We left home at 6:30 on Saturday morning and got to Tuolumne Meadows, 8,660 feet, at 11:00. When we stepped out of the car into the sun, we instantly got hot. It was much warmer than I’d expected for our elevation. I’d forgotten my Chrome Dome, which had served me so well on our Red Slate Mountain trip, and resigned myself to getting by with just my hat.

We took the John Muir Trail south, crossing the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River over a pair of well-built bridges. The river was slow and broad, its emerald water gliding easily over polished granite.

We followed the Lyell Fork upstream through Lyell Canyon. The canyon’s bottom was wide and nearly flat, split down the middle by the sinuous Lyell Fork. Next to the river were blond grass and willows with fading leaves. Farther away were groves of conifers that became thick on the mountainsides. To our left was the attractive Mammoth Peak, its summit a mound of white granite surrounded by shrubby conifers.

After 5 miles, we left Lyell Canyon to cross over to the Rafferty Creek watershed. The forest was thicker and provided almost continuous shade as we climbed. The trees were all lodgepole pines, but I did see a few mountain hemlocks. The understory had labrador tea, currants, and heather. Their blooms had long since gone, but a few of the currants still had berries.

At the pass, 10,600 feet, we had excellent views of the high country all around us. We could see the Kuna Crest to the northeast and the Cathedral Range to the south. We were near timberline and the exposed terrain above us was beginning to glow in the late-afternoon light. The lodgepole pines that had dominated the forest east of the pass gave way to whitebark pines to the west.

We got to Evelyn Lake at 6. Our timing was perfect; we had about an hour to set up camp and make dinner before sunset, then it would get dark just as we prepared for sleep.

The lake was big and dark blue. Its south side was bordered by a granite ridge framing high, ragged peaks. Its east side, where we set up camp, was a gentle slope covered in a woodland of whitebark pines among short, golden grass. Across the lake, to the west, were more peaks, silhouetted against the sunset.

We walked to the lake and were delighted to find a sandy beach on its shore. We took off our shoes and waded into the water. We rinsed off our feet, then sat in the sand and watched the sun set over the lake.

Back at camp, we heated up dinner. I’d made a cat-can stove months ago and I’ve been using it with an MSR Simmerlite as a backup, but this weekend I was confident enough to leave the big stove at home. The cat-can stove weighs 1 ounce and needs only a little denatured alcohol in a plastic bottle for fuel, making it much lighter and simpler than the MSR stove. Success! The little stove worked perfectly.

As we ate, Clark’s nutcrackers flew between the pines, calling to each other with loud ‘kraa-kraa-kraa’s. By the time we finished eating, the sky had grown dark and the half moon in the southwest was casting shadows on the ground.

We went to bed at 9. We were entirely alone at the lake. With no wind, the night was utterly silent. I held my breath in the tent and could hear only my heartbeat and the ringing in my ears. Outside, the cold, clear air was perfect for watching the night sky. We got up to watch the moon set, a big, orange half-disc hanging over the lake. Afterward, we could see the Milky Way and shooting stars.

I woke up at 5:30, which was as late as I could manage considering how early I’d gone to sleep. It was 33 degrees and still dark outside, so I just lay in my sleeping bag until the sky began to get light. At sunrise, we got up and packed our gear.

We left Evelyn Lake at 7:30. The air was brisk, but the sun warmed us as soon as it rose over the mountains. As we walked, our shadows stretched for a good 10 yards over the grasslands.

Vogelsang High Sierra Camp was closed for the season and had been taken apart. All that was left of the white canvas bungalows that had housed trekkers all summer were their wooden frames. The showers were partly dismantled, and their interiors were so rusty that Elizabeth suggested a tetanus shot before anyone used them. Vogelsang Peak was quite prominent from the camp, and I took a good look at it to see the routes we could take to its summit if we came this way again.

The descent to Rafferty Creek was scenic, passing through more lodgepole pine, mountain hemlock, and whitebark pine, with more views of towering silver peaks.

Down in the canyon, we walked through meadows that were golden and scarlet in their fall colors. The forest on either side of the meadows was nothing but old-growth lodgepole pines. But as the day warmed past 80 degrees, the heat and the monotony of the landscape conspired to make me dislike the last few miles of the hike.

