Dawn light hits Mosquito Peak.
I continued climbing the grass and made good progress for a while.
But soon I encountered deadfall and talus
. I kind of enjoy routefinding through this sort of stuff, but it is time-consuming.
In some places, there was a lot of deadfall.
Especially where avalanches had piled it up.
Eventually, I got to the boulder field, the terminal moraine of the ancient glacier that had carved the upper Herein Creek cirque. This called for a new set of routefinding skills.
This view is toward the South; I was heading East (left).
As it got steeper, the boulder got bigger.
Note to self - smile!
At the steepest part, where the boulders were huge, I found myself having to make low class 5 moves. The big boulder in the middle of this picture was about 60 feet across and 30 feet high - I climbed up from the other side of it before realizing that it lead to a 40 foot drop off and had to down climb.
Once over the steep part, there was still plenty of talus to enjoy!
Herein Creek is shown on the map as a permanent stream, but I found it dry. This was a serious problem because I was nearly out of water. The map showed a lake (with no outlet stream) about a mile and 400 ft vertical up from my intended campsite. I dumped most of my gear and headed off to fetch water - thankfully, I found the outlet stream in some talus about a quarter mile from camp.
I found a great campsite.
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