Backpacking - July 24 to July 28, 2003

This year's backpacking trip took us from Edison Lake to Mott Lake and back.  There were 6 people on the trip, however Ed didn't make it until a day later, so he's only in the very last picture.  Five of us drove up to Edison on Thursday evening: Joe, Dave, Jerry, Jan and myself.  We spent the night at the campground at Edison Lake and enjoyed breakfast at the restaurant at the Vermillion Valley Resort on Friday morning.  The people there are super friendly and the food is great too (the pancakes are HUGE!).  We caught the 9:00 a.m. ferry boat across the lake (about 4 miles hiking - 15 minutes by boat) and started our hike up to Mott Lake.  Edison is at about 7600' and Mott is at about 10,000'.  The trail looks to me to be about 5 miles but the guide shows it as over 6.  In any event, it's not as long or challenging of a hike as Graveyard but was plenty of work for our group for one day.  We were on the trail at about 10:00 a.m.  By shortly after noon it started to rain.  We got rained and hailed on for the rest of the hike in.  It was intermittant at first but towards the end it just kept coming.  Jan was the first to the lake, beating Joe and me by just a few minutes.  Joe and I got there around 3:00 p.m. wet and ready for a break.  Jan had already hiked much of the way around the lake but Joe and I found a campsite that was suitable and closer so we stopped there.  Jerry and Dave showed up about an hour later.

Fortunately it quit raining before it got too late so we were able to set up camp and eat dinner.  My plan was to sleep outside unless the weather was bad, in which case I'd jump in Jan's tent.  Only one problem: Jan forgot his tent (oops).  It worked out okay though, by night time the weather was great and I wound up sleeping out and had a great night.  I saw several satellites and shooting stars.  What a view!