Elizabeth noticed lots of lodgepole snags obeying a right-hand rule, their bark twisting counter-clockwise up the trunk. We wondered if this was true for all lodgepole pine snags and talked about why it might be so. But in the end we saw a few obeying a left-hand rule, disproving our theory.

We got back to the trailhead at 12:45. On the way home we stopped at El Agave in Oakdale for a burrito and enchiladas.

We left home at 7 and started hiking at 9:40 under an overcast sky. The clouds were a novelty for us, since almost all of our Sierra Nevada hikes this summer have been under a blazing sun. Cool temperatures and a healthy breeze even made me put on my fleece jacket.

We hiked through a secondary forest of lodgepole pine, western white pine, mountain hemlock, and red and white fir. It was pleasant enough, but the setting was marred by the roar of nearby Interstate 80. The Pacific Crest Trail meandered around the interstate for a frustratingly long time, but it did provide one amusement: the trail crossed the road through a pair of underground tunnels that were a great place to play with our echoes.

We left the road’s vicinity through a classic Sierra landscape of pine woodlands strewn with granite boulders. By then, the clouds had broken up and brought back some classic Sierra sunshine.

Approaching Castle Pass, we walked through a forest of red fir and white pine, almost entirely secondary. A few of the trees, perhaps because of their curved trunks, had been spared by the loggers, and we found some spectacular old specimens of white pine and red fir.

From Castle Pass, Elizabeth and I turned east toward Castle Peak. The trail was steep and the rocks and sand underfoot were slippery. But plenty of switchbacks let us climb without any problems. We passed two hikers descending from the peak and we saw plenty more during the day. This is a popular peak.

I loved the sparse, wind-swept trees and tawny grass we walked through on the way up. The groves were surprisingly diverse, including red fir, mountain hemlock, Jeffrey pine, and lodgepole pine. Among the grass were pinemat manzanita, sagebrush, and some buckwheat. Woolly mule’s ears, turned yellow by now, rustled in the wind.

The morning weather forecast predicted strong winds on the peaks and ridges around Lake Tahoe, with gusts up to 50 miles per hour. And as we approached the summit ridge, we were feeling them. We held on to our hats. Elizabeth’s hair whipped her face and my backpack straps beat my chest. Some gusts even threatened our balance, but they didn’t keep us from the summit.

Castle Peak has three turrets of volcanic rock on top. The first one you reach, the west turret, is a walk-up that seems to satisfy most visitors. But the third, the east turret, is the true high point, and that’s where we headed, bypassing the other turrets on a trail below their south side.

We scrambled up a crack to the east turret’s base, from where we could see the route to the top. The rocks around us settled the wind down to a persistent breeze. Above us was a 30-foot climb up nearly vertical rock. We’d never climbed anything like this unroped before. At least it looked solid with lots of holds.

Elizabeth tried the climb first. Mindful that she’d have to downclimb it, she went up some 6 feet, then scrambled down. She faced away from the rock to descend, but I encouraged her to try climbing face-in since it would be essential to get down the steeper parts. She didn’t want to hear about it, though, and came down just the way she wanted.

I went next. The turret certainly was steep. I could only fit my toes on the rocks. I searched for handholds. I tried to keep my weight over my feet. Once I’d gotten about as far as Elizabeth had, I slowly started making my way down. I tried to face in, but like Elizabeth, I turned around near the bottom; she’d been right after all.

She went up again—this time about 10 feet—then I went up again. The first time wasn’t too bad, so now I wanted to see how high I could go before I got scared. I climbed up, putting more and more air under my heels. I made a few moves that felt tricky, particularly in my trail runners, and started worrying about reversing them on the way down. With 10 more feet of near-vertical rock above me and Elizabeth 20 feet below me, I decided I’d had enough and climbed down, slowly unwinding the path I’d taken up.

Back on the ground, I shook off my stress and excitement. The summit would have to wait for another day—the climb was still too rich for my taste. Elizabeth went up one last time, making it about halfway. Then I went up once more, but just tried out different hand and foot holds and practiced moving up and down the rock. I still had to wrap my head around the experience of climbing in sneakers and with severe consequences.

