Circle the Cirque Crest

Looking across lovely Bench Lake you can see the wooded tongue leading to the Cartridge Pass lake basin. Cartridge Pass can be clearly seen to the right of the white of the speck of snow seen above and to the right above the basin . On my first visit to this lake I spent several hours looking at that scene across the Muro Blanco trying to spot the trail, and never really succeeding.

On the way to Bench Lake

Circle The Cirque Crest - By D.W.Donehoo (All rights reserved)

When the trail faded out near a good sized duck marking the point to head up to find the trail, we could clearly see talus to our left, so we headed towards the river to see of we could skirt it. No such luck. All we got for our effort was bush and talus. We forced our way through the bush and talus hopped the avalanche fan. The going was fairly easy, with some use routes through the bush until we met up with another fan of talus, which had to be crossed. After another section of bush was crossed and yet another fan of talus was skirted (with some detouring and route losing along the way) we once again found the old John Muir Trail. We thought the talus and bush we had just crossed was pretty annoying, but it was only a mild little taste of what was coming.

Looking back at the wooded lip of the Cartridge Pass lakes basin, you can see the slope is very manageable, especially because there is a trail there. Nearby was our new friends, Mister Bush and Mister Talus.

Dave had gone ahead and I cruised along at my own speed. The trail gradually enters progressively thicker forest, and once again I saw that the trail was in surprisingly good shape, with a few minor blowdowns here and there, and only one confusing section of deep woods sheltering a meadow. Eventually, finally, I reached the present-day John Muir Trail and right after that the river crossing and its campsites were found. Dave had dropped his pack for our morning snack-break, and I joined him. Shortly thereafter, we saw something we had not seen for five days: people! And even a bigger surprise, it turned out to be a man and woman who were going to do the route we had just done in reverse! After talking to them we had grave doubts they were up to the task in the time they had, but we gave them as many pointers as they would listen to, and bade them on their way. Soon, the trail got down- right crowded. Large groups pulled in, and after we mounted up and crossed the river, we met more coming down into the canyon. We looked forward to our lost solitude. The haul out of the South Fork canyon to the trail junctions is a real tree shaded grind, and I was not looking forward to it, having remembered this particular section from the last time I was there when we were doing the John Muir Trail. But by this time we both were in very good shape physically and mentally, so we fairly flew up the switchbacks, even stopping to chat with other fellow trail travelers.