2023 Fall Trip - Day 11-of-21 - Sept 17, 2023

Sunday, Sept. 17, 2023 - After yesterday's "Beautious-Day-of-Beauty", let's see what happens today! I have 2 goals for today - hike not too long (under 10 miles) and kind-of off the beaten track (after yesterday's total inability to park near the trailhead). Kind-of directly west of here (23.4 miles up 395 North, take a left at "Tom's Place", then 10.4 miles out/down Rock Creek Road) is Mosquito Flat Trailhead, with the hike being hike Mono Pass to Summit Lake (8.8 miles long, taking 4:41, and has a rating of 4.8 out of 5.0) - SOUNDS PERFECT. The map on the top is from AllTrails, and the map on the bottom is from caltopo.com:

After another great breakfast I headed up the road:

Parking was much more reasonable today (and in a bit of shade so the Crosstrek wouldn't get over-heated):

Very nice 0.36 mile walk up to the trailhead, alongside Rock Creek:

I LOVE GOING UP ALONGSIDE RIVERS/STREAMS

I'm taking the trail to the right:

Pretty Cool Views ahead of me:

Looking down (left-to-right) on Marsh Lake, Heart Lake, and Box Lake

Looking up at Mount Starr towering above me:

The trail off to the left goes to Ruby Lake:

But why go next to it when you can LOOK DOWN ON IT??

By then I was turning the corner of Mount Starr, and heading up to Mono Pass:

Looking back, I had passed a couple of hikers. One was kind-of-slow:

But I had my own problems to worry about (looking up):

Looking back down, it turns out that the best trail is staying west-of-the-snow (the way I hiked):

Given yesterday's experience with "Mountain Pass as flatland", I wasn't too surprised to see "Summit Lake" far ahead of me:

Since I could see how to EASILY get there (there were people there), I decided to take the uphill trail curving around the ridge to the left - maybe I'll get some cool views. Where I stopped was 5 miles into my hike:

Looking left:

Looking ahead:

Looking right:

It was 1:15, so I headed to the right, over the ridge (and a little untracked snowfield), to approach Summit Lake from the north (can you see the people?):

I was all alone when I got down there at 2 PM:

Heading home - a goodbye look at Summit Lake:

And some pretty pictures on my way down:

I usually make pretty good time going down, but today there was an extra incentive - THE CLOUDS WERE RISING BEHIND ME:

I stayed dry all the way back to my car (as a matter of fact, the clouds sort of dissipated), and it was a GREAT HIKE - 9.62 miles in 5 hours 25 minutes:

A nice view of Rock Creek Lake on my way home:

I drove 68 miles today. Thank you God for this Wonderful Hiking Day!

Music for today - 2 albums from U2:

Zooropa, 1993 - lousy, except final song with Johnny Cash:

Achtung Baby, 1991 - after lousy stuff, I wanted to hear their "Best Rock Album" (just saying):