My uncle and I have been due for a trip for a long time. Our last one was Cedar Mesa.

We drove out Friday afternoon to make a campfire and cook some lentils. Uncle Bill is heading to the JMT later this month for a thru-hike that has been on his list for fifty years. Besides hiking and lounging, this weekend was filled with talk of backpacking technique and trail gossip.

Hiking cross country was a joy. The opportunity to navigate, relative solitude, large number of lakes, alpine plants and sub-alpine trees; it was a great loop. We made camp in the early afternoon, swam, napped and hardly moved ten feet from our warm granite slab.

Yesterday, we leisurely visited the various other lakes in the area, explored other cross country access routes to the region and stared at the view. Around noon we donned packs and found our route down. While there were a few other parties up there, I saw no evidence of travel on the route we took down and hardly any on our route up. I’m pretty sure that people go other ways.

Once we reached tread, the miles went quickly, but we still didn’t get back to the car until after five. It was a nice change from the rush to the car that Sunday often is.