Today I climbed over Muir Pass, stopping at the Muir shelter on the way. In the afternoon, I dropped into McGee canyon to camp. By the end of the day, I’d covered 12.3 miles, 19.8 km.

It was a cold start this morning, the valley was deep in shade and last night was colder than any of the recent nights before. From camp I could see into the valley I’d walked through yesterday, there were several tents down there, some were already packing up.

After getting on trail, I walked past still lakes in shady valleys. The sun shone on the mountains above us, promising to warm us soon. On the ground, I saw patches of frost from last night’s chill.

The trail climbed into the light, and past several lakes and waterfalls. Each lake had a flat section of trail along the shore, and each waterfall meant a steep climb. We headed up towards the pass this way, in giant steps.

We walked around the final lake, Helen Lake, before starting the switchbacks on the final push for the pass. I was surprised to find a small snow patch over the trail which needed traversing, but it wasn’t a problem even without spikes.

After only about 20 minutes on the switchbacks, we got to the pass. There was a stone shelter up top with a logbook to sign, the John Muir Shelter. I spent some time reading the logbook before adding my name too.

Looking out from the top, I noticed that the downwards grade was much more gentle than earlier passes. This came as a relief, as a lot of my recent descends have been bone jarring.

On the way down, I passed more lakes, including Wanda Lake which had very dense swarms of strange gnats along the shore. They didn’t bite, but the clouds of bugs were so thick that I could feel my legs moving through them. Just as quickly as the bugs appear, they disappear once I pass the lake. No other lakes seemed to have this odd bug situation.

I walked around Evolution Lake before dropping over the end of the valley into McGee Canyon. After about an hour and a half of fairly steep descent, I arrived at camp. A nice sheltered spot near the river and a meadow with good views of Mt Mendel, Mt Darwin and The Hermit as the sunset painted them in golden orange light.