Eclipse Day!!

Day 6
8/21/17
13.5 miles
(77 miles total)

Eclipse day!!!!!!
We woke up to a beautiful sunrise, thanks to a bunch of clouds. $#!%! No! No clouds for the eclipse!!

Good morning!

We made surprisingly great time walking up the Grasshopper glacier, gaining a high ridge line. From there it was a bunch of scrambling over rocks to Iceberg Pass and on up towards Yukon Peak, where we had a great view of the Sourdough glacier, dumping into Iceberg lake. 

Getting on to the Grasshopper Glacier
First sighting of the eclipse starting!
Sourdough Glacier feeding Iceberg Lake. Baker lake to the right

We saw three people from a distance heading up Yukon Peak. Not want to crash their eclipse party, or have company at ours, we skirted the peak and instead found a nice spot behind some boulders, sparing us from the crazy relentless wind. 
We got all our eclipse party things out and intermittently looked up at the sun with our glasses to watch the moon progress across the sun. 

We enjoyed our eclipse celebration feast, Fireball whiskey and Moon Pies (as much as one can enjoy Moon Pies). Bubs donned her tutu. 

In the final few minutes before totality, it quickly grew dark. And then suddenly we could take our glasses off and stare directly at the corona ring around the moon! The horizon was pink like sunrise and looking straight up we could see Mercury (maybe?). There was much shrieking with delight and hurried attempts to snap photos. (I practiced last night with starry night/Milky Way photos, but the lighting was totally not the same, so I had to improvise.)

Partial eclipse (through glasses) before totality, totality (no glasses), after totality (glasses again)

The sun in totality, looking south towards Gannett and the high peaks along the Continental Divide

It was all over so fast, growing light once again. We continued shrieking while packing up our things to get hiking once again. 

Looking west as the daylight returns. During totality, the Tetons suddenly became visible, backlit in the sunset like glow on the horizon

After that, it was a bunch of annoying rock hopping in terrible wind for a long ways up to Downs Mountian, a 13,200’+ peak. The gusts were so strong at one point I lost my balance and fell, snapping what was left of one of my trekking poles, rendering it completely useless.

Walking across the moon

It was so windy I was afraid to stand up atop the highest rock on Downs Mountain, this the laying/holding on for dear life

Downs Mountain signaled the beginning of the end of our high route. From there we descended to Goat Flat, a broad flat plateau at 12,000′. 

The endless rocky ground of Goat Flat

We slowly picked our way through the rocky ground to within a mile of our exit trail. Tomorrow morning we’ll finish. I can’t believe it’s over already. 

Final camp

5 Comments to “Eclipse Day!!”

    1. dropnroll Author
      · Edit

      I know! And we were a whole month later. I wished we’d had ice axes a few times. Btw, thanks for all the beta. We were especially thankful for you notes on Europe!

Comments are closed.