Ansel Adams Wilderness, 8/29/2010-9/4/2010

Not sure what happened to the trees here, some sort of blight, but made for an interesting look.

Very interesting how these rock formations were created. Google Devil's Post Pile to get a good description on how this occurred.

First outing with my new tent. Much more space in this tent compared to my last one of 7 years.

Everynight the temperature was at or below freezing, so we had some condensation in our tents.

Weather was absolutely beautiful and we made sure we had time to just relax along the route.

For those Star Wars fans...doesn't that rock formation look like Jabba the hut!

The water in these lakes have an amazing blue color to them. The pictures just did not do them justice.

Fortunatly, the storm never came our way. We could see on the peaks were it had left snow.

Our camping area for the second night.

Obviously, I was impressed by this lake.

Our lakeshore campsite on Garnett Lake

The shot I knew was going to be awesome first thing in the morning.

As you can see, it was quite chilly in the mornings. As soon as the sun hit you, it only took 15 minutes to warm everything up and dry out stuff from the condensation.

This is a grouping of a bunch of lakes grouped together and called Ruby Lakes.

This was a definately a route that took us through a large number of lakes.

Not as impressive as Garnett Lake, but still very beautiful.

This is a major junction for many trails and we saw the most people here on the entire trip.

Knowing that we had to get to 11,000 feet today, we were not happy to get to this lake because we had to drop 1,000 feet and then make that up, plus more.

I have always wanted to camp out in the open surrounded by the mountains. This was just awesome.

Nighttime view of the stars was incredible.

We have to go up and over the pass tomorrow. 12,300 feet, our highest point on this trip.

Glad we were hitting this first thing in the morning.

Interesting how the snow stays on the black rock, but all the other rocks cliffs are snow free.

I really enjoy going above tree line. Nothing but rocks all around.

We started at the farthest lake back.

Absolutely awesome view. Almost 360 degrees.

We were wondering if the lake is part of a salt flat. The blue is very unique and no other lakes had that color blue.

I am really glad that we are going down these.

We determined the interesting pattern was caused by the rocks below the snow heating up and causing this.

At the point where we leave Ansel Adams and head into the Yosemite, there is just nothing around whatsoever.

Unfortunately, the trail to the lake did not exist on the route we were on. Either someone removed the sign or they changed something that was not on the map.

Wow, did we find a great place to camp.

These guys were fun to watch. They were all over the place and there little holes were everywhere.

I decided to where my boots for this morning.

Been there, done that.