Day two started the way every backcountry morning should. Coffee first, then pancakes with chocolate chips, and Spam to round it out. Nobody was in a hurry. The lake was right there, the weather was perfect, and the only thing on the agenda was finding Lost Lake.
The main event for the day was hiking to Lost Lake, a small lake just off the marked trail in the John Muir Wilderness. The name makes it sound more remote than it is, but getting there still meant leaving the established trail and picking our way through the backcountry. Crossing from Inyo National Forest into John Muir Wilderness felt like stepping through a threshold. The terrain got wilder and the foot traffic disappeared.
Lost Lake earned its reputation. The water was clear, the setting was dead quiet, and the fish were not shy about it. We spent hours here, casting lines, eating lunch on the shore, and doing absolutely nothing productive. It was the kind of afternoon where time stops meaning anything and you only know it's getting late because the shadows start getting long.
The hike out of Lost Lake took a different route than the one we came in on. Whether that was intentional or not is debatable, but it involved some bushwhacking and a few sections that were noticeably more challenging than the approach. Eventually we found the main trail again and made our way back to camp.
A good day. The kind where you don't take your boots off until you're back at camp and even then you sit there for a minute before doing anything else.