Satisfied with our scrambling, we hiked back to the west turret and enjoyed the view one last time. We waved to a group of hikers resting on top, then started down to the trail to Basin Peak.

Right then, my left knee started hurting. I’d tweaked it with some overzealous sprinting during my morning run on Wednesday and now it was acting up. Overuse injuries are easy to get and hard to lose, I knew, and I wanted to avoid one. Maybe it was time to curtail the day’s plan. Anyway, the wind was still blasting us and we were starting to get sick of it.

As tempting as the ridge hike to Basin Peak was, we returned to Castle Pass. From there, we followed a trail west to Andesite Peak, turned left at the intersection with the Hole in the Ground trail, then hiked cross country to the peak.

I traversed south of the summit, then climbed to the top over a mess of crumbling rocks. Elizabeth chose a better route, climbing over red rocks to the saddle east of the summit. In hindsight, we probably should have just gone straight up from the trail.

The best view from Andesite Peak was of Castle Peak. We enjoyed it for a minute, then returned to the pass. Again I was pleasantly surprised by the diversity of the scraggly trees on the ridge—western white pine, lodgepole pine, red fir, and mountain hemlock. A flock of mountain bluebirds flew through the weathered conifers and the drab grass, looking like sapphire jewels.

The hike back was uneventful. I welcomed this, since knee pain was an event I hoped to avoid. I felt fresh at the end of the hike and was surprised by the time: 6:10. We’d been out for over 8 hours. Another fine day in the mountains, although we’d have to hike the Castle–Basin loop another day.

On the drive home we ate at Ikeda’s in Auburn for dinner, just as we had after our hike to Tinker Knob a few weeks ago.

On Friday night we drove 40 hungry miles on Route 395 before we found a restaurant that was open after 8. We stopped at the first one we found: Rhino’s Bar and Grille in Bridgeport. It was more fun than anything we could have hoped for, with a local crowd at the bar wearing cowboy hats and tight blue jeans, guys in camouflage playing pool, and a cheeseburger-eating patron wearing a red “DEAR LEADER CHAIRMAN MAOBAMA” t-shirt. A  jukebox playing Metallica completed the scene. It was the first night of the holiday weekend and everyone was having a great time. The food was good, and we’d definitely come back.

After dinner we spent the night at the Sportsmen’s Inn across the street, an 1880 hotel that could have passed for a haunted house. Our room was out in front, so we could hear the traffic on 395 all night and were illuminated by the motel sign outside our window. We probably could have gotten a better night’s sleep on the ground at Deadman Summit, as I did on the trip to University Peak a few weeks ago.

At 8:30 on Saturday morning Elizabeth and I arrived at the McGee Creek trailhead under a clear blue sky.Whereas Elizabeth was excited about the coming weekend, I felt uneasy. I felt as if I’d forced myself to come. There were only a few weeks of clear weather left in the Sierra Nevada, and I felt compelled to take advantage of them—to fit in as much time in the mountains as possible, whether I liked it or not, since I would regret not going enough, not accomplishing enough, not pushing myself enough, once the season was over. And I knew these were all the wrong reasons to go, which made me feel even crappier.

But I put those thoughts away as we started up the trail, confident that John Muir would be proved right about receiving the mountains’ good tidings [1]. The valley floor was filled with a gold and copper-tarnish mix of sagebrush, bitterbrush, and blooming rabbitbrush. It was split by a line of vibrant green trees tracing the course of McGee Creek and bordered by 11,000-foot ridges. At its far end a line of peaks rose past 12,000 feet.

The only trees next to the trail were a few aspen, juniper, and birch. We’d both brought our Chrome Domes, silver lightweight backpacking umbrellas, and they were perfect for the nearly treeless landscape. Almost everyone we met on the trail asked us about them.

The chutes on both sides of the valley were filled with aspens that were starting to show their fall colors. A few of the aspens had been felled by beavers and were used to build an impressive dam across McGee Creek, creating a great pond in the valley.

