High Sierra Topix

My pleasantest surprise was the view looking up from the base of Grinnel Meadow. A light coating of snow covered the meadow and with the ridge in the background, was breathtaking.

My biggest disappointment was North Guard Lake. Because of it's relatively low elevation (10004 more or less) made me anticipate good fishing like I always got at Sphinx (higher elevation). Also, North
Guard lake is about as scenic as my foot.

Sphinx is gorgeous. This pic is only a tiny part of the Lakes and doesn't do it ANY justice.

Exceeded expectations:

• Kid Lakes, especially the long narrow lake below Mungoat Pass and the lowest lake (which has kind of a Japanese rock garden feel to it)
• Lake 10554, below Emerald Peak
• The westernmost Swamp Lake, on the Monarch Divide
• Upper Goddard Creek valley
• Lots of other places that are off the beaten path and not well known, so I hadn't seen tons of photos of them before actually being there.

Disappointed:

• Woodchuck Country. Just not that attractive at all, IMO.
• Little Yosemite Valley. Kind of pretty at the eastern end, but further down it's just nothing special...and way too crowded. The campground is kind of a pit--might as well be car-camping at that point.
• Blayney Meadows. See above re campground.
• Lowest Graveyard Lake. Pretty enough as far as it goes, but it's so overused that it's impossible to ignore how beaten up it is.

I've never been to a place that didn't meet my expectations. Generally don't have any or have a good Idea of what it will be like. Skeeters, people, trash etc. may not be pleasant but those are things you should be aware of and should not allow you to be disappointed at what mother nature provided. Not to say that I haven't been disgusted with trash, TP, and garbage--that is not the fault of the land.

I'm not sure whether the places that provide the most pleasure are the most esthetically pleasing or simply emotion evoking. To this day the most awe inspiring sight from year to year is entering Yosemite Valley. Yes I know there are people and cars but if you can't get beyond those things and admire and appreciate the grandeur that is your problem. It gives me goosebumps still and I have been viewing the valley from time to time since the early 50s.

In the backcountry three places will certainly give me goosebumps. A stroll up either Deadman or Cloud Canyon and a view across the upper Merced from any viewpoint will bring an emotional reaction, sometimes to tears, that I can't explain. Bad weather or skeeters can't change that.

I do agree with Mark, that first day--the first six miles can have unpleasant human impacts. But that is why we go farther than that.

I guess I am a little off topic but the concept of exceeding or disappoint places in the backcountry is just foreign to me. It is what it is.

Mike

I have to agree with Mike about disappointment. For me, it's almost always been that the disappointment was inside, rather than outside. My second JMT trip was a real disappointment because we had to bail and because I never really felt especially good anytime on the whole trip. But the times I managed to get out of my own funk, I realized I was in a bunch of pretty cool places!

But for exceeding expectations, I have to put in last year's trip to SE Yosemite. My expectations were very high for this trip because of all I'd heard (thanks, Doyle, Mike, and many others!), but the scenery—and the trip as a whole—exceeded them. What a fantastic area! The disappointment for that trip was coming down to the Valley, where we were first greeted with the signs about the sad bozos who had gone over the top of Vernal a few days before, and then the bumper-to-bumper hikers on the trail from the junction of the Mist Trail all the rest of the way down (and it seemed like 20 miles at that point...). But of course we expected that, and the trip was still wonderful.

As I know that anywhere you go in the Sierra is different, I never have expectations. Sometimes I just head up some seemingly weird dirt road off Hwy 88, or 4, or 108, and I find amazing places; sometimes not, but if I look around, I find worthy experiences in the "sometimes not" places.