Day 0- shutteling cars and sleeping in the back of Dina's truck at Big Sandy Trailhead.
Day 1- little views except the backside of Cirque. With little hiking going into this trip (1hr 30min hike at most) my back was hurting carrying a 30 lb pack. However no pain once I tossed the pack. ha. We did see lots of hunters the first 15miles of our trip. We camped at Upper Silver Lake. I stayed super warm in my -15 degree mountain hardware bag and Dina's mega lite During the night at 12:30am I woke up to elk buggeling.
Day 2- Today was a lot of map reading and treaky trails that would disappear. We did a have great views of Dragon Head and started to see lots of lakes and ponds. Now that my back has gotten use to the pack my hips start hurting. Plateau was REALLY beautiful - as we got back into more trees there were lots of grand views because the trees were sparsely spaced - AWESOME!! We camped at North Fork Lake. We only saw 3 other backpackers today and they were camped at Nork Fork Lake too. During the night I heard a owl hooting.
Day 3- We had gorgeous views once over Hat Pass. Camped at Tommy Lake. We saw one other backpacker and his dog that were doing the trail from North to South. The weather has been perfect and warm above 10,000 ft. We washed our feet in the lake and were in t-shirts all day.
Day 4- Beautiful day of hiking. Once we got over Lester Pass, hiked past Little Seneca Lake and Island Lake (sand beaches) we hung our packs and did a 12 mile day hike to Titcomb Lake. Big peaks, amazing entrance, Dina went swimming and Granite peaks surrounding us. We hiked back to our packs and ventured on to the ponds underneath Lower Jean Lakes. This was my favorite day by far.
Day 5- Today we said goodbye to the mountains and hello to the forest. Good maintained trails. My big toe (toe bang) started to hurt today because of the 3,875 ft of descending, overall the body felt good. We camped off the trails by Green River Creek where the water was teal color.
Day 6- This was our coldest morning at camp. We hiked out so fast not even changing out of our Ibex woolies. We didn't even make breakfast. We did stop once we were in the sun, took layers off and only had 2 miles left of our hike. Today was flat with views of Squaretop Mountain and hiked along the Green River Lakes. We saw 2 moose before Upper Green River Lakes. After dropping our packs we freshened up in the Lake and started back to Big Sandy to camp for the night.
Day 7- 20 mile day hike into Cirque of the Towers. I loved the dramatic landscape, with granite spire peaks and high alpine wilderness setting.