South Lake To North Lake Trip Report Day 2

Our plan for day 2 was to hike down into the Le Conte Canyon and then hike to Helen Lake which was near the Muir Pass. It was quite a lofty plan! (We actually made it down the Le Conte Canyon and to a little above Big Pete Meadow right below the 10,000 feet sign.)

We woke up early and prepared our breakfast that consisted of a Breakfast skillet of eggs, hashbrowns, peppers and sausage in dehydrated form. It tasted pretty good the first day. We were able to quickly load our packs and were on the trail by 7:30 am. We dropped off of dusy basin and hiked along the edge of the cliff that dropped into Le Conte Canyon quickly. It was a rough trail with steep downhill steps and lots of water running everywhere. I was a little concerned I might slip and end up in the river at the bottom.

The waterfalls coming out of Dusy Basin were amazing. The water cascaded for about 2 thousand feet down the granite walls. Some of the time it looked like waterfalls.

Here is a picture of where we will be going soon...

Here the water just flowed down the granite and made me think of a giant waterslide. It looked like great fun but I was a little afraid of the landing and I didn't try it.

We finally dropped into Little Pete Meadows. It was beautiful down there and quite warm. We felt like we had been hiking for awhile and soon found a nice place by the river to take a break. We went swimming (Cameron swam and I quickly got in and out.) and then washed our clothes on the granite rocks. We washed up and then Cameron went fishing and I curled up and read away the afternoon. (This part felt like a dream vacation reading by the river with no kids to interrupt me.)

After several hours Cameron thought we should start hiking again. He was convinced that the breeze was blowing and that it would be much cooler hiking. It was about 3:30 when we started hiking. I never felt very good when we started hiking and the long hike in the morning, plus the elevation caused me to feel terrible for the couple of miles we hiked. We hiked above Big Pete Meadow which was amazing and then started climbing up some benches towards Muir Pass. I finally put my foot down around 6:00 where we found a great camping spot just below 10,000 feet. We were able to have a nice fire and the river was close by.

Here is a picture of our camping spot. At camp I laid down on the rock and didn't get up for almost an hour. I am impressed with myself though because I never actually got Heat exhaustion and was able to work through the feeling of being too hot. We ended up hiking about 6-7 miles that day which made our shortest hiking day.