Thursday, 21 July 12.1 miles, 8:55
Long Meadow and a granite knob
We camped alone last night at the last crossing of Sunrise Creek at about eighty-two or eighty-five hundred feet. I slept well but woke up several times to catch my breath. I got up a bit before 7:00 and we hit the trail shortly before 9:00. We had a climb up to about ninety-eight hundred feet over one and a half to two miles and I expected it to take us at least two hours. Although we took it slow and enjoyed the increasingly expanding views I was surprised to find us on the crest after only 1:16. From here it was up and down between ninety-three and ninety-eight hundred feet and in and out of views. We dropped into the lovely Long Meadow and ate lunch at noon at Sunrise Camp. Here we met our first Belding ground squirrels (Urocitellus beldingi). These charming subterranean sentinels popped up in all directions, standing upright on their haunches and chattering, no doubt passing word of our presence. We enjoyed their antics as we ate. After lunch we followed the trail, trenched by the weight of thousands of feet and hooves, through Long Meadow before climbing to Cathedral Pass. Here we contoured at ninety-eight hundred feet for a kilometer or two and at times I felt mildly dizzy. Once we began to drop it passed. As we dropped to Upper Cathedral Lake we encountered patches of snow, mostly easily negotiated but we lost the proper trail. We picked our way across wet, spongey ground near the shore. The lake was beautiful and we stopped for a snack before finding the trail again. From there it was a long downhill to Tuolumne Meadows where the “backpackers’ site” is loud and full of people who “backpacked” from the parking lot a hundred meters distant.
