with Louie doing his daily carpal tunnel stretches... |
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| Sharkin |
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| Dinner Time! Jambalaya! We tried to use as much of the fresh veggies as we could, but didn't get through too much of it. By this time I had already caught a few goldens... and saved two for dinner. |
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| Woke up nice and early to catch this guy... yes, he is approx twice the size of my foot... so probably 14 in+ beast... |
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| After getting a few bites, came back to wake up the crew and start brekky... |
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| We found this egg on the ground next to Louie's head. Weird right? We looked for a next, but didn't find it.... any guesses to what this belongs to? |
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| a closer look at the Citadel |
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| Some pics of wildlife (emphasis on the "wild") |
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| California Mule Deer |
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| a wild yeti... |
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| Rock chuck... aka Yellow Bellied Marmot. These guys spend 60% of their lives hibernating! |
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| At the Muir Hut! Hobnobbing with white faced neon green folks... |
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| the roof, the roof, the roof is awesome... |
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| Notice... Louie is eating a peach. |
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| Louie and I decided to hike up Mt. Solomons... if you look hard enough (and click on the pic)... you can see the trail and little tiny people on it... |
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| Louie @ the summit. This gave us a view of the Ionian Basin, which should be a destination for our next trip... |
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| Summit shot! |
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| Scree Skiing down... |
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| Back at the hut... |
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| Tiger Moth caterpillar |
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| Moon! |
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| Reflecting on Darwin |
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| Another yeti sighing... We camped on Evolution Lake at the base of Darwin & Mendel. Good fishing at this lake... |
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| Golden Trout! |
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| The next morning we decided to look for the class 3 West Face route up Darwin. This was quite a confusing route, and we ended up making several class 4 (probably class 5) moves up to the notch between Darwin & Mendel. I had a lot of fun... don't know about Sharkin... |
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| Looking back at the North end of Evolution Lake. |
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| The notch between Darwin & Mendel |
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| hmmm... a severed rope? That's never a good sign... We also found some pro... |
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| Down climbing... I was reminding Sharkin to keep on taking deep breaths here... |
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| Here is Sharkin's moment of relief... as we got back down from the puckering down climb and into Evolution Lake |
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| Dinner #3... and we still have a cucumber! WTF? Good thing we decided to go ultralight so we can carry fresh produce... |
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| My favorite section of the hike... the Darwin Bench. You start off climbing up a beautiful stream with waterfalls, meadows, wildflowers and gently opens up to 5 lakes... amazing spot... |
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| Darwin from the east... the notch that you see to the right of darwin is where I ended up... As you can see from this angle, there is no easy walk off on this side of Darwin... |
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| L to R: Darwin, Mendel, Gould |
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| You know you are at the right spot in the Lamarck Col when you see this sign |
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| Lamarck Col from the east. |
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| Moonscape... |
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| At upper Lamarck Lake. See that Brookie on the upper right? |
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| Here it is 20 seconds later... |
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| Louie, stoked that his Volvo was at North Lake! |
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| There are campgrounds at North Lake with bear bins... where many folks stash their food, as the parking lot for the trailhead has no bear bins... we found all of our food... |
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| except the beer! WTF! Who stole our beer! |
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| It's OK... as we were soon ordering burgers, milkshakes, while drinking ice cold IPAs... at the burger barn. |
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| we didn't talk much over this meal... |
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| There was quite a bit of lightening the night before... and cause some wildfires |
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| Our one and only group shot... |
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| We stopped at Rainbow Pools for a quick pick me up... |
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| And watched the start of the Rim Fire. Who knew that this would eventually turn out to be the biggest fire in the Sierras in recorded history... |
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| Back at 505. All is well when you are jousting with hiking poles with a naked Kai bear... |
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