23 July 2023
Cottonwood Lakes Trail
(6 miles, +1,200/-200 feet).

Time again for another adventure with UltraShuffle! And this time he brought his whole family!

We originally planned to tackle Whitney again, this time from the trailhead at Horseshoe Meadow. And we wanted to pass through Miter Basin on the way.

But the Snowpocalypse of 2023 is still blocking passes and making water crossings difficult. So we scaled our ambitions way back, opting to base camp at Cottonwood Lakes and do day hikes from there.

By Saturday everyone was at our place in San Diego. Gear exploded!

Eventually the gear got packed and we hit the road to Lone Pine early Sunday morning. After a lovely breakfast at the Alabama Hills Cafe, we drove up to Horseshoe Meadow.

The creeks were still quite swollen, and the meadows were greener than I’ve ever seen them up here.

It’s about 5 miles from the parking lot to the Cottonwood Lakes basin. It’s only 1,000 feet of elevation gain, but we came from sea level and climbed from 10,000 to 11,000 feet! We were all happy to take a nice long break at the top.

We stopped again at the meadow east of Cottonwood Lake #3 to wait for everyone to catch up. The altitude was really taking its toll!

I recruited Scamper to come with me to look for campsites on the ridge between the meadow and Cottonwood Lake 3. Snow drifts still occupied lots of the flat areas, but we eventually found a spot on the north end of the ridge where we could all pitch our tents.

Before heading to the trailhead, we had checked all kinds of forecasts. They all said 0% chance of rain, so I was surprised by the leaden sky.

Half Cookie said “that sure looks like rain.” I rechecked the weather on my Garmin. Still 0% chance.

And then it started raining! In fact, it rained off and on well into the night. In the last gap before dark we peeked out of our tents to watch a gorgeous sunset.

Finally, about 9pm I checked the Garmin again. Begrudgingly, it said “okay, it’s raining now.”