Great Pharaoh Pk (2711 m)
The Sphinx (2500 m)
We were set to go camp at Hidden Lake, but bad weather forecasts had us pull the plug early. When the forecasts showed a lovely weekend (of course they did) Roman and I decided to make it up by packing a weekend's worth of hiking / scrambling in one day. We were both hoping to beat our personal bests on distance (ST: 34, RS:36 km) and gain (ST: 2200 m, RS:2000 m) in one day. Given the larch were still in season but we wanted to avoid the crowds we settled on going in the Egypt lake area.
The larches did not disappoint. Healy Pass had fantastic views, tons of golden larches, bluebird sky and the fresh snow gave a fantastic look to the scenery. We kept hiking to Egypt campground, and then went up to the meadows below Great Pharaoh Pk for lunch. The ascent of Pharaoh was a bit murky, with snow and mud underneath. From the summit, we decided we had enough energy to tackly our secondary objective, The Sphinx, which is just across Scarab lake. We descended, traversed and went upt the straightforward S face. Again, fantastic views. Not excited by the boulder field at the base of the Sphinx, we decided to instead go down towards Talc lake to find the trail that would bring us back to the valley bottom. We eventually found the trail, but likely added 3 km to the trip.
We then started the long boring trip back to the car. We hiked under the moon in the meadows of Healy pass, and finally reached the car at 11 pm, after 15 hours on the move.
We both beat our PBs, with 42.3 km of hiking, and 2455 m of gain.
Summits 46/47 of 2020.