The scenery was really giving Death Stranding. In fact it gave a lot of things; the rapid change in terrain as you hike high up into the peaks above the Lakes Basin felt like navigating different biomes in Minecraft. Starting with glacial lakes and lodgepole pines... keep going up and you find yourself among ferrous red sand on a crest overlooking the entire basin... continue further and you discover low scrubland reminiscent of much lower elevations... a dry mountainside evocative of the chaparral of home territory... then it's peak meadows full of flowers that smell strongly of maize, opposite a view of endless mountains fading into the horizon... the marshy Deer Lakes... rocky cliffs at the top of a trail composed of shattered stone... and finally scattered boulders and grasses as you see here, with the occasional patch of summer snow. The descent is an entirely different story - a much buggier one.Don't get me wrong - the lakes were beautiful, but the mosquitos rather dampened the mood.I wish I had taken more photos of the descent. It was on the rocky switchbacks past Duck Lake that I had the stunning realization that Thomas Cole wasn't making it up.
