Piute Pass & Muriel Lake
Our impression of Piute Pass was bolstered by fantastic weather. I should re-phrase: Fantastic weather for photography. We had beautiful partly cloudy skies on the way up the pass. While we were in Humphrey Basin and at Muriel Lake, a storm moved in, relatively quickly, and when we got snowed on for almost 3 hours on the way down. Fortunately it was a dry snow, and we never really got wet. The temperature was also pretty warm for snow (mid 40s). The approaching storm and subsequent snow made for great photos, particularly around the pass and at Piute Lake. Moreover, we had completely different scenery on the way up versus the way down, which is always an added bonus on an out-and-back hike.
This hike started at the North Lake Campground. The day use parking is a quarter mile up the road from the trailhead. After nearly 3 miles of climbing through the forest, we reached the first lake, Loch Leven. Then Piute Lake and Piute Pass. The upper part of this climb was quite beautiful, especially looking back from the pass at the direction from which we came.
At the pass, we had great views of Summit Lake. Summit is an otherwise nondescript shallow circular lake in the middle of Humphrey Basin, however, it looked incredible on this day with rapidly changing sunlight and a storm moving quickly across the basin sky. There are several consecutive photos below of Summit Lake in these variable conditions.
At the pass, we took the southwest trail toward Muriel Lake. There is a really cool tarn (photos below), which appears contiguous with Muriel Lake (it is not), on the left as we approached base of the lake. Muriel Lake reflects Muriel Peak, which lords over the east side of the lake, as well as the mountains surrounding adjacent Goethe Lake to the south. We ate lunch at the lake and then turned back, first noticing the approaching storm.
When we got back to the pass, dark storm clouds had filled the sky. The first snow fell as we started the descent. The sky was still bright in the background, as we hiked east, which provided great light on the far end of the valley. The scenery in the first mile after the pass was fantastic. As we descended further, we gradually got colder and were happy to eventually get back to the car.
As an aside, we always hike regardless of weather. Rain, snow, sleet, hail, cold, or hot. We might modify our hike selection based on weather, but we will always go. Partly because we have had some of our best hikes on days in which the weather forecast was poor. Partly because we don’t know if or when we’ll ever be in that place again. And partly because we find these remote and backcountry areas to be wonderful to experience in their natural elements, including adverse weather. We’ve certainly had days with continuous snow or rain with zero visibility, but that was not the case during our day on Piute Pass. If anything, the color of the vegetation was greater and highlights of light were more vibrant in the afternoon snow. While there is some chance that I am overrating this hike because of our weather experience, we thoroughly enjoyed this trail and consider it to be a top tier hike in the Eastern Sierras.
