"The Lost Lake and the Bear - 2022" This past weekend I joined my friend @mcummingsphoto for a trip we've both been eyeballing for years - an off-trail exploration of a remote drainage in the nearby Wilderness Area we both frequent. Ever since I saw this particular lake on the USGS Topo in 2007, I knew I wanted to know what it was like there... the problem is, there's no trail to this basin and its extremely remote and access is quite steep and inhospitable... so what's the problem!? LOL Well, we pulled it off. We originally wanted a view west at sunset of the Needles but the weather forecast shifted and we had to hustle to get this sunset in. So, we started at 2 PM on Thursday, hiked 11 miles on-trail to the drainage intersection, stayed the night, got up at 6 AM to start the grueling off-trail hike with heavy packs up the drainage, gaining about 4,000 feet, and reached the lake at around 1 PM. We set-up camp, ate dinner, and then climbed to the summit of this 13,000 ft. peak to witness this nice sunset. We had unfortunately just missed some really rare gap light to the west of us; however, the ubiquitous cloud cover offered some nice diffusion of the entire area, which enabled some nice glow on the peak to our northeast. We thought about climbing to the summit of that peak on the right the next morning, but it rained all night and we woke up to being completely socked in. The view of the Needles to the west at sunrise will have to wait for another adventure in the future! Some pretty incredible stats for this particular trip, which included me carrying all of my backpacking gear, my 14-24 lens, my 24-105 lens, and my 70-200 lens. 3 days, 32.1 miles, 5,772' elevation gain, 17 hours of moving time, off-trail bushwhacking for 11 miles total on steep terrain. This was all pretty encouraging for me since I had just gotten over COVID and was very concerned I would not be able to pull it off, but I felt great! Hope you like this one, trying to get more to my roots in the mountains when I can!