Leaving Papoose Lake Mike ventured south on the John Muir Trail, crossing over Silver Pass and reaching Horse Camp Meadow by 12:45. Mike calls it Horse Camp Meadow because the site is used as a camp by Rock Creek Stables during their guided horse trips. You can easily detect the area where the horses are tethered.
In fact, the meadow has no name on the map, perhaps because as meadows go this one is fairly nondescript: Silver Pass Creek enters at one end, meanders here and there and then spills over a granite wall at the eastern edge. This August, alas, the creek was almost non-existent.
The real reason that Mike has made this a destination spot is due to the large undulating field of granite in back of the meadow, along with an overwhelming quantity of erratic boulders—boulders lifted up and carried by glaciers and deposited back on the ground at random (that is to say, where they would have the most esthetic impact.)
Mike set up his camp amongst the boulders, but had to wait until after sunset for boulder pix: the sun bouncing off the granite was much too hot and contrasty. In the meantime he wrote, read, and engaged in the ever-popular False Hellebore pix hunt.
Photos: Boulders, Granite—Sierra Nevada, 2008; False Hellebore—Sierra Nevada, 2008; Boulders & Tent—Sierra Nevada, 2008
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