We would camp at Big McGee Lake for two nights. At 10,500 feet, it was just 8 miles from the trailhead, and with plenty of time to cover the distance, Elizabeth and I walked slowly and stopped whenever we felt the urge. No use hurrying to the lake and then sitting around until it got dark. Better to spend our time taking in the fantastic scenery. I could feel my mood improving as we walked farther into the wilderness and the mountains worked their influence.

As we climbed, the sagebrush and aspen gave way to a forest of lodgepole pines, hemlocks, and western white pines. It was cool and shady and McGee Creek, now a white-water cascade, roared through a rocky ravine.

We emerged from the lodgepole pine forest into subalpine meadows framed by spectacular mountains. The meadows were losing their green and turning auburn and the only conspicuous wildflowers left were ranger’s buttons. The trees—lodgepole and whitebark pines—were widely separated.

We arrived at brilliant, cobalt Big McGee Lake at 2 in the afternoon. This gave us an average pace of less than 1.5 miles per hour from the trailhead—not as slow as we had hoped, but slow enough.

Big McGee was set in a granite cirque topped by Red and White Mountain. A stiff wind was blowing down the cirque, so we picked a campsite sheltered by a grove of whitebark pines. Elizabeth took a nap in the tent while I walked around to admire the scenery.

At dinner Elizabeth and I introduced ourselves to Sam, another backpacker staying at the lake. He’d come up from San Diego on Friday and was planning on dayhiking to McGee Pass Sunday. This happened to be the same route we were taking to Red Slate Mountain, and we considered hiking to the pass together. We all cooked and ate dinner as the sun set, then went to our tents to sleep.

The wind blew all night long, roaring down the cirque, over the lake, through the pines, and across our tent, flapping its sides and blowing dust on our faces. But the wind quieted down often enough that we slept much better than we had at the frightening Sportmen’s Inn the night before. We were also blessed by a full moon that made walking outside the tent a phenomenal experience. We did not need our headlamps: everything—the stark peaks, the lake, the pines, and the boulders near our tent—glowed in its cold white light.

The next morning, Elizabeth and I saw Sam again as we packed our bags to hike up to Red Slate Mountain. We’d hike to McGee Pass together, then Sam would decide whether to continue to the summit or go back to camp.

We left camp at 8:30. After spending so much time staring at the lake on Friday, I was excited to see it from a new perspective. We hiked away and soon enough we were a few hundred feet above our campsite, with excellent views of the lake, the cirque, and the mountains around it.

We walked past timberline through a fantastic landscape of meadows, streams, and waterfalls. The only trees here were whitebark pines, and even they became isolated and gnarled as we gained elevation, eventually disappearing completely in the alpine tundra.

We stopped at a seep, green and dripping with water, that was a jackpot for wildflowers. From it grew bog orchids with their lovely white flowers, elephant’s heads with their tiny pink flowers, and grass of Parnassus, whose white, five-petaled flowers Elizabeth said looked like a miracle. Next to the ranger’s buttons, rose-colored mountain onion, scarlet paintbrush, and some kind of yellow monkeyflower added color to the scene.

In the canyon east of McGee Pass, we were flanked by steep ridges of layered red and white rock and walked amid their colorful rubble. At its end stood an imposing peak with two snow-filled cuoloirs. I’d read about the route up Red Slate Mountain and by all accounts it sounded like a walk-up. But the mountain in front of us looked more difficult than that, I thought, so it couldn’t be Red Slate.

On top of McGee Pass we got our first view of the landscape to the west: meadows split by lazy rivers and bordered by pine forests and granite mountains. Backpackers heading in the opposite direction congratulated us on making it to the pass, but we didn’t mention that we were going to the top of Red Slate Mountain and that getting to the pass was the easy part. Sam found the hike to McGee Pass quicker than he expected and decided to come with us to the summit.

By now I had confirmed that the imposing peak was in fact Red Slate Mountain. Its slope looked less steep from the pass, but it still looked more difficult than I’d imagined. In particular, a steep band of gray rock below the summit looked as if it might give us some difficulty, and I was eager to see what it would be like once we were on it.

