Mather Pass is known to be one of the more difficult passes. Mostly because of the steep incline and the amount of snow on its sides. Luckily, ours is not a heavy snow year and only the north side, the side we descended, still had snow. Going up was a breeze, I’m definitely getting over the altitude issues I had earlier.
To traverse the snow fields on the other side, most of us put on microspikes. I was surprised how much more grip I had on the still hard snow and it was also just a good experience to finally put those spikes on for the first time. It made going across a lot easier. We even glissaded down the last bit of the descent, on a track made by previous hikers. I didn’t expect it would be so much fun.
The rest of the day followed a wild running river, the path being on the granite slopes besides it. It felt good to finally hike fast again, no longer encumbered by the fatigue that had plagued me up until now. Strong winds came up later and dark clouds gathered arouns the mountain ridges, but no rain came luckily. It made me realize that I haven’t had any rain in 52 days, which is to me unheard of on a hiking trip.
In the end we didn’t reach our goal for the day, but we found an awesome sheltered campsite that was free (!) of mosquitoes.
