Rea Lakes Loop

[Aaron Sorensen]

Hello all,
I will be off to do the Rea Lake Loop on Friday.
I plan on leaving the parking lot by 3:00 am and get off by 12:00 am, (21 hours)
The length is 42 miles.

Any way, I will give a little more in depth report on the snow going over Glen Pass and the rest of the loop than what I have heard on the podcast from Andrew Skurka.

All I know is snow between 9-10,000'.

I will let you know where the hard spots are with the snow and where it's just patchy.
Also how the sketters are multiplying and the level of the creek crossings.

I will be going counter-clockwise to try to hit the snow before it gets too musshy in the afternoon.

I will also get a good chance to try out my homemade pack in its element for my JMT attempt.
Wish me luck!

[Aaron Sorensen]

All done,
Took 18 hours.
The weather was beautiful.

As far as the loop goes, it has a lot of snow on the north side of the pass. You are in snow all the way down to the lake. About 90% of the trail is covered completely.

I would definitely not recommend going over Glen Pass from the north. If you did, you would have to do it from 10-12 am. Any other time and the snow would be too hard or soft.

If going south to north, if you're not heading down by about 11 am it will get very soft and pretty much dangerous.
The loop is doable now but the effort you have to use while going down the 1 1/2 miles of snow takes a good toll on you.

Going up just had a few patches above 10,500' but none were very hard to get over.

It’s hard to believe that I will be doing basically a loop a day for 5 days while doing the JMT.
I started out on the loop at 3:00 am with only 1 ½ hours of sleep. I didn’t really pay to much attention to the amount of calories and liquids I was getting, (thought it was good).
The lack of sleep mixed with the elevation hit me hard while not getting enough nutrition didn’t let me get back up to speed from the half way point all the way back.

Next time I head up there, (before the JMT attempt), I shouldn’t have any problem doing the loop in under 15 hours.
It took 2 ½ hours just to get from the top of Glen to the other side of Rea Lake.
Andrew Skurka talked about how hard it was getting over the passes in the afternoon.

I wish all the luck for those thru-hikers out there.

[kevin davidson]

Very cool, Aaron, a great warm up for the JMT attempt. What was the daytime temp. range, you think? And how did the pack work out?

Trust you'll get more than a 1 1/2 hrs. sleep a night on the JMT.

[Aaron Sorensen]

Hey Kevin,
Highs were in the high 70's although it felt like mid 80's.
The winds were about 5 mph also so it felt great.

Yes, I will be sleeping about 3 hours + naps when needed. If I can get the mileage in and stay ahead of the pack I'll take as much sleep as I can get.

John Stamstad will be out there for the 3rd attempt.
He will only sleep about 8 hours or less while he's going for the attempt.
You really have to be aware of your nutrition and water intake to push that hard. If you bonk in elevation while also being tired it fells like you got ran over by a wall rather than just hitting it.

[Author]

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