It's hard to realize how massive these areas and ridges are in a photograph, hopefully these panoramas can show it. Click them for larger views.
This pic is still from along the awesome long approach to the main ridge. Along route, there was scrambling, lots of smaller ridges and plenty of forest on route. The right of this pic is a huge gendarme we skirted around and found a good route up behind it, which presented an amazing view out into the valley of this long ridge traverse. The couple brown lakes down in the bottom are not the most inviting color, but yet, its a dry year!
The skies were not looking too friendly for a few minutes on the approach in. I've been on my share of ridges and been overtaken by dangerous thunderstorms, so I was happy to see these moving on fast and clearing out while on the way up still.
Its also hard to see but all of these alpine ridges were showing more and more flowers in among the grass. You could easily smell the flowers the way, which was really nice! Hardly any wind and a excellent scenic hike on the centennial ridge.
Also, there were still lots of snow cornices, but all were easy to avoid. Here in the bottom left corn you can see the lake, with the sandy shores and it actually has a tiny island in the middle. I thought that would be the perfect little island with a few trees on it to go pitch my hammock sometime. Too bad there's no random camping allowed here.
There's the island in the little mountian tairn. Can't you just see it as the perfect spot to camp! There wouldn't likely ever be a soul nearby. A great wilderness spot.
I hope you enjoyed, these, I'll keep them coming!