Getting Tired
We passed the Marathon Lake campsite. It was still covered in snow. We hadn't been planning on stopping here, though, so the snow didn't concern me. We kept going and crossed Diana Lake. Up to this point, because the trail was fairly wide and open to the sun, the snow had only covered the trail in places. The trail started narrowing, making the sun exposure much less, which meant that the snow had not melted on pretty much any of the trail. Every stretch of snow on the trail wore us out. Sometimes the snow was two feet deep, making us cold, wet, and tired. We were determined, though, to reach Superstition Lake today, so we kept going. We passed the Campfire Lake campsite on the way, which was free of snow. Maybe we should have stopped there...it would have saved us a lot of agony later. We passed the Quadga Lake spur trail that went to a campsite, and the trail turned north. Then it got ugly.
Marathon Lake Campsite
Diana Lake Crossing
Campfire Lake Campsite
Exhaustion
Once the trail turned north, it narrowed even more, and there were no spots free of snow. The trail also had a lot of brush covering it in places, much more than we had had to deal with previously. Every time we came to a part we had to go around, we became more depressed. We both became exhausted from the miles, the snow, and the brush. We stopped talking to conserve our energy. It was all we could do to just put one foot in front of the other and plod on.
Superstition Lake
By some miracle, we finally saw Superstition Lake through the trees. We still had between one half and one mile to go, which was a little depressing, but we could finally feel that the day was almost at an end. We kept walking and walking, navigating some tricky portions of the trail, until we reached the end of the lake. We had never seen the campsite. I took out the map and realized we had passed it about a quarter mile back. We discussed what to do and decided we were too tired to go back. We pitched our tent in the middle of the trail since we highly doubted anyone was going to be coming.
We rehydrated our dinner of chili and peaches. Despite how hungry I was, I could hardly eat anything. After dinner I took the food into the woods away from camp (though I could still see it from camp) so we wouldn't have any critters come looking in our camp for it. I was too tired to hang it from a tree, so I hoped that the "scent-locked" bag it was in would be good enough. We set up camp and went to bed at 6:00 PM - the earliest I have ever gone to bed in my life.
