Day 2: 1000 Island Lake to Ediza Lake (August 23, 2012)

I awoke around 6am. The night had been fairly warm and I had slept on top of my sleeping bag for most of the night. The lake was still and the sky clear, and even though it was early, I could already tell it was going to be a hot day.

We took our time getting out of camp since we were only going ~7.5 miles to Ediza Lake and had minimal elevation change along the way.  I made a hash-brown and egg scramble for breakfast, and we hit the trail by 9:30am.

We followed the JMT to Garnet Lake. The JMT had a fair amount of traffic on it and we were passing people regularly. Many of the hikers were traveling with dogs, and one group was guiding a couple of goats along the trail!

At 11:00am we arrived at Garnet Lake where a couple people were taking a morning dip. We stopped at the lake outlet to have an early lunch and re-apply some much needed sunscreen.

Continuing past Garnet Lake, we made our way over the next ridge towards Ediza Lake. Here we came across several groups that had come up from Agnew Meadows.

When we arrived at Ediza Lake it was about 3:00pm, and there were many tents visible along the opposite shoreline. We circled around the lake and worked our way up a stream towards the valley at the base of Ritter. While our camp was nestled in the trees giving us almost no view of the mountains, the trail around the lake offered a spectacular site!

Our camp this night was away from the lake but not far from a stream of glacier melt. The water was ice cold and refreshing! The camp had an established fire ring, and the rock ledge above offered more tent spots as well as a great view of the Minarets.

By 4:30pm we had the tent up. We were near 9,500ft, and while there were quite a few people by the lake, our camp felt a world away.

I found a spot near camp from which I could see our route up Mt Ritter. The mountain was very dry with little snow covering the route. From here, the SE glacier and the chutes that would take us to the summit ridge were obscured by the SE pinnacle, so we would have to wait until the next day to see what the conditions were like up there.

The day had been quite warm, and much of our hike had been exposed. Now that we were in the trees and the sun was setting, the temperature began to drop. Nothing too cold, but definitely enough to make me dig out my down jacket and fuzzy hat as I began to prepare dinner.

The menu this night was a new dried chili mix I had found to take the place of the pizza I couldn’t make due to the fire ban. It took almost half an hour of simmering to hydrate (probably because of the altitude), but I added some peppered jerky and cheese to the mix, and it was quite tasty and very filling!

I climbed into the tent about 8:30pm. Paul set his alarm for 6:00am to be on our way to the summit by 7:00am. Tomorrow would be the first of our two big days…

Continue reading with Day 3

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Be sure to check out Day 1 of this trip HERE