The next morning we got up, packed up, and headed out for Glen Pass at about 8.

We had briefly considered climbing one of the peaks south of Bubbs Creek, like East Vidette or West Vidette, but settled instead on heading north and climbing some of the peaks closer to Rae Lakes. Today we hoped to do the short detour up Mount Bago en route to Glen Pass.

Looking south towards Center Peak and Bubbs Creek.

East Vidette and Deerhorn Mountain to the south. Once on the JMT we started to pass more groups headed in both directions, though mostly north. We continued in.

Mount Bago from the JMT. The description in Secor isn’t too specified, so we figured it’d be easy to find the way. We thought we’d head through the forest for the obvious bowl east of the peak and then cut north up the seemingly more forgiving slope. We stepped a hundred or so feet off the trail and made a marmot / bear-proof cache of the things we wouldn’t need.

Looking east towards University Peak and the Sierra crest over a small lake that sits east of Mount Bago. The route up Mount Bago was about as easy as we expected, taking about an hour and a half to get up from the JMT and slightly less time to get down.

A panorama looking south from Mount Bago. At the right is the Great Western Divide, East Lake is in the middle, and then the Videttes and Deerhorn Mountain and Mount Stanford are at left. Despite this mountain’s relatively lower elevation it had an impressive view, especially to the south.

Looking southeast from the summit towards the Videttes, Mount Stanford, and Forester Pass (obscured).

The Great Western Divide with Mount Brewer riding prominently.

Looking up East Creek towards Mount Jordan and the Great Western Divide.

Mount Brewer and North and South Guard.

Looking over at University Peak and Center Basin.

It didn’t take long to get back down to our things. We ate lunch in the shade before shouldering our heavy packs and heading for Glen Pass.

Mount Bago from the JMT again. It was a hot, exposed climb up to Glen Pass. We refilled water at the last lake before the pass as a group of young, fit PCT hikers blitzed past us.

The view north from Glen Pass.

The view north from Glen Pass.

Mount Cotter and Mount Clarence King from Glen Pass.

North again towards the Palisades. We yo-yoed the PCTers on the way down, having taken a shorter break atop the pass than them before descending the rocky north side of Glen Pass.

The view of the Painted Lady as we dropped down into the Rae Lakes basin.

More Rae Lakes views. We headed directly for the large area of campsites at the Middle Rae Lake.

Nearing the campsites.

While we weren’t that early in arriving at the camping area at Middle Rae Lake, we still had a good choice of campsites and selected one far away from the bear box overlooking the lake and the Painted Lady before relaxing for the afternoon/evening.

We made a plan to climb Mount Cotter which rises above the Sixty Lake Basin the next day.