The wind hadn’t let up since the night before and it whipped us as we climbed. We found an intermittent use trail but didn’t bother to stay on it at first since the slope was so mild. The mountain’s rocks were indeed like plates of red slate, and they sounded like wind chimes as we walked on them.

We took a break halfway up, then continued over slightly steeper terrain with bigger rocks. Getting off trail now meant scrambling with hands, so we tried harder to stay on it.

When we got to the band of gray rock I’d been concerned about, the terrain got steeper and more slippery, but we were able to get through it in a few minutes, using our hands for balance and scrambling most of the way.

Above the gray rock, the slope got mellow and we cruised to the summit, arriving at 12:30. On top, we were over a half mile higher than our campsite; the ridges around it and even Red and White Mountain were well below us.

Sam was quite happy to have made the climb, and he surprised me when he said that this was his first Sierra peak and that he’d never hiked this high before. The view from pass, he said, just didn’t compare with the view from the summit. Indeed! Being on a peak spoils one to the more modest joys of valleys, lakes, and passes. We snacked and rested on the summit, then took photos and signed the register.

Elizabeth and Sam were a little worried about the descent, but we were able to follow the use trail through the steep sections without any trouble. I thought we’d be home-free once we got to milder slopes lower on the mountain, but Elizabeth didn’t like how the rocks shifted under her feet and her progress was slow. The wind was incessant, and when we got down to the pass we took a break behind some rocks that gave us shelter.

At 3:30, back at camp, Sam packed his bag and left for a spot closer to the trailhead so that he could make an early departure the next morning. We then exchanged e-mail addresses and wished each other well.

Elizabeth and I were both weary from being out in the sun and wind all day, so we lay down on our sleeping pads under the pines. I had a headache and spent half an hour just staring at the branches of a whitebark pine swaying in the wind against the blue sky. Elizabeth was a little exhausted and joked that she didn’t like backpacking, or even like hiking, anymore.

With Sam gone, we had the campsite to ourselves—no one else in sight. We rinsed our hands and faces in the cold lake, then stuck our feet in until they got numb. We ate dinner at sunset, then watched the sky grow dark and the stars come out. Cleaned, rested, and with full stomachs, our moods improved considerably. Elizabeth no longer hated hiking and I’d finally gotten rid of my misgivings from the start of the trip. The wind had settled down. We went to bed at 8:30 and slept soundly all night.

This morning, we got up at 6 and packed up our gear. We left at sunrise, saying our goodbyes to Big McGee Lake and to the trees and critters that call it home. As we walked away, the top of Red and White Mountain blazed in the sunrise light while the moon, almost too bright to look at, hung over it in a deep blue sky.

We made good time on the way to the trailhead, getting back to our car in less than 4 hours. I particularly enjoyed traveling through the many life zones of the eastern Sierra Nevada, from subalpine meadows and woodlands to lodgepole forests to aspen groves to sagebrush flats, in so short an amount of time. We had both enjoyed ourselves tremendously on the backpacking trip and we were sad to leave. But a stop at the Whoa Nellie Deli for lunch lifted our spirits and prepared us for the return to civilization.

[1] ‘Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.’ – John Muir, Our National Parks

The group started hiking at 7:30 on Saturday morning through a mix of forests and glades. It was still bracingly cold under the shade of the red firs and lodgepole pines, but had gotten pleasantly warm in the sun.

The hikers at the head of our group kept a quick pace, but Elizabeth started falling behind. The truth was, she’d had the stomach flu all week and had decided, only hours before we left on Friday, that she was well enough to give the trip a try. But as we climbed uphill, she could only laboriously put one foot in front of the other, and it was clear that she wasn’t well enough for the full loop.

By the time the group reached the junction toward Weaver Lake, Elizabeth and I had decided to skip the first part of the loop and to just hike the remaining 4 miles to Jennie Lake and wait for everyone else at camp. Two other hikers, Chuck and Jill, happened to do the same thing, and they made good company as we hiked to the lake together.

We hiked slowly, which left me plenty of time to stop and look at the trailside plants. The forest on the way to the lake was a mix of old-growth red fir and western white pine with an understory of dead branches and dark brown-gray dust. The only other life was a few pinedrops.

