High Sierra Topix

Days 11-13 Harriets to Merced Peak Fork/Edna Lake

On day 11 Mark and I headed around Big Harriet to the sw corner then over and down a little pass where I sampled the fishing (Thanks Rogue for noticing fish when you passed by! I passed this lake by on my previous visit, which may have been fortuitous since on my arrival at big Harriet on that trip I witnessed the frolicking of a pair of naked nymphs). From this lake we worked our way down to the high trail but forsook the roundabout trail and plunged down off trail and traversed our way down to the trail just above the junction of the Merced River trail and the Red Peak Pass trail. A nifty piece of navigation if I do say myself! We then followed the trail up and over the ridge then down to The Merced Peak fork, Mark whining the entire way. We establish a camp a hundred or so yards below the trail crossing. We would spend 3 nights here. To be continued

Mike

Days 14-16 Merced Peak Fork to Adair, layover day, Adair to Washburn.

Before this trip I had been to Adair two times on both occasions I arrived and departed on separate routes, this would be no different, This time we started on the route we took with Tehipte Tom in 2009 but just as we got to the place where we began a long traverse to go around the ridge that separates Red Peak Fork from Gray peak Fork we called an audible and decided to follow a sparse treelike that went almost directly up the ridge. Before we knew it we topped out and were confronted with a few hundred feet of steep but not too nasty talus. At the bottom it was a piece of cake to Adair. In my 3 trips there is only one photo of Adair! It was taken in 2007 on a trip with my daughters. So for the sake of giving you a view here is the pic from 2007. What always stands out at Adair is the evening views of the southern end of the Cathedral Range--Florence, McClure, and Lyle. After our layover day we would hike the next 4 days to the conclusion of our trip. From about day 12 on we were both lamenting that we were down to a week or less on our trip! Our exit from Adair was to head down canyon a bit then head over the ridge and travel e until we returned to the Red Peak fork. Dropping down the canyon wall was a bit dicey but we managed just fine. There were lots of great slabs at the bottom of the canyon and fish in the creek (never spotted any in Red Devil or the upper reaches of Red Peak Fork). Due to low water the ford across the Merced was only about knee deep. We managed to find a passable campsite just below the outlet of Washburn. to be concluded!

Mike

This is AWESOME!!! Thanks for posting the photos and commentary. I'm looking forward to summer even more now.

Day 17-19--Washburn, Merced Lake, Echo Lake, Tuolumne meadows

Day 17 was a really short day, almost a layover--Washburn to Merced Lake backpackers camp. pressure was on, though as we had yet to catch a brown trout. So we had to set up camp then head out to fish.
Fish caught the fishing was completed though I did have the option of fishing at Echo Lake (but chose not to). On day 18 we split up. Mark heading down to the valley via little Yosemite Hikers Camp and I heading up Cathedral Creek to Echo Lake. Last day The, the thats all folks!

Stay tuned for 2012 car/great lodge/ hiking trip to Glacier NP/ Waterton Lakes

Mike

What an awesome trip. Great pictures too. Thank you both for sharing.

Sometimes it was hard to get mark moving!

LOL, who could blame the guy.

You two are quite the pair!

Great report and photos. That was a creative, fascinating route - a lot of my favorite Yosemite places. Thanks for sharing. I'm looking forward to the Glacier report.