Stats

Start: Cathedral Lakes (off trail) – Mile 942.5
End: Clouds Rest (off trail) – Mile 942.5
Elevation Max: 9,982
Elevation Min: 7,799
Elevation Change: 2,377 up & 3,188 down
Average Heart Rate: 103
Walking Time: 3 hrs 52 minutes
Date: 6/7/2022

The Walk

Another easy morning. I woke up and didn’t worry about moving quickly. Cathedral lake was still beautiful. I ate breakfast and relaxed. I did yoga and mediation on top of the ridge overlooking the lake.

Then I took my air mattress down to the lake to search for a leak. I patched it once in Mammoth, but it still was leaking. Last night I had to blow it up twice in the middle of the night. And by 7:30 I was touching the ground.

The lake wasn’t moving. Which is exactly what I need. It’s tricky to find a leak in moving water. Because you need to be able to see bubbles coming up out of the water.

I put the air mattress in to check if my patch was leaking. It wasn’t. But there was another leak close by! Perfect. I checked the rest and didn’t see anything. So I climbed back up to the camp spot and patched the second hole. Hopefully tonight I’ll get a full nights sleep.

We planned to get to clouds rest and maybe do half dome. Depending how we felt. Around 10 we actually got out of the lakes and headed out for the day.

Most of the day was walking through a mix of forest and meadow. Pretty mild. Until we took the sunrise lakes side trail. That was a break from the JMT. We started to climb up to the lakes.

At the first lake I noticed a lot of mosquitos when we stopped, so we kept moving. They will probably be everywhere. The third lake was smaller and hopefully warmer, so we kept waking.

At the third lake we found a nice flat rock to relax at. Except the mosquitos were everywhere. I think the bug spray I used helped a little bit, but I could hear them buzzing around in my ear. And see them all around my legs.

I never stopped moving around and then quickly jumped in the water. I’m not sure when the next shower will be, and a lake soak is better than nothing. Plus it felt nice once I got out and over the shock.

I kept pacing around and snacked. We headed out after 30 minutes because we were sick of swatting at the mosquitos. When you are walking they aren’t too bad. Plus I reapplied spray after getting in the water and it seemed to help.

After the lake we hiked up to clouds rest. I didn’t expect much when we got here. I expected a normal mountain, where I’d look at some cool views then move right along.

But this 360 degree view was amazing. There was a perfect view down into Yosemite Valley and of half dome. Plus the sun set would be epic. It was only 3:30, but we decided to call it and camp here. The only problem was water.

Quest had a liter and I had about 4 gulps. I hadn’t planned to camp here, so I didn’t think about water. The closest water was 3 miles back down a steep climb. I didn’t want to do that.

So we decided to try snow. Quest filled up a 2 liter cnoc with water and we waited for it to melt. Rubbing it at times to speed up the process. It was working, but slowly. So I tried to boil some snow.

The problem with my idea was that my pan wasn’t clean. It had cheesy rice left over from last night. And when I put the snow in I turned the boil on too fast. And it burnt the crap out of the old rice.

The snow in my pot eventually melted, but it tasted terrible. It was like vomit. I filtered and gave it a taste and it was just as bad. Now I’ve ruined two water bottles and I can’t boil dinner. Haha.

As we were wondering what to do I saw some snow melting on the side of the mountain. It was tricky to get to and I would have to climb down 100 feet. But possible.

So once the first batch of snow melted I went for the snowmelt. The climb down was slow and tricky. But I got there. And 10 minutes later I had a full two liter of water. We filtered it and prepped dinner (cold doaking). And I went to get one more fill up. That would be plenty.

I got back then relaxed and watched the sunset. My cold soaking was a disaster. I soaked 69 cent Mac and cheese for 3 hours (way too long, and it turned to mush). Then I didn’t soak the cheesy rice long enough. I ended up eating crunchy cheese rice. Because I was hungry and didn’t want to wait.

What a great night. We made it work and got to camp out on an epic spot. It’s a sunset I’m never forget! Now a few mosquitos are buzzing and landing on my hand as I type. Hopefully they will go away and leave me alone. Also hoping my air mattress stays inflated all night!