We caught Blanca Lake on the one perfect day with no wildfire smoke. Incredible. Not crowded at the lake or on trail because we went mid-week. It was perfect.
It's hard, obviously. I have done this once before and I still underestimated it, though I am in the worst shape of my life and have done no training hikes and still made it. We intentionally packed light, went through all of our water on the way up, and filtered more at the lake. That was a tiny bit of a letdown because it wasn't ice cold like I thought it would be based on our campsite at Troublesome Creek - Blanca Lake is totally swimmable.
The biting flies are very aggressive for a stretch of the hike but are not present at the lake. They are responsive to DEET, which is good because we were getting close to turning around just because of the bugs.
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