John Muir Trail, Day Two

Papoose Lake via Tully Hole

July 21, 2017

Our itinerary for our second day was planned to take us past Lake Virginia, down into Tully Hole, back up to Squaw Lake and off the JMT to spend the night at Lake of the Lone Indian. We woke up to a cool and clear morning at Purple Lake. The early morning was spent boiling some water for breakfast oatmeal, coffee, and for some people freeze dried breakfast meals. For some reason, Steve and I usually ended up being the last people out of camp each morning, but the first morning seemed a bit slow for everybody as we adjusted to tearing down tents, and packing everything back up.

Darrell’s friend Jeff was still not feeling very well and we discussed his options and wisdom of continuing on or heading back to Mammoth solo. If he continued on, the next bailout point would be in two days at Edison Lake. At that point he would be on the west side of the Sierra Nevada and would have to figure out how to get back around to the eastern slope where his car was. This was coupled with a couple more days of up and down plus going over Silver Pass at almost 11,000 feet before getting to Edison Lake. He decided that he would end his JMT trip at Purple Lake and spend a rest day fishing at Purple Lake before hiking back over Duck Lake Pass to Mammoth. It was agreed that he would figure out a way to the North Lake trailhead outside of Bishop where his car was, and be there in 6 days when David, Kevin, and Steve were to be finished. I believe that Jeff was wise in not continuing as the trail never got any easier from Purple Lake, and actually was a bit tougher.

All packed up and ready to hit the trail at Purple Lake.

The first section of trail was an uphill climb of 700 feet to Lake Virginia, and with the coolness of the morning and a north breeze that accompanied us all day the climb was fairly pleasant.

Steve stopping to take pictures on the climb up to Lake Virginia.

Coming over the ridge to Lake Virginia give you a very nice view and a pleasant flat section for the next 2 miles.

Crossing the inlet of Lake Virginia was easy and non eventful.

At Lake Virginia we ran into a solo hiker that we gave the nickname of “Mr. Talker” as he proceeded to tell us all about his trip so far from Yosemite and how his hiking partner had dropped out at Mammoth Lakes because he was scared by the water crossings. Every time we ran into him on the trail he would proceed to repeat the same story like he had never met us before. He was nice enough to take a picture of Steve, Darrell and myself with Lake Virginia in the background. Day two and the shirts still look pretty clean!

The trail from Lake Virginia to the start of the descent into Tully Hole is flat and easy.

Darrell hiking towards Tully Hole.

As you descend into Tully Hole the trail goes into a massive series of switchbacks and you are presented with an amazing view. This section of the trail is in the sun most of the day and I felt for the folks that were heading up the climb. In hindsight, it seems going north to south on the JMT makes most of the climbs not as steep and avoids some very hot and sunny uphills. At least for the section I did.

The panoramic view from the top of the downhill into Tully Hole.

Darrell navigating the switchbacks down into Tully Hole. Hot and dusty, but compared to other sections of the JMT this was pretty easy on the body.

After you reach Tully Hole the trail then follows Fish Creek for a while down the canyon. The trees and creek provided a refreshing break from the full sun during our descent. As you can see from the picture above of us crossing the bridge over Fish Creek this lushness brought out the head nets for the bugs and for the next mile or so the trail was quite buggy.

Some of the lush vegetation after crossing Fish Creek, which meant many bugs. After a brief level walk the trail starts to head back uphill for the climb to Squaw Lake.

The climb up to Squaw Lake is a fairly typical Sierra Nevada uphill trail. You can see the section just below Squaw Lake above (at about mile 6.5). Steve, Brennan and Daryl are the three hikers just ahead of me. You can see another backpack ahead of them, which was a group of two hikers. It seemed they were father and son and the father was in his later 60’s or early 70’s and was moving pretty well when he was moving. He had an annoying habit of stopping in a section of the trail where you could not get around him and would proceed to talk for quite a while and then proceed up the trail to only stop and talk again. We took an opportunity to pass them up when he stopped to talk to a south to north solo hiker just above Squaw Lake. Trail etiquette on the JMT is not always the greatest, but overall the people we met were pretty friendly and nice. The final climbing section from Squaw Lake to the trail junction to Lake of the Lone Indian was a healthy one, but knowing it was the last climb of the day made it easier. By the time we made it to the junction our group was spread out. We started to have lunch, but it was a bit buggy with no shade so we decided to head down towards Papoose Lake. At Papoose Lake I noticed an older trail headed to Lake of the Lone Indian before you crossed the outlet of Papoose Lake. I debated going down it but it was fairly overgrown. I then noticed a junction up the hill on the other side of the outlet. I continued on to the other side of the outlet and waited for the group as I was not sure we wanted to drop all the way into the Lake of the Lone Indian only to have to climb back out the next day. At least I was not all the excited to do that.

Slowly the rest of the group managed to find their way to the newer tailhead, except for Kevin who was the last to find his way down the trial due to a bio break near Squaw Lake. Kevin took the old trail down to the Lake of the Lone Indian and nobody in our party saw him. We waited for quite awhile for Kevin and then decided we needed to send some folks back to start looking for him. About the time David and Brennan were out of shouting distance we saw Kevin hiking back up the newer trail from the Lake of the Lone Indian (which was the right thing to do). More folks were sent to get the other searchers back. By this time a good couple of hours had passed and we decided to camp at Papoose Lake much to Darrell’s disappointment.

Lake of the Lone Indian, as close as most of us except Kevin got to the lake.

Papoose Lake was not too shabby of a place to camp. Lots of Mosquitos, but luckily it was cool and windy that day and night. One benefit of hiking a little ways off the JMT was the lack of people we saw that night. Quite the contrast to Purple Lake the night before.

Our route for day two, although Kevin got a bit more mileage by taking a detour to Lake of the Lone Indian :-).

Previous: Day One Purple Lake

Next: Day Three

keywords: John Muir Trail, JMT, Backpacking, Hiking, Sierra Nevada,Tully Hole,Virginia Lake, Papoose Lake

description: Day two on the trail from Purple Lake to Papoose Lake via Tully Hole