The Hail Day
"It never rains in the Sierras in the summer" <--- Not true for the month we spent in the Sierras! :)
Got a late start this morning. We started the climb up Donahue Pass (11, 073 ft) under partly cloudy skies which quickly turned to storms. The temperature dropped and it was rain and hail the whole way up the pass and the whole rest of the day! So much hail . I wanted to take a video of the hail bouncing off the ground. It was like the grass was alive with thousands of little bouncy balls!
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| Rain and hail clouds surrounding the pass |
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| Starting up Donahue, just before the rain and hail started |
We stopped half way up the pass to take a candy bar break and to try and get out of the wind and warm up for a bit. Even though most of the surrounding views were blocked by low lying storm clouds, we could still see back into Lyell Canyon, it was neat to see where we had come from the day before!
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| Candy bar break halfway up the pass, trying to seek shelter from the wind and rain |
When we finally reached the top of Donahue Pass, the storm parted for about an hour, just long enough for us to dry out and warm up a bit. We took advantage of the break and ate some lunch and rested our feet.
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| Ninja suited and booted. Donahue Pass, elevation 11,073 ft |
On the south side of the pass was our first real view of the sprawling Sierras. I had tears in my eyes as I took in the views. Wow. We were really here! We were really doing this! Surrounded by all this beauty. And we get to be here, in this beautiful Range of Light for the next 24 days. Wow. We are so lucky! As we gazed at the mountains Daveed said, pointing south at the mountains, "that's our road for the next month!!". Yes, indeed it was. What a cool thing.
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| "That's our road!" |
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| Short window of sun, lunch time! |
As we lunched just on the south side of Donahue Pass, Amelia and her crew passed us. And this is when we met The Jackies. We would go on to hike every day with both Jackies until Vermillion Valley Resort and then we would hike until day 23 with Jackie Ray! As we continued down Donahue Pass, we hiked into a gorgeous meadow with beautiful little cascading falls, lush greenery and just picture perfect everything! The rain and hail started again so I wasn't able to take any pictures, but I took many, many "brain pictures". I would blink my eyes and make a shutter closing sound, imprinting the image on my brain. I promised myself I would never forget this meadow. And I can still picture it today. I took a lot of these "brain pictures" every day. I just couldn't believe all of the beautiful sights I was seeing!
We leap frogged with Amelia and her crew, who were all cold, wet and pretty miserable. We saw many people who were not prepared for the weather and we were very thankful that we had proper rain gear and that it performed well for us. We saw many who had seemingly legit rain gear, only for it to fail them, soaking them to the skin. My public service announcement is to not buy anything North Face unless you really truly test it prior to a backcountry adventure and it performs for you. A 30 minute commute in light rain does not count as testing. And even if it cost you $300, that is not a guarantee that it will keep you dry.
OK, North Face rant over.
As we continued on in the rain and hail, we started up Island Pass (10, 221 ft), which wasn't much of a pass. Yes, there was plenty of uphill, but the gain wasn't very dramatic, only about 700 feet. Nonetheless, it was still uphill. And it was still raining and hailing. Which meant the trail was flooded and we were walking upstream. It was difficult to keep our feet dry with so much water on the trail, but we did pretty well. Daveed stepped in a deep stealth puddle toward the top of Island Pass and then his shoes and feet were properly soaked. The 3 Amigos/Oakland Boys passed us by, looking absolutely miserable. One had a thin plastic poncho bought in Yosemite, the others had no rain gear at all.
When we finally arrived at Thousand Island Lake the storm started to break up. At one point Daveed exclaimed "I can sort of see my shadow!!". Thankfully the rain and hail stopped for the day, but the cold and wind stayed. We found a decent place to camp on the spongy grassy lakeshore, on the other side of the lake where everyone else had clumped together.
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| Banner Peak wrapped in storm clouds |
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| Storm clouds starting to clear |
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| Warming up! |
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| Warming up with some hot food! |
Daveed has definitely found his trail legs! He motored up and down the trail yesterday and today! He had to wait for me to catch up several times going up Donahue! He loved hiking in the hail, had a huge smile on his face all day long :) He would often stop and turn around and wag his tail at me saying "this is so much fun!!", I would laugh watching the hail bounce off the top of his head and agree that yes, this was fun! I've never seen so much hail in all my life and it was really fun to be out hiking in it-- although I think I might have felt otherwise had I not had good rain gear to keep me dry!
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| Thousand Island Lake camp, elevation 9,844 ft |
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