Goal for the Day: Matterhorn Canyon or as close to Benson Pass as possible.

This day started badly for me.

During a late night bush watering trip, I stumbled and reached out my left arm to brace myself and ended up dislocating my middle finger and also jamming and scraping a couple more fingers. Ouch, to say the least.

I snapped the finger back in place and ran through a series of finger movements to make sure everything was functional. Fortunately, nothing seemed to be broken. There was pain and some swelling, but like when I dislocated my finger (the SAME finger) during my Shepherd Pass trip in 2019 the finger was usable and may not stop my trip. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do any class 3 climbing on this trek which is what cut that trek short.

After some more sleep, I woke up and had breakfast and saw some light from the sunrise. My finger was still sore, but wasn’t any worse and I decided to continue the trek.

Then one of the lenses on my sunglasses fell out. A tab that help the lens in place broke. I had to use a little duct tape to hold it in place. Looked a little odd (neon orange), but it worked and kept me moving forward.

First challenge of the day was to climb up to Miller Lake. Like the previous time down this trail last year, the climb up this part would have been daunting at the end of a day. But even in the morning, it scared me off last year.

This year even with the sore finger, I pushed through and made it to Miller Lake. Beautiful!

Definitely wished I could have camped at this lake. Without the mistake that had me doubling back on my hike on day 2 and by skipping McCabe Lakes, I could see making it to Miller lake by the 2nd night. Ah, well…

After enjoying a short break at the lake, I had to head north towards Matterhorn Canyon. I wanted to at least get to the far end of that canyon before camping, but getting up as far as I could along Wilson Creek would be great.

Unfortunately, the descent down into the canyon meant a thousand foot drop using some annoying switchbacks. Some great views along the way, but I was happy when I reached the long meadow running down the canyon.

As I hiked down along the creek, I started to feel a little like I was in Yosemite Valley. Some of the rock walls and formations were very similar to Yosemite Valley. Except no cars or roads or crowds. No Half Dome or waterfalls either, unfortunately.

As I neared the trail that would take me up the canyon that Wilson Creek tricked down, I decided to stop at a large meadow area. In general, I prefer campsites that have a scenic view rather than those packed into a dense forest, so I passed up several in forests near the creek and I picked an area that had some views of the surrounding cliffs to get some view of the light at sunset and sunrise. Pretty nice place to stop.

I was a little surprised how I only hiked 6.5 miles before stopping, but the climb up to Miller Lake was exhausting and the descent right after wasn’t that much better. This day made the first two days seem easy.

Goal achieved!!

6.5 Miles
7.5 Hours on trail

25 miles total for entire trek