THE BIG TRIP PART II
Eastern Sierra Waterfalls Part II …
Although Thousand Island Lake was all right, I much preferred Garnet Lake and in fact fell in love with that lake. That was to be our second night destination. It was certainly not snowed in as the Ranger said though we did encounter a little bit of snow on the trail, but nothing that was a problem. The trail climbs up to over 10,000 feet in elevation before going back down to the lake. I think the elevation affected Jadon a bit, but it didn’t seem to bother me all that much. We arrived early at the lake and promptly snagged the best campsite at the lake. There is not a lot of shade at Garnet Lake either, but our campsite had quite of bit of nice shade. There was no one else there, and we had the whole lake to ourselves. Garnet Lake I thought is much prettier than Thousand Island Lake, and it has impressive Ritter peak looming over it as well. We had views of a waterfall across the lake, and a bald eagle soaring overhead. Chipmunks scooted about our campsite, and of course we can’t forget to mention the marmots again as well.
However, in the afternoon the wind picked up tremendously. It was blowing our tent around like a ragged doll and with no sight of tomorrow, and it seemed to be getting worse not better. There was no better place to move the tent out of the wind. Now to be certain the tent held up tremendously and remained steadfast, and I have no doubt that it would have remained secure during the night. The problem was me, I would not have gotten any sleep worrying about the wind shaking us all night long. Jadon said the same thing, namely that he was not going to be able to sleep. So I offered an alternative to him: we could hike back to the car that evening, arriving a little after dark. I was truly okay with either option, a nice lazy day and semi relaxing hike back the next day, or a gangbuster hike back to the car that evening and then a long drive home getting back to our comfortable beds very late. Quite surprisingly Jadon pounced on the alternative to hike back that night. I did not think he would have the energy for another long hike that day.
My personal ulterior motive in hiking back that evening was the waterfalls. I would get to see six more waterfalls in good lighting conditions. If we did the other option and left the next day, I would only get to see one waterfall at most in good light, possibly none. Now you know why I suggested this alternative option to Jadon.
The hike down to the bottom of the canyon from the end of Garnet Lake was treacherous, to put it mildly. It is very steep and it was snow-covered. People had been down already, but it was potentially quite dangerous, so I sent Jadon ahead first to test the snow pack. I am kidding, I went out first! It was not icy and it was firm enough that you did not sink in, as long as you were careful. And we were extremely careful as we hiked down that snowy path, making one sure step at a time. We made it down to the big waterfall at the outlet of the lake, but it was still in the sun so we had to wait and wait and wait, about 30 minutes before I could take my photo. That was probably the biggest thing that delayed our long hike back to the car. It was also impossible to get a good clear view of this waterfall; if the flow was lower I probably could have crossed the stream to get a better view point, but that was certainly not happening today. Bummer. Nonetheless, it is not a bad photo, eh?
We continued down to the bottom of the canyon stopping at the waterfalls along the way. Five more waterfalls. I was a happy camper. Many more pictures to come.
Now we just had to hike back along the river. I knew there was a trail on the south side of the river but it is not a marked trail, and it was very difficult to follow in places, disappearing into obscurity in some spots, fallen logs to clamber over, some treacherous cliffy terrain to negotiate. It took a much longer time than I anticipated. Jadon did not like the trail much but I suppose it could have been a lot worse. We finally got back to the main trail at about sunset. We still had about 2 miles to hike back to the car and we arrived in the dark at 9:15 PM. Not really too bad at all, and I thought Jadon did very well on that long hike back, but he was very tired at the end. Nonetheless, we did it. We got home at about 1:30 AM and of course we slept in the next day.