We slept in rather late again but packed up and started up our steep creek canyon. We were trying to avoid creek crossing and getting our feet wet but it didn't last very long. We decided to climb up out of the canyon instead of getting our feet wet but that was a mistake. We climbed straight up a few hundred feet when we came across a side canyon that dropped straight down to the creek we just climbed up from! After a break and snack taking in the magnificent views, we backtracked down our climbing route to the creek, then waded across to the other side. We continued to follow the creek, forgoing any temping ramp up to the higher grasslands that hid steep slot canyons. We came across a pair of Dall sheep horns, which were cool to look at.
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| Climbing up to the pass |
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| Dall sheep horns |
Eventually, we reached the pass to Refuge Valley, a beautiful open grassland valley. It also had steep creeks cut into the land so we were careful to follow down the middle bench and cross over to the southern bench that was uninterrupted all the way down to the river. We found another set of Dall sheep horns at the bottom of the creek we crossed to get to the southern bench. The bench was covered in tons of beautiful tundra flowers! We followed the grassy bench down towards the river when the land became rather swampy. There was a nice little mound rising up above the rest of the ground so we made our way there to set up camp. We enjoyed a nice quiet evening watching the clouds build up and I tramped around getting photos of all the different tundra flowers. The rain clouds came in, producing a beautiful rainbow, and we retired to our tent.
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