That first night we were camped pretty close to this spot. To the right, were a bunch of huge boulders, that we climbed on and played around after coffee.
On a dare, trying to break a bit of the glacier off, and thinking I would only break off a piece about a foot at most, I ended up causing an 8 x 3 piece to crash into the lake. It was pretty cool.
Then I knew that this was going to be the best day of the trip when I saw, and exclaimed: "There are beers in the snow." Sure enough, a bottle of Jubuale and Black Butte Porter were sitting there for us to drink. I have recently learned the trick of how to open a beer bottle with another one and gave it a try. Worked like a charm. Breakfast was now beer on top of the coffee. We drank them rather quickly and with gusto.
When we were done, we decided to play it safe and move our camp over to a dryer location, and one that I prefered for the view. It was set above the lake a bit, but afforded an amazing scene with the mountains surrounding us and the lake below.
We made camp and then realized there wasn't much to do. We weren't hiking anywhere that day. We were just too sore. We kept looking at the clouds and I became an amateur meteorologist, having scrutinized the sky yesterday, I was ready to detect any similar patterns.
Needing something to do, and still a bit buzzed from the beer, we decided to climb the hill behind our camp. Not a small feat. If you look closely, in the middle of this photo, you'll see a waterfall, which came from another lake on the mountain. It was draining down the side into our lake. The photo was taken about half-way up from camp:
It was really bloody steep, though not covered in snow, and dangerous. We almost stopped several times and turned back, but as you get closer to a goal, it becomes harder to resist. So here's the view:
If you click on the photo above, you'll see where everything happened explained in notes.
So, it was hot and we wanted to get a swim in before the weather turned bad. We started back down the mountain and that's when I was inattentive at the wrong time and took a tumble. I have huge, baseball sized bruises on my left leg from that fall. Nasty. Then, we were walking on the snow again and Steve was showing me some shoe skiing moves. I decided it was too steep for that and sat down and proceeded to slide the length of that glacier. We ended up doing it again and again, causing our asses to be sore and wet, but it was the most fun thing we did on that entire trip. Check above for video.
Then, we were back at camp and the decision was made to swim in this lake. If you'll notice, the glaciers are touching the lake. There isn't much colder water anywhere in the world, I'd imagine. To make it better, we went to the edge of the glacier and jumped off of it to swim. Invigorating. Most of you that know me well, know that I am not a swimmer. But I'm improving, see?
Not much else happened that day. We explored the section that remained, an area full of huge, 8 foot boulders. I dared Steve to jump from one to another and he made it. I hesitated a moment too long and missed. My other leg took the brunt. I won't be wearing a skirt for a long time.
We started a fire around 7:00, made dinner and went to bed soon after the stars came out. We were brave and put the tent in the clearing to have a nice view, but became a bit more apprehensive in the night as clouds moved in. We were up early enough and hiked back out 3 miles to the car, where all sorts of good and decadent food awaited us in our still cold cooler.
A lovely trip. Oh, and on the trip out, I jumped into Strawberry Lake without any clothes on. I ended my virgin backpacking and virgin skinny-dipping in one trip.
Tuesday was another story.
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