Cathedral Lakes

We drove up to the new Cathedral Lakes parking lot at Yosemite National Park to hike up to both the Upper and Lower Cathedral Lakes. After 0.6 miles, the trail joins the John Muir Trail on the way up to Upper Cathedral Lake. We also explored part way around both lakes making our total hike 11 miles round trip with 1,500 ft of overall gain.

Quite a bit of this trail is in the forest, but there were open areas with some views. Here we could see the North Buttress on Cathedral Peak. 

Red huckleberry bushes gave us some fall color along the way.

 side view of Cathedral peak

another view of Cathedral Peak seen along the trail

We hiked up to the south end ofUpper Cathedral Lake following a well defined boot track.

Cathedral Peak reflecting in Upper Cathedral Lake, we took a lunch break here, and didn't see another hikers at this lake while we were there.

Echo Peaks to the east

Maybe Tressider Peak across the lake to the southwest as we hiked along the eastern shore of the lake.

We then hiked back down the John Muir Trail and took the side trail to Lower Cathedral Peak, here is a small pond near that lake.

On reaching Lower Cathedral Peak we took the trail along the western side of the lake, here are some of the views.

Cathedral and Echo Peaks

Western end of the lake

Dozier Dome

View looking down towards Tenaya Lake

zoom of Tenaya Lake

Dozier Dome and Tenaya Peak 

We returned to the John Muir trail and hiked back down to our trailhead, on the way I glimpsed this distant peak to the north through the trees.