[pimaCanyon]

One thing about going solo is that you always have the option to change the plan. Can be a good thing if you come up with something better to do, or a not so good thing if you just weasel out. I weaseled. Well, sort of. But I have good excuses! The plan was to do the Buck Creek Pass/Cloudy Pass/Spider Gap loop in 2 days (which I've done before, another story...). I had all this resistance, not sure I really wanna do this, whine, whine... Finally as I was driving up the REALLY BAD road to the Phelps Creek TH on Friday evening, I realized what the problem was: Too much time in the woods (boring), like 8 hours, and I'm doing it solo (boring). Too much boring and not enough alpine time. But I wanted to do the hike-all-day-from-first-light-till-dark deal, so what to do, what to do... Then I thought of North Star, that peak with the elegant name way out on the ridge NE of Cloudy, right across from the cliffs of Bonanza. I did a rough calculation of the elevation gain to hike out there and back to Spider Col and it would definitely take most of the daylight hours. So that was the amended plan. Which I liked a lot better than having to ride my beater road bike (yes, road bike) down the hill from the Phelps Creek TH to Trinity in the dark at like 4:30am and in the cold! This way I could sleep in till 4:30 and hit the trail around 5:30. Which I did. The coolest thing about the whole weekend was this: About 6am--I'd been on the trail a half hour or so--I'm cruising along the wide flat Phelps Creek trail, lost in the reverie of my own thoughts, when I hear a voice from like 2 feet behind me mumble something. Scared the bejeezus out of me, I about jumped out of my skin. Turned around to see a guy in running shorts jogging past me. Had this little day pack on his back with an ice axe strapped to it. As he pulled away from me I shouted out, "Where you headed?" "Maude, Fernow, Seven Finger Jack," came the reply. "In one day?" I ask. "Yep", he shouts back. You gotta love it! Made me smile big for quite a while. Somebody more insane than me. I mean just doing one of the three involves 5400 verts, to do all three in one day is completely nutso. Made my North Star thing seem like a walk in the park. That was the trip highlight, nothing else I can say can come close to what that guy was doing, but I'll give you a quick recap of what I did. Made it to Upper Lyman by late morning pretty much on schedule. But I'm looking around and there's all these clouds in the sky and it's windy and coolish. I'm thinking, maybe those weather guys screwed up and the weather that was supposed to hit after midnight is coming in early. And that did it, another casualty of solo, the trip got amended again, I lost all interest in making the long walk over to Cloudy and then up to the ridge and along the top of the ridge to the North Star summit. At least in these conditions by myself. My excuse was I didn't want to be up there in the cold and have it start raining and get stuck having to camp way over there and have to make the long hike out on Sunday. (But I'm already scheming about a return visit to actually do the peak, this time hopefully with partners. Maybe do a three day thing over Labor Day. Any takers? On the other hand I may have reached my saturation point with that area, at least for now.) So I lolly-gagged around the upper basin for a while, then climbed back up to the Col and found a perfect secret spot for my tent, took a nap and just generally enjoyed a lazy late afternoon and evening, drinking in the beauty of the place, remembering yeah, this is why we come out here, and feeling really grateful to live with these kinds of places in our own backyard. The weather guys were right on, showers began sometime after midnight, so I packed up and started the hike out by 6:30 Sunday morning. Greg PS Anybody know what the flowers are in Upper Lyman and on the slopes leading up to the Col? It's the only place I've seen these.

Dumbell mt

what are these things?

Zia and Red Mt

Chiwawa Glacier

Dome again

Lyman Lake from an earlier trip

[Dayhike Mike]

Wow! Gorgeous colors! Great pics... Thanks for the TR, vert up!

[Quark]

That flower is willow-herb, a type of fireweed. I always think it's fireweed until I see them next to each other. This willow-herb has a smokier colored leaf, and is shorter, it seems. I always have to look it up. Every year I have to look it up. Nice pics. I've always been intrigued by Cloudy Peak. I stand very corrected, because over the years I always thought it was Clark's backside and identified it as such from afar. Last year while at Lyman Lakes, I realized my error.

[pimaCanyon]

thanks, Quark, for identifying the flowers. My pic wasn't the best example of the blossom. Those specimens were a little ragged, but I loved the color and the setting. I saw some better examples down by the lakes and noticed that the blossoms have pointy sections between the rounded sections, kinda making a four-pointed star pattern.

[Layback]

Pretty colors. Me likey.

[naturealbeing]

Vert up, I think this is the guy that passed you, his report is over at Cascade Climbers, here. He did Fernow, 7FJ, and Maude in 11hrs. and 13 minutes. WOW!

[pimaCanyon]

naturealbeing, no doubt about it, that is the guy. thanks for the link to his TR, I'll have to read it in detail later today--looks like he's got some awesome pix. Wouldn't it be nice to be in that kind of shape?