Hiking to Ruby Lake
Aug. 26th, 2022 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerEarlier today I posted about hiking the Crowley Lake Columns; yesterday I posted about crawling through volcanic crevices at Mono Lake. I'm catching up on blogging about hikes I did in June. These have been in my backlog for ten weeks now. Okay, I did post a bit about the trip in real time. I wrote about the hotel we stayed at and included one picture from this hike. My concession to keeping up with the blog in real time was to go light on the trail notes. That's the tradeoff: I can be timely or detailed, but not both. Anyway, here it is now.
We started from the Mosquito Flat trailhead high up in the eastern Sierra Nevada. The trailhead here is at nearly 10,000'. The nice thing about hiking from this trailhead is that the car does a lot of the ascent for us. Though there's plenty of ascent left for those who want to huff and puff. The mountains in the distance rise to over 13,000'.
We've been here before. In 2018 we hiked from this same trailhead. We're hiking a slight different route today. Back then we hiked due west into the Little Lakes Valley, visiting a string of Alpine lakes. Today we'll climb up out of the valley, toward Ruby Lake nestled high in the Mono Pass. (We considered hiking Ruby Lake the second day after camping back then but chose not to.)
Not too far up from road's end the trail crosses into wilderness. These wooden signs are one of the two forms of "You are here" to my happy place.
Shortly past this wilderness boundary the trail splits. The "easy" way climbs gently into Little Lakes Valley. I quote easy because when we did it a few years ago it was still a moderately challenging trek. There's some elevation gain, and at 10,000' the thin air is hard on those of us not well acclimated. The fork to Ruby Lake, though, is the hard way as it climbs up out of the valley.
Yes, it's hard, but that just means I stop more often to appreciate the beauty in which I walk.
Update: continued in part 2!
We started from the Mosquito Flat trailhead high up in the eastern Sierra Nevada. The trailhead here is at nearly 10,000'. The nice thing about hiking from this trailhead is that the car does a lot of the ascent for us. Though there's plenty of ascent left for those who want to huff and puff. The mountains in the distance rise to over 13,000'.
We've been here before. In 2018 we hiked from this same trailhead. We're hiking a slight different route today. Back then we hiked due west into the Little Lakes Valley, visiting a string of Alpine lakes. Today we'll climb up out of the valley, toward Ruby Lake nestled high in the Mono Pass. (We considered hiking Ruby Lake the second day after camping back then but chose not to.)
Not too far up from road's end the trail crosses into wilderness. These wooden signs are one of the two forms of "You are here" to my happy place.
Shortly past this wilderness boundary the trail splits. The "easy" way climbs gently into Little Lakes Valley. I quote easy because when we did it a few years ago it was still a moderately challenging trek. There's some elevation gain, and at 10,000' the thin air is hard on those of us not well acclimated. The fork to Ruby Lake, though, is the hard way as it climbs up out of the valley.
Yes, it's hard, but that just means I stop more often to appreciate the beauty in which I walk.
Update: continued in part 2!
