Day 4 - August 14th
After the fourth day on the trail, we got used the routine of thru-hike life. After having our Dinner, we planed for our next day hike. How many miles we would cover and where we wanted to camp. We initially had multiple plans for John Muir hike, but since Ferguson fire, all our plans were out of the windows. Also we started at Tuolumne Meadows, we were much father on JMT than we expected. We mailed our food resupply for the August 17th arrival. The pace we were going, we could get there by the 16th and we planed to be at Muir Trail Ranch one day earlier.
We both were very early morning person so this morning we started to hike at 6:30 am. Today would be a long 18 miles hike with quite a bit of elevation gain. The weather turned out to be perfect in the morning and the view along the trail was stunning. I personally felt so lucky that I was able to do this. I also started to notice the thunder storm and dark cloud and rain were usually rathering in the afternoon. This was very normal in high sierra in the Summer months. I told to myself that i could camp next to any of these lakes and called it a day as we passed beautiful Purple Lake, Lake Virginia. We descended toward Tully Hole with magnificient view down below. This was one of the beautiful section of today's hike. We hiked along the canyon with water runoff next to us for at least a mile. Occasionally we looked up and wondered ourself how these tall trees could survive by rooting on rocks. The cloud were formed above us but we enjoyed the cooler weather in the canyon and also expected this is a normal in high country. Water quickened as we descended further down in the canyon, turned into cascade. There we crossed an impressively built sturdy bridge. The view at Fish Creek was so beautiful that again gave us the energy and strength to power up the next 3.3 miles with 1700ft elevation gain to reach Silver Pass (10,754ft). We finally got caught in the rain and wind as we approached Silver Pass. It was cold wind but that added to the experience hiking on JMT. We were advised to climbe over the pass in the morning so we could avoid the unpredictable thunder storm as we were so exposed at the mountain passes. My thoughts of concern crossed my mind butthe rain suddenly stopped and here came sunshine! Of course, this was the third time we blew whistle at the moutain pass. As this point, we powered down toward Silver Pass Lake (10,386ft) and looked for campground. We found a best spot with trees surrounding us so that we wouldn't exposed to the elements. We were amazed how the weather were changed from rain, windy, to sunshine and warm in less than an hour. We decided this time to swim at the lake. For me particularly, this was the first time i swam in the lake over 10,000ft and surprisingly the water was not that cold. We could choose this campground over 5 stars hotel anyday. We were at mile 82.6 of JMT.
