August 8-Let’s go for it!

Miles Hiked: 13.2 Total:42.79
Elevation Gain: 2653 ft

Lyell Canyon trail - Donohue Pass in distance

"When we are with Nature we are awake, and we discover many interesting things and reach many a mark we are not aiming at." ~John Muir

JOHN OF THE MOUNTAINS - June 1890

We awoke in the cold and “cleaned up” so to speak at the restroom sinks. The water was cold and my fingers went numb (which made the finer points of packing a challenge) until we started hiking up the Lyell Canyon.

We got under way around 7 AM and were immediately struck by the beauty of the Lyell Fork shortly outside the campground. The morning sun on the water flowing over the granite slabs was spectacular and something I wished I had taken the time to capture on camera.

Lyell Canyon was beautiful as we approached Donohue Pass in the distance. We were energized, having had a good night’s sleep and a decent meal and, sometime early on, decided we’d keep going up and over the pass, rather than stopping before as previously planned. It being our first time on the trail, something was driving us to see if we could do it faster than our planned 21 days. We had a long conversation about trail and pass conditions with a fellow north westerner, a young man from Seattle northbound on the PCT.

Lyell Fork

Sometime mid-day we first met what would turn out to be the reappearing foursome from Pennsylvania – Karen, Heather, Tom and John. Heather and at least one of the young men were Karen’s “kids” so this was a family outing and little did we know we’d keep running into them throughout the nearly 200 miles ahead of us. They were trying to get into their planned schedule of 13 – 15 mile days in order to complete the trail by August 22nd. They had apparently hiked until around 10 PM the night before, setting up camp somewhere not far from where we met them, getting a late start as the “boys” liked to sleep late and drink their coffee before starting off in the morning. Coffee? I had had my last sip in Bend, OR days a week prior and Christi went cold turkey in Mammoth Lakes, so I naturally had to razz them about their coffee routine each time we saw them.

Prior to mid-day we had been treating all of our water collected from streams or rivers. The Lyell Fork was so beautiful, clear and cold, we decided to gather untreated water from it. It tasted so good!

Looking up to Donohue Pass

The canyon is long and did I say stunningly beautiful? We began climbing the switchbacks out of the valley up Donohue Pass around 3 PM, the hottest time of the day. Regardless, we were determined to keep going, increasingly loving the taste of that high Sierra water from the many fresh streams descending around us. We ran into Ed Rodriguez, heading northbound, whom we “knew” from the JMT Yahoo Group, who shared his perspective on the passes and stream crossings we had ahead of us.

There’s a small, unnamed lake at the foot of the final approach to Donohue Pass and we went to the left around it. We should have known something was amiss when the trail kind of petered out at the other end of the lake.

Top of Donohue Pass - Ansel Adams Wilderness

But, hey, we don’t know until we know, do we? We were getting into increasing patches of mushy ground and some snow by this time and would follow occasional footprints leading to the base of a steep ascent of large boulders followed by a couple of steep snowfields. I checked the Donohue Pass data point on my GPS and found we were headed the right direction, so we began scrambling up the boulders with our fully loaded packs.

We should have known, but…Would the JMT really be so un-trail like? We didn’t know having never done it before, so we kept climbing up. Christi was getting increasingly freaked and I was in my route finding, scrambling element, carefully testing rocks for stability and making sure we didn’t fall through a snow bridge. At least until that “final” steep snowfield, where it looked like man had not set foot before and I became less sure about how to overcome the steep cliff beyond it.

Campsite - Donohue Pass in background

It was then that I noticed the trail switchbacks below us, about a quarter mile northwest of the rock/snow we were ascending. The trail had, of course, gone around the right side of the lake and, had we followed it, we’d be approaching Donohue’s summit about then. We gradually made our way down and across to the trail switchbacks and were “soon” back on track with perhaps only 90 minutes wasted.

We made it over the pass before sunset, setting up camp high in the Rush Creek drainage after beginning the descent. It was a cold night but we were lulled to sleep by the sounds of rushing water all around us.

[Christi]
Oh, my, we'll add this to our "Lessons Learned" pile that we seem to be quickly amassing.  This was a tough day and would have been a long day even if we'd found the trail of Donohue Pass to start with!  From here on out, we agree to BOTH be knowledgeable about the trail and maps so that we can check each other's assumptions.  Two heads are better than one, I say!