Day 5 - Mystic to Summerland 20.8miles

Originally I had planned on the previous day ending at Carbon River, but my rough calculations showed about 5,500ft of elevation gain so I shaved a thousand feet and almost 4 miles off of it and camped at Mystic. The result is that Day 5 was a monster day. Jeff and I left camp at 7:30am winding past the Winthrop Glacier before climbing through the woods into Berkley Park before dropping into Sunrise via Sourdough Ridge around 1:30 (~9.2m).  Early in on the day we ran into a geology class doing moraine mapping and water sediment testing and later ran into a handful of people doing the Northern Loop trail which looked like a pretty awesome 2 night trip. It had rained a little over the night and day 5 was mostly cloudy and socked in with a few moments when the sun popped through.

Winthrop Glacier terminous

Right before Berkley Park, we apparently just missed a herd of goats

Looking into the Berkley Park bowl

Berkley Park was amazing - it can easily be day hiked from Sunrise and is on my list to revisit

We crossed dozens of bridges like these

Emmons Glacier coming down from Sunrise

After eating a veggie burger, beer, and then some coffee (and having a bit of a food cache mishap) we left Sunrise for White River which involved us taking some wrong turns and making it a 4.9miles trek rather than the 3.1 it could have been. Jeff and I split ways here and he met up with Joy for a night of car camping.


I think that this is a little piece of Fryingpan Glacier approaching Summerland

Summerland Shelter - where I was lucky enough to spend the night