Upper Cathedral Lake - Evelyn Lake Trail Junction

We passed a certain milestone today as we encountered our first chance to escape and kept on at it. For some reason that seems like a big deal to me- the fact that we were like "civilization? whatevs. we'll keep on keeping on for 15 more days."
We woke up in the gorgeous Cathedral Lake basin this morning and prepared for a long- but flat- day. We hiked the five miles from our campsite to the Tuolomne Meadows Grill! Grocery store! Our resupply! We had a nice breakfast (Matt) /lunch (Lucy) with our "JMT Class" -- all the people who started on the same day as us and who we have been leapfrogging on the trail with. This consists of three different groups, whom we have nicknamed "Washington," "Laptop" and "Built to Spill." We can explain the stories behind the nicknames some other time. Anyway, the 10 or so of us traded stories, advice, and plans for the trail. It's nice feeling like we aren't the only crazy people around. I'm the only girl left now though (the other girl left at Tuolomne). After lunch, Matt and I had a bit of a fight regarding JMT purity. You see in the map below that the grill/store/etc. isn't exactly on the trail. But you are very close to the trail and do almost all the mileage.

So, once we hit the 120 we walked along it to get to the grill. After lunch, everyone else was taking the horsetrail back out the JMT. Matt, backpacker purist, insisted we walk the .9 back to the trail. Lucy did not like this plan. I went along with it, just complained the whole time :)

We got our resupply at the ranger station, and Matt helped me with a particularly bad blister I have on one of my toes. We headed out of Tuolomne with good spirits and a bag of flamin' hot Cheetos. You can see Matt's backpack setup to the left- solar charger and all!

Six miles later, we called it a day. It was three miles before we intended to stop, but it was 5:15- way past camp time. We have a nice spot amidst some lodgepole pines northwest of the Evelyn Lakes trail junction. Tomorrow, we hit Donohue Pass- our first pass above 10,000 feet! We're going to try to hit it as early as we can, so it's an early bedtime for us tonight.



[Lucy]
Miles: 12.2 Miles (+1.8 non-JMT miles)
Total: 29.5 Miles