El Paso Trip
4/18/2024 • LA to Phoenix
Day Seven
Mildred Lake to Cloverleaf Lake
→ Hiked up to Lake Dorothy (10,350ft), then down to Lake Genevieve (10,000ft),
then up to Edith Lake (10,200ft), and up to Cloverleaf Lake (10,400ft).
→ Patti and I tried to find Bunny Lake, but I forgot my map and we ended up taking a wrong turn.
We turned around when we got to about 11,000ft.
→ The hike took so long we got back to camp after dark. I was going so slow at one point
(long uphill) that the boys went on ahead and prepared dinner for us. It was great.
Total of about 7.5 miles.
Up from Mildred Lake
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→ This first leg from Mildred to Dorothy is a long arduous trail pretty much straight up the side of the mountain. The effort was hard, but the views were wonderful.
↓ All the pics ↓
Lake Dorothy
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→ This mile-long lake is beautiful.
→ When I was a teen, on a back=packing trip with my dad, we witnesses the lake being stocked with trout - by airplane!
→ We crossed the stream here and
started toward the next lake.
↓ All the pics ↓
Lake Genevieve
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→ The hardest part of accessing this lake was the several hundred foot drop, from the access at Lake Dorothy.
→ Looking all the way down at the lake, realizing that I'd have to climb all the way back, made it a challenge to be motivated to hike all the way down.
↓ All the pics ↓
Lake Edith
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→ This small, but beautiful lake was a resting point on our way to the next lake.
↓ All the pics ↓
Lake Cloverleaf
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→ This was the only lake I tried fishing in this day.
→ Unfortunately, I fished it at noon, the worst time of day to fish for trout, and only caught this one little fish.
↓ All the pics ↓
Above Lake Cloverleaf
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→ We all hiked up above Cloverleaf until we found a small pond.
→ The boys didn't want to go any further, but Patti and I had a goal to find Bunny Lake.
→ Unfortunately, I had left my topo map in camp, so we were winging it.
→ I did figure out, after we got back to camp, that the reason that we didn't find that lake was because we took a right when we should have taken a left.
→ We were at about 11,000 ft, and I was having a hard time breathing, when we felt the earth shake a little, and then there was a rock slide on the hill above us.
→ We decided it was time to head back toward camp.
→ I was really struggling on the uphill stretch between Genevieve and Dorothy, that I had dreaded earlier in the day, so the boys went on ahead, and by the time Patti and I got to camp, dinner was ready!
↓ All the pics ↓