Some sunrise photos at Honeymoon Lake.

Our plan for today was to climb to Granite Park, cross to Royce Lakes via Croft Col, and then to the Bear Basin via BeaRoyce Col. The bugs were nowhere near as bad this morning as the night before.

Looking back east over Honeymoon Lake.

Nearing tree line in the Granite Park area.

Great views all around from Granite Park.

Overlooking a meadow with Mount Humphreys in the background.

Braden strolling through a meadow in Granite Park.

The view of Croft Col (the angled snow chute) from the unnamed lake just to the east.

The view directly up Croft Col.

Braden climbing slabs towards Croft Col.

The view of the uppermost Royce Lake from Croft Col. The pass was not difficult at all, only about 400-600 feet of class 1 from the unnamed lake. The upper Royce Lake still had a fair bit of snow floating in it, even this late in the year. The imposing face of Feather Peak is directly across the lake in this picture.

Views of Royce Lakes, with Mount Humphreys and the Palisades in the background.

BeaRoyce Col from below. The col is the low point on the ridge above the snowfield. From this angle it looked like a pretty steep snowfield. We weren’t sure we would be able to make it, but thought we would give it a try and go back the other way if it was too steep.

A better view of Mount Humphreys and the Palisades.

Royce Lakes from partway up BeaRoyce Col.

The upper part of BeaRoyce Col. It was quite steep, but the soft snow, suncups, and occasional rock outcrops made it doable.

Braden climbing BeaRoyce Col.

Braden on the sand slopes at the top of BeaRoyce Col.

Sky Pilot atop BeaRoyce Col.

The Bear Basin. From BeaRoyce Col. We were very excited to get our first views of this rarely visited alpine basin. The mountain on the left is Seven Gables, and the three lakes in the foreground are Bear Paw, Ursa, and Big Bear Lake.

After a couple of short downclimbs, the descent from BeaRoyce Col was much easier than the climb.

More Bear Basin views.

Looking back at Feather Peak.

Erratics atop slabs.

We set up camp just below Ursa Lake on a sandy flat patch. To our surprise, there was another couple across the outlet stream, about a hundred feet away.

Braden fishing in Ursa Lake. We didn’t catch much, maybe one fish each.

Evening views, with the other tent nestled in the rocks.

Braden fishing Ursa Lake some more.

The last light of the day on Seven Gables.

The mosquitos were much more tolerable here than the night before. We were able to eat dinner outside without headnets.

We discussed our plan for the next couple of days over dinner. Given the pace we were moving, we would have to hike most of the next two days to complete our loop over Dancing Bear, Gabbott, Mono, and Morgan Passes. We weren’t too excited about that ratio of hiking to relaxing, so we decided to use the Italy Pass shortcut. In order to see some new scenery, though, we planned to camp in the Chalfant Lakes basin. That meant that tomorrow, we would cross Dancing Bear and Italy Passes and then drop down to the Chalfant Lakes area.