24 July 2023
Cottonwood Lakes to New Army Pass
(8 miles, +1.400/-1,400 feet).

Today some folks wanted to fish, some wanted to chill out, and some wanted to hike. I was very curious to see whether it would be possible to go over New Army Pass to get to Miter Basin, so I led an expedition with UltraShuffle and Half Cookie to go check it out.

Our very first challenge on the way to New Army Pass was to find a way to cross between Cottonwood Lakes #1 and #2. It took some time to find a boulder hop that worked, and we had to do some teamwork to get across, but we made it and were on our way!

The trail passes through a barren boulder field between Cottonwood Lakes and South Fork Lakes.

Once we climbed above Long Lake it seemed like the trail went through a very steep snowfield traverse so we decided to take an off trail route. We donned our microspikes and made our way up.

We made easy work of the snowfield and found a mostly-snow-free basin above.

We had to scramble through a boulder field to get back on trail, but it wasn’t too bad.

The buckwheats up here are so multi-colored I originally thought there were several species. But it was only two.

We were able to mostly follow the switchbacks until about 200 feet below the pass.

On the descent we discovered (not surprisingly) that the trail was much easier than our cross country route. It involved some snow traverses, but they were so easy that we did not even put on our microspikes.

When we got back to camp we enjoyed hanging out until some crazy winds sent us into our tents. It was a very loud night of freight train gusts rolling down from Mount Langley!