Our third day was a day to pack the overnight bags and hump over to our intended goal in the Manson-Davidson area. Packing all our various crap took a while and it wasn’t till about 10am that we got going. A slog up Lorna Pass again ensued and down we went via the Lorna Trail hitting the Manson Creek drainage junction with the Tyax trail right around noon.
It was then a typical take your bike for a hike up Manson Creek from the 1700m mark at Tyax trail junction. Even though all three of us were looking for it somehow we missed the very faint junction taking the Manson Crk junction NE towards Manson Col (its approx 1920m fyi) so ended up with some aggressive pushing up a deadly hot exposed to the sun ridge punctuated with views of Davidson’s S face and the Tyoax drainage.
After a short break to guzzle the rest of our water we pushed up another bugger of a steep hill approx 200m to what I call Manson Col where we found no water. We hiked over to our intended route continuing to Paradise via ridgelines but then there was dissension about what could be accomplished in the remainder of the day (it was 4pm and still stinking hot). After hiking down another 70m or so we filled up with water and decided to take our bikes for a refreshing walk to Davidson then reconvene and camp in the Manson Creek drainage.
After ditching unnecessary weight of overnight gear we were once-again back to daypacks. However our attempt to hike the bikes up to Davidson was aborted when stiff winds gusting from the SW periodically lifted our bike wheels up into the aether. After ditching the bikes and weighing them down with rocks to prevent them from taking off we then hiked the rest of the way up to Davidson to, once again, take in spectacular 360 views. The ride down was similiarly pleasant with the rocks of Davidson being small and having good traction. Manson Creek was also a blast to ride down and what took us 2 hours to push up must have taken about 15 minutes to ride down.
We set up camp on a small grassy knoll at the Manson Crk trail junction surrounded by spectacular views, took in an orange sunset and wandered around in sparse meadows that once again were bug-free. Dinner that night was three cheese smokies with some ramen and butter — mmmm
Day 3 – Manson – Davidson
The Lorna Trail – once again
Bombing down Lorna
Calling out periodically works! We spotted this friendly wrangler from Tyax’s Bearpaw camp who said she heard us from some distance and appreciated the headsup.
Up Manson – views behind to Lizard Lk
A bit of a hot deathmarch up Manson
Pleasantly rambling
Cresting the last climb to Manson Col
Up we went to Davidson. Then ditched the bikes. Then down again
Bikes are cool
Davidson’s lower slopes to Manson Col. Just below the black triangle dildo’s shadow in picture left is a faint trail heading down to Little Paradise E then up and over to Paradise Crk where the logical camp would have been
Down Manson Crk again a lot quicker than we slogged up.
Refreshing Indian Paintbrush swin