But along a seep I saw an impressive display of wildflowers that included yellow sneezeweed and arrowleaf groundsel, white ranger’s buttons and yarrow, lavender wandering daisy, and crimson columbine. Thimbleberry, wax currant, and corn lily were conspicuous from their big leaves, but were not flowering.

With a slow pace and plenty of breaks, we stretched the 6-mile hike to Jennie Lake into 5 hours. But even this exhausted Elizabeth, and she was quite happy when we found a good campsite and put down our packs.

The lake was shaped like a big kidney bean, deep blue with bright white granite cliffs on one side and dark forests of immense red fir and western white pine on the other. We had been warm while hiking, but as we sat in the shade, a breeze off the lake cooled us off enough that we put on our jackets. We set up the tent, went inside, and napped.

After I woke up, I walked around the lake to look for the other group members, but they weren’t there yet. I started getting bored. As I sat next to the tent looking at the granite peak above the lake, Elizabeth noticed the look in my eyes and asked what I was up to. I admitted that I was getting restless and trying to think of ways to get to the top of the peak. I asked her if she wanted to come, but she said she was too tired and that I was on my own.

A few hours later, after the rest of our group had arrived at camp, Chuck and Jill asked if Elizabeth and I wanted to explore the trails around the lake. Elizabeth was feeling better by now, so we both decided to go.

Serendipitously, we walked east toward the saddle I’d suspected would make a good approach for the peak across the lake (the unnamed Peak 9,612 feet, as I would later find out). From the saddle, the four of us followed an elevated rocky rib with good views of the lake to our right. Partway up, I decided the peak was well within reach and Elizabeth and I made steady progress toward it. Meanwhile, Chuck and Jill were content with the views they’d gotten and turned back for camp.

Near the summit were large talus blocks separated by thickets of chinquapin. We stayed above the shrubbery with some boulder-hopping and had a fun time getting to the summit. The view was tremendous. We could see all of Jennie Lake, including our campsite and a few people from our group. On the horizon was the Silliman Crest and, farther away, the peaks of the Great Western Divide. We even saw a pair of mountain quail on the cliffs below the summit, unconcerned with their exposed location.

Elizabeth and I went down the way we’d come up and got back to camp at 5 o’clock, just in time for the group happy hour. We all chatted while stuffing ourselves with carrots, celery, hummus, cheese, crackers, and olives.

Elizabeth left in the middle of happy hour, saying that she wasn’t feeling well and that she wanted to lie down in the tent. A minute later, I saw her squatting and digging a cathole behind some rocks some 20 yards away from the group. Yes, I thought, there are lots of campers around the lake and privacy is scarce, but that spot is just way too exposed; I’d tease her about it later. For now I just continued enjoying the company and the fresh food as we built a campfire and darkness fell over the lake.

When I went back to the tent after happy hour, I found Elizabeth lying down, looking sick. I was shocked when she told me that the real reason she’d dug a cathole was that her stomach bug wasn’t gone after all and she’d thrown up all the food she’d eaten during the day.

She was in no shape for dinner, so she stayed in the tent to rest. I went back and ate my own dinner with the group by the campfire, then brought her some of it so she’d have something warm in her stomach before going to sleep.

It was a long night. Elizabeth was tired and hungry, but afraid she’d throw up anything she tried to eat. She felt sick and was alternately too hot and too cold. She couldn’t sleep. We didn’t know if she’d be better or worse by morning and we both worried seriously about her ability to hike. I felt particularly guilty for encouraging her to come and then encouraging her up the peak. So much for a great first-time backpacking experience.

But the night’s worries faded when the sun rose. Elizabeth ate a packet of oatmeal and a few saltines while I lightened her load by packing as much of our gear into my pack as I could.

We left a little after 8 this morning. To get back to the trailhead we had to go over Poop Out Pass, which lay several hundred feet higher than the lake. Elizabeth and I made very slow progress toward the pass and, when we finally reached the top, thought its name apt. We took a long break there, relieved that the hardest part of the day was over. The rest of the hike was downhill and we made it down without any problems, getting back to the trailhead at 12:30. My only worry afterward was, would Elizabeth ever want to go backpacking again?