As we descended the non-maintained trail from Monarch, this was our view of Sawtooth Peak. If you aren’t familiar with it, the view here might help you.
Michael referred to this as the “moonscape”.
“. . .miles to go before I sleep.”
Nice light, eh?
Sometimes we lost the trail because we were avoiding stuff like this.
When I told Michael to look at the way these spires were lit, he said, “I’ll fall over if I look up!”. Speaking of falling, I did fall a couple of times. This is the first time in my memory that my knees and ankles just spontaneously buckled.
In the summer, we rarely choose to use the Sawtooth/Timber Gap trail. It is steep, hot, and dusty. On our trip down from Monarch, it was the most welcoming and comfortable part of the day. Because of freeze-thaw, the trail bed was a little spongy and not dusty at all. It wasn’t steep compared to the rest of the hike, and such a nice flat place to put one’s feet! Good thing, because we were on the edge of running out of daylight and needed to pick up the pace.
Michael took this photo of Empire and Sawtooth Pass while shouting at me to hurry up in the outhouse. I did hurry, but not soon enough to run down the icy slick road for a better view of the entire peak. It was truly this red, and only lasted about 1 minute.
Dang. That was a hard day. Michael asked me what the best part was, and I said “the sunset”.
2 Comments
What an adventure, Deb! (Thank you for sharing the story and I’m not going to ask when you were there so I don’t feel sad about having missed you.) The normal trail to Monarch is very well graded but North facing so it really holds the snow. That final stretch into Monarch is a long slide down if you lose it on the ice! Michael and I avoided those snowy stretches but I photographed them for the effect. TERRIFYING is right!!
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