Back to the high route! With our bags packed heavy with 5 more days of food, Emma and I rode the free trolley from Mammoth to Lake Mary to begin week 2.At Cold Water Campground, I ate my lox bagel and salad. Then we began the hike following a trail up to Duck Pass. We paced ourselves well despite all the food weight we were carrying.People were really friendly on this trail compared with other ones we'd been on. We made it up to the pass relatively quickly, a sign that we had been well acclimatized and perhaps gotten stronger over the last week.Once over the pass we planned out some more of the route for the next few days. If we could get to Lake Italy by Wednesday night, we'd be in good shape.

The following section followed the JMT, once again on trail. We passed many groups of hikers, including a ranger who checked our permits, and some familiar faces we'd seen near Yosemite a few days ago.

Trail miles felt repetitive but we made really good time. Soon we arrived at Virginia Lake.Since it was still early, we decided to rinse off in the lake and keep going, rather than camp for the night. On the descent to an area called Tully Hole, we could finally see some taller mountains in the distance. Today had been relatively low altitude.Tully Hole had a ton of mosquitos and it wasn't a great place to camp. Even though it was close to 7pm, we decided to keep going yet again. We crossed a stream and followed an overgrown trail up a canyon until reaching a meadow like area.As it turned out, we walked right into a bog. Still seeing no good camp spots, we skirted around the edge of the bog-meadow up onto some higher ledges. The sun started to set but we pushed on through brushy, unpleasant terrain.Finally, the forest gave way to bare granite slabs and our spirited lifted instantly. After 14 miles of trail today, this was the type of terrain we had signed up to do the high route for!

As we reached Izaak Walton Lake, the sunset cast a beautiful alpenglow on the surrounding peaks. We were excited to see some more high route hikers camping up here! They gave us some beta for the next two passes.

We found a sweet camp spot elevated a little above the lake's meadow with no mosquitos at all! We were so relieved to be able to finally eat dinner, for the day felt like it kept on getting extended.

Lake Mary (Mammoth) to Izaak Walton Lake - 14.7 mi and 3800 ft gained.