Well, the stream crossing is a piece of cake now.  There's a tree that lies across the entire creek with branches sticking out that serve as a makeshift banister.  We enjoyed a minute or two of level hiking then suddenly the trail ascended unrelentingly through the forest.  I'd forgotten how steep this trail is.  In fact, I'd forgotten how relatively difficult the approach to Eldorado is.  It's certainly a lot harder than Boston Basin.  I'm sure our fitness and the hot sun weren't helping.  In the talus field, it felt that I couldn't escape from the sun beating down on me, draining my energy.  Finally at the stream crossing we had a brief reprieve where we had a quick lunch.  Higher up, it was odd to see a couple other parties on the trail as well.  Seems like we never see anyone else on the trail.  I had to remind myself that Eldorado is very popular.  The hike up to the Inspiration Glacier was uneventful, but the views were outrageous.  We both were dragging by the time we were taking the last steps to reach the large flat plateau on the glacier south of Eldorado Peak.

We talked briefly with a party camping on the edge of the Inspiration Glacier, the same spot that I had camped with Ken three years before.  We'd heard of good campsites in the rocks along the base of the east ridge and decided to head there.  There were two other tents on a rock outcropping below the east ridge but we pushed higher up and found a nice spot within short sight of the summit.  Unfortunately, neither us had the energy at the moment to go for the summit.  Also, the rest we needed meant that we probably wouldn't have enough decent light to make a summit attempt, at least one where we'd have good views.  So we both hung out and ate.  I kinda figured that we'd just do Eldorado tomorrow and head out - we were both complaining about our knees too.  Dang!

A good night sleep saw us ready to attempt the peak.  Actually, we slept quite late.  Being the longest weekend of the year, we slept a good three hours past sunrise (I think we got up a little before 7am).  We headed up, not bothering to rope up and eventually arrived at the base of the summit ridge.  There were two parties up there and we decided to wait for them to descend.  Seemed like we waited a long time, but it didn't matter; we had plenty of time.  We wandered around to a rock outcropping at the end of a short snow finger on the north side where we had good views down into Marble Creek cirque.  Early Morning Spire and Dorado Needle both looked inviting, although we were treating the trip with too much leisure to go for Dorado Needle.  While we were waiting, a yellow plane buzzed by - Scurlock was in the 'hood!  I took some video of the plane flying by.  Eventually, we got our chance at the summit ridge.

The summit ridge was a piece of cake and I had video camera in hand, filming the entire way up.  It was a nice day, a little windy, but clear.  I got great cell phone reception but for some reason I couldn't get any rings.  Oh well.  We headed back to camp and took a long nap in the sun.  I didn't mind being a little lazy on this trip.  We headed back around 11:30.  As soon as we hit the talus field, the sun was really doing its work on me again.  Ug, I felt so drained.  My knees were really starting to hurt too.  Dang, this wasn't a good auspice for the following week, when we would tentatively be out in the wild for a full week (we postponed the trip and I've been wearing a knee brace, which has helped a lot).  Because of my knee, Aidan hiked out much faster than me, but waited for me now and then.  We both arrived back at the creek together where Aidan suggested a quick plunge.  Why not.  We sat down in the middle of the frigid creek and leaned back dunking ourselves in.  Cold and refreshing.

The creek restored our sanity