As I packed up camp this morning, mouth full of oat bran with taco seasoning, I could barely contain my excitement to be back in the high country doing some gnarly passes. We left camp a bit later than usual at 9am. The stars were gorgeous last night at Izaak Walton Lake.We picked a semi-random path up a steep forested hillside to a bit of a flat area with many lakes. When we turned the corner to the right, we could see our objective, Shout-of-Relief Pass.This pass still had some snow on it, but it was not difficult to avoid. We reached the top of the pass around noon, and I had an epic lunch of cheese, sausage, and tortilla. It felt good to lighten the load by eating my heavy food first, but I was also conscious of the fact that these heavy food items were also the most tasty. I hoped that my standards would lower as time went on, thus increasing my apetite for dried backpacking food namely mac and cheese.Next, we descended to a small tarn and then traversed to Bighorn Pass among some huge boulders. We contoured around the hole to the right to avoid descending and going up again.

We reached Bighorn Pass with a good amount of sweat and effort. The day was getting hot! On the descent to Laurel Lake, we started going down a class 3 chute but eventually found an easier route to the right. At Laurel Lake we joined up with the trail and kept going because it looked too green to swim.

The trail down from Laurel Lake was unmaintained and we got lost a few times.A steep and slidey section took us to the Second Recess trail. Since the whole area felt a bit overgrown, we were not surprised to see a sketchy log crossing instead of a nice bridge over Mono Creek. We carefully walked over the thin fallen tree above the rushing water.On the other side we saw no good campsites, so we decided to climb up a bit further. We eventually found a bugless site right off the trail, set up the tent and jumped in the river. Did laundry and cooked dinner - rice, cheese, fritos, taco seasoning, summer sausage. Fun meal to end a fun day.

Izaak Walton Lake to Second Recess - 7.9 mi and 2257 ft gained.