Mt Julius Caesar 08/03/19

With Caitlin heading over to the eastside to do Whitney and another hike, I got it into my head that I should do a hiking weekend as well! I decided to head into a part of the Sierra National Forest I had never been to that also looked like it had some great routes into the high mountains. My plan was to go to Italy Pass from Edison lake, with an option to go up to the summit of Julius Caesar if time allowed. There was a loop option to make things slightly more interesting... by going up Bear Ridge trail on the way out, and coming back down Bear Creek trail and over the ridge.

The route:

The goal was an 11 hour day, with a turn around time at 6 hours to allow for extra time to descend if needed. The total daylight from my start time of 6:30 was a little under 14 hours.

Sunrise at the Edison Lake

Climbing up bear ridge trail

 Bear Ridge trail was a pleasant 8km climb up to the PCT/JMT.

PCT descent looking down into the bear creek drainage

A few kilometers later, now slowly climbing along beside Bear River.

It was about 6km along PCT until the turn off to Italy Pass. The turn off was pretty obvious, but right away it was obvious that the Italy lake trails was many orders of magnitude less used than the PCT and I was no longer running along a well marked, well maintained trail.

I stopped to take this photo, and in the 10 seconds it took me to get out my phone and capture this, I looked down and saw >50 mosquitoes on my legs.

Parts of the Italy lake pass were very swampy... in those places it was very hard to follow the trail, as it was overgrown due because of the abundance of water. I ended up sidetracking across some boulder fields and aspen which cost a bit of time and energy on the way up.

A less mosquito-y meadow higher up Italy pass trail. 

The creek was running in a canyon here carved into the granite valley base.

Once I was above the treeline, the mosquitoes disappeared, but were replaced by the equally annoying snowfields. The snow was firm, but very sun-cupped, making going quite slow.

Looking back from when I reached Italy Lake 4 hours in. In the meadow below I had to take off my shoes and cross the stream. It was thankfully only ankle deep. On the way down I found a way to cross without getting my feet wet / taking off my shoes!

The very annoying boulder field needed to gain the summit of Julius Caesar. 

I made it to the summit 10 minutes before my turn around time of 6 hours. I ate some pizza on the summit overlooking Italy lake and started my descent down

Looking east from the summit towards Bear Creek Spire.

Looking south from the summit at Granite Park.

Looking from the drainage I came up with Italy Lake on the right, and Jumble lake on the left. 

The suncups were at times thigh deep making going very slow.

Looking back from Italy Lake. Bear creek spire is middle left and Julius Caesar is middle right. Marmot is on the far right.

Glacial valley

Tree is looking very mangled, yet seems to be quite happy.

Back on the PCT

Once back on the PCT, I continued to retrace my steps until I came to the Bear Creek trailhead turnoff. This trail ended up being way less used than I expected, and was also a lot rougher and technical than the PCT and Bear Ridge trail I came in on. Going was slow, and I again was getting off trail going through overgrown meadows.

At about the 10 hour mark, I started to fade pretty hard. I had energy, and was hydrated, but my legs just did not want to run, and my running pace was really not all that much faster than hiking while being more inefficient. But once I started walking, the bugs were now able to keep up, and I was suffering even more! I eventually gave in and applied some of the 100% deet I had in my back and I didn't notice a bug for the remainder of the way out. Pretty amazing stuff, but probably not too good for you?

Hiking back out over Bear Ridge on the way back to Edison Lake.

Sunset at Edison Lake.

I finished in just under 13 hours, so a bit longer than expected, but no need to get out the headlamp. In the end it was a 58km day with ~2500m of climbing. I was very exhausted.