Day 5 - July 16

Another 11 miles on the agenda today.  Duck Creek to Chief Lake.

Up around 6:30 to another blue-sky glorious day!  It seemed to take a long time for people to get their feet trail-ready today.  Another learning curve on what taping methodologies are going to work best for each one of them.

We started climbing almost right away, up over a shoulder before contouring around a hillside, with ever improving views of high mountains across the valley.  We went up about 500 feet, and then down a bit to beautiful Purple Lake - so-named, apparently because under the right condition (cloudy/overcast) it looks purple.

Purple Lake.......

Then it was up and over another shoulder (and another 500-ish feet gain) and then down a bit to Lake Virginia.  A beautiful setting for another lovely lake.

In the next mile and a bit we went down about 1000 feet via lots of switchbacks to our lunch spot at Tully Hole.  We stopped next to a nice little creek - Fish Creek.  Great spots to pump water and soak our feet and legs.  We lounged about for around an hour before resuming our trek - downhill about another 500 feet to a bridge across Fish Creek.  I've hiked and biked long enough to know that a bridge crossing is usually followed immediately by an uphill; 1500' of uphill in this case......

Tomorrow we will be crossing Silver Pass.  So, today we will climb most of the way up towards the pass so that we can cross it early tomorrow morning.  We had some great views and a pretty lake (Squaw Lake), as well as some creeks, falls and tarns on the way up today.

The last two days I have really been feeling my deep glutes.  Buns of steel, here I come?  If I had one word of advice for training for this route, it would be to do lots of really high steps.  Someone with a long stride designed this trail!

Camp tonight is at Chief Lake (about 10,500').  Although it looks like some weather might be moving in, the skies cleared in the evening.  We have a beautiful campsite - lots of room again, with our own private lake.  Below are two tarns on the approach to our lake (which I didn't take a picture of). Beautiful sunset tonight and starry skies.

I believe the peaks just to the left of centre in the photo above are Mount Ritter and Banner Peak, which we first saw (from the other side) on our descent from Donohue Pass on Day 2.

Another beautiful day in the books - about 11 miles, 2920' of ascent, 2280' of descent.