I haven’t been making coffee much in the morning, but made an exception this morning since I figured a little extra caffeine wouldn’t hurt. Although we wouldn’t climbed a mountain pass until tomorrow, the plan for the day still required a lot of vertical gain. It would be a long day. 

We quickly learned the Sierra Mountains contain what felt like a desert. The trail was sandy forcing our pace to slow down. 

We saw our first alpine lake of the Sierras, which are formed by the snow melt. We chilled there to get water and clean our feet (in that order). 

Later in the morning we entered Kings Canyon National Park, which I hadn’t been to and was excited to check it off the list.

The rest of the day was full of a few mile climb followed by a few mile descent. We wanted to camp near the base of our first pass, Forester, so we hiked until basically dark to arrive at our planned campsite. It was a long day and we covered a lot of miles. The last few miles to camp were stunning!

Miles:31.5

Total Miles:  990