Today's hike was by far the longest, time-wise. We hit the trail at 7:50 am, a new record for us, but didn't get off the trail until 6:15 pm. By the end we were both struggling, despite the hour and a half laundry/lunch break at the lake halfway up Donahue Pass. Although we were exhausted by the end, we got to see some amazing scenery today that made up for it.
Donohue Pass is amazing. Lakes, views, stream crossings, marmots, glaciers, everything. I think my favorite part was the unreal variety of butterflies. Not only were the butterflies everywhere, but they came in every different color- orange, blue, purple, GREEN, pink, yellow. I've never seen a green butterfly before. There are so many butterflies that some grad student sent a bunch of undergrads to live in the Sierras for the summer and catch them. We ran into the budding lepidopterists near the top of Donohue pass, butterfly nets in hand. Sounds like a pretty rad job, but if they steal all the green butterflies I'm going to be pissed.
The descent from Donohue pass is as hard as going up. I was feeling pretty good knowing we were beating Built to Spill and we would stop soon. As we approached the Marie Lakes trail junction we saw some people setting up camp right near the stream junction. It was Built to Spill! I'm not sure why this is a race for me, and I'm sure I'm not racing anyone else, but I was sure we were in front of them. And now I've made Lucy set the alarm for 5:30, just so we can be sure to stay in front of them tomorrow. Jeez. 5:30 am. Is it worth it?
In our exhaustion, we set up camp at a campsite pretty much on top of the trail tonight, above the Rush Creek junction. There are a bunch of campsites here, but there are also a couple on a ridge above the trail that we didn't see until too late. But we're getting up at 5:30, so we can probably break camp before anyone passes by.
(Editors Note: Matt forgot to mention there were 10,000 mosquitos at our campsite)
Miles: 10.4
Total: 39.9
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