Mt. Whitney From Cottonwood Lakes

The last and eastern-most South Fork Lake. From here we headed directly for the lake.

Beyond the Lakes...

Mt. Whitney Trip from Cottonwood Lakes Trailhead. June 2000.

After threading our way through some larger talus beyond the first chain of lakes, the last eastern-most lake was reached. Easy walking brought us to the shores of the lake and a trail. A family of packers were there fishing in the calm waters of the eastern-most lake. We followed the trail around the lake and should have crossed the outlet where there was a junction and trail plain as day, but instead we turned right short of the outlet, SE, and followed the outlet. Actually it was an interesting diversion over very easy park-like cross-country next to cascades, all with a good view down the valley we were following. At the first meadow we turned it to the right through a tall stand of trees sporting some isolated level camps. Obviously, all of the meadows we passed through were at one time lakes, and we were able to turn these meadows on the "shore".

The got to the next meadow following the next step downward and decided to find the trail. We crossed through one whole meadow and at a meadow bottleneck of rocks we searched for and found a very pronounced and groomed-looking trail. You will not find this trail on any map, but it is as much there as any trail in the Sierra.