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That was where we camped our first night on the JMT trail. We could not believe that we got such a good campground next to the beautiful river. The sound of running water, the surrounding of Tuolumne Meadows was unbelievable. The weather was just perfect. The air was clear and all worries about fire and smoke replaced with crystal clear sky and beautiful moutains. This was what we expected but being here surrounding by nature was surreal to us!
Donohue Pass (11,073ft) was the first mountain pass that we climbed. I personally kept hearing how difficult it was but somehow i got up there with ease. I guessed the amazing scenic vistas kept changing and I never got tired to enjoy. We embraced the moment. That might be the only energy of the mother nature that i really need. I brought a whistle and plan to use in case of emergency. I came up with the idea with my trekking partner Cyndi that we should blow the whistle to celebrate each time we were at the mountain pass. There are a total of 10 mountain passes on the John Muir Trail.
We called the second day was the official hiking day on the trail. Yesterday was a bonus since we did not expect to get the permite. We took the advantage of the extra day and required by the park that we had to hike at least 5 miles out. We ended up of hiking around 8 miles and camped next to river on the first day.
As we hiked along Lyell Fork toward Donohue Pass, the scenery was beyond spectacular! The morning sunrise, pristine freshness in the air, river, lakes, mountains...soon at no time we were at Donohue Pass and crossing toward Inyo Ansel Adams Wilderness. We got a chance to blow whistle a second time today as we passed Island Pass (10,221ft). Our goal of today was to reach Rosalie Lake at mile 51.4 of JMT and camp there. We passed 1000 island Lake, Emerald Lake, Ruby Lake, Garnet Lake and Shadow Lake as we hiked toward our destination. These are beautiful lake but we marched on toward our goal. In fact i felt a little regret that we kept passing by all these places and not giving enough time to enjoy them. There was the last 800 ft steep climb on the last mile toward Rosalie lake, two other hikers were also heading that direction and we knew that whoever came first would have a better choice of picking the better campground. Somehow what got into me but I could power hike up the moutain toward the lake so fast and lucky enough we got the wonderful spot to camp for the night. We considered we got the best campground two nighs in the row!
View from the campground on Day 2!
This is where we camped on the second night. This is what i called my version of 5 stars hotel in the wilderness!
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