9/16/2023
Section: Milepost 929.9 to 907.8
Total Trail Miles: 2029.4
Distance: 22.1 Miles
Moving Time: 10:15 hrs
Elevation Gain: 2080 ft
I’m pretty sure my soul left my body last night. Something that doesn’t get enough attention, or maybe it’s just me, is the sleep you get on the PCT - unlike any other time in your life. In the first few weeks it’s tough because all that separates you from the eternal depths of darkness is a few millimeters of nylon, but once you start getting into 20 mile days your body starts to adapt and realizes, if you aren’t going to stop walking it better figure out how to start sleeping. I’ve never had trouble sleeping before, but the nights on this trail have been on another level. Regardless, the 3 am alarm clock suuuuuuucked. I had given myself a little extra time to snooze, and I used it in its entirety.
Eventually, we did rise from the dead. It may not have been much sleep but, deep as it was, we were feeling pretty good. Today is a downhill sprint to Red’s Meadow. Typically, a shuttle runs several times a day between this meadow and central Mammoth but Mammoth Resort is repairing the road up to Red’s so the normal shuttle has closed down. The resort that I splurged a few spare Chase Travel points on, however, were still running a private shuttle up to the meadow and said they could sit there until 5 for us. 5 o’clock though, is still 5 o'clock and, given that we had not finished before dark in the last week now, I was a little nervous to make it in time. Given the hard stop we had in front of us, we ate quickly and packed even faster and were on the path a few minutes before 4:30. Ending in the dark and…starting in the dark.
As mentioned above, the route today is a downhill slide to Red’s Meadow. The path starts in a small cirque on the northeast side of Mt. Lyell and drains down to Rush Creek which it crosses and joins with a path coming down from Lower Marie Lake. The PCT hits a local low at three miles in before climbing up to a small pass, called Island Pass, before descending to and traversing along the northern shores of Thousand Island Lake. At the east end of Thousand Island Lake, the PCT splits from the JMT and winds through a series of small domes. It crosses the western head of the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin River valley which it follows but well above the valley floor, traveling east. The trail moves through northern sloped meadows high above the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin River for six miles before making a steep descent to Agnew Meadows Campground. Here it follows the valley floor for another five miles to where it rejoins the JMT near the northern boundary of Devils Postpile National Monument. The last few miles of the stage runs through the core of the Devils Postpile National Monument before ending at Red’s Meadow.
We started slow today. The path is stony and our feet are done. As we ended, so we began, with big ‘ol horse steps and in the dark. The headlamps are almost dead. They are each giving little red warning lights indicating there is almost no power left. We’ve each done a lot of alpine starts in our day, but I don’t think we’ve ever stretched the battery life like this. All-in-all, it wasn’t a good start and I probably wasn’t as supportive as I could have been. I had some considerable concerns about catching this shuttle and, honestly, highly interested in sleeping in a bed tonight.
The path winds down through gorgeous open country. There are minimal trees up this high and so the views are immense. Island pass was an extremely unwelcome surprise. It was only 600 feet up but, at this point, i’m just done climbing, but once on top we cruised down and the views became… familiar. Growing up in California, my parents had a large coffee table book of Ansel Adam’s pictures. I remember flipping through it and I distinctly remember a picture of a lake with this perfectly conical peak rising up behind it, casting an imposing reflection off the static lake below. As we made our way down from Island pass I slowly realized, with each step, that I was coming face-to-face with that exact picture. As we came level with Thousand Island Lake, I found myself encountering the real life still of this famous picture - Banner Peak and Mt. Ritter reflected on the early morning stillness of Thousand Island lake. I think I burned that last 10 percent of my iPhone battery snapping repeated pictures of an image I couldn't quite reconcile in my mind.
We carried on, the path dipping and climbing annoyingly as it navigated through the western head of the San Joaquin river valley. Eventually we got to the eastern side of the valley and started a long traverse above the river. Across the valley, I could see the JMT. This is one of the few spots where the two diverge and it’s only for 10-15 miles, but I could tell this was the less rocky of the two options. The JMT looked like it was chopped through solid granite. Gorgeous but probably very painful walking. It was around this time, walking a short distance ahead of Amanda that I ran into the first ranger that had cared about our presence in the last 2000 miles. He was kind enough, but did ask for a permit, this being one of the most popular sections of the trail. I handed it over, he read it and, in a semi-awkward monotone, informed me that I was going the wrong direction and that he would have to invalidate my permit. In a similar monotone, I told him that would be fine. He took it and wrote a bunch of information down as well as took some pictures of it before handing it back, wishing us luck and continued on. “Well,” I said to Amanda, “if it was going to happen this is where it was going to happen.”
I honestly don’t know how to feel about this. I grew up in the national parks and I have a ton of respect for them and the people that operate them but if ever there were “unprecedented” circumstances on the PCT, this year was it. I guess, what’s tough for me is that we’re not passing over any ground twice. I feel like the permit should give you the ability to rearrange your direction just as long as you're not “re-doing” spots over repeatedly. Oh well - whatever, we were almost out and I could get a local permit in Mammoth to get out through Kearsarge. The more annoying part was that Mr. Ranger dude had eaten up some time that we couldn’t really afford.
After we got our permits back, with some scribble on it basically saying it was void, we carried on, passing through some annoying, muddy traverses and overgrown sections and eventually reached the descent down to Agnew Meadows. We took a quick break at High Trailhead and ate some of the last of our trail snacks. We are getting to the point where we reach stage-ends with not much in the way of food which is… optimal, if not a little concerning. It’s a toss-up between the calories it takes to carry extra weight and the extra calories the weight represents.
We left Agnew Meadows and it’s many cars and hiked along the San Joaquin river. This river is what convinced many people to avoid the Sierra. It’s a massive drainage and the snowpack had wrecked some brand-new bridges the forest department had built just before the winter of 2023. It really was too bad because the first one we came to, three and a half miles downstream from Agnew Meadows, was a gorgeous bridge but obviously badly damaged. It was here that Amanda got mansplaned by two older gentleman how to navigate the ford. What really pissed her off is that it was a whole lot more convenient to strip down to her underwear and they insisted on offering her guidance when, honestly, she would have just preferred they move on. The ford wasn’t that bad, certainly nothing compared to what it was when we were slugging through Kings Canyon back in July, but they had just finished it and tried to give her tips on the best path across…like they had found it. Eventually, they realized she wasn’t listening to them and withdrew into the woods on the far side. She made it across just fine and I followed closely behind. Men… am i wright…. The ford was cold but we crossed without issue, the water coming up to not much more than our calves. I cannot imagine crossing this in July though - it would have been terrifying. Memories of Tindal creek before Forrester pass came to mind, the awesome power of that much smaller creek.
We reached the south side and cruised downstream before making another crossing below Minaret falls. This brought us to the outskirts of Devils Postpile National Monument where we ran into an old friend. It had been in Julian that we had shared some pizza with Mouse, a friendly character who was waiting on her boyfriend to go back to Columbas, Ohio to check in with his boss before they could continue on. We had followed them for a bit but they had jumped at the Sierra and we had lost them. We ran into them here, on the banks of the San Joaquin river and stopped to chat for some time. They were finishing up in California and headed up north soon and we exchanged some beta on our respective directions. “Best of luck” we called to them as we headed our opposite directions. I was feeling better about making the shuttle now, knowing we were only a few miles away .
We followed the overly large and welcoming path through Devils Postpile. We had not been back here since our honeymoon in 2015, but the epic rocks had, of course, retained their highly unique shape as we battled through the large crowds of visitors making their way through the park. Families and roving packs of teenagers laughed and talked as we navigated our way southeast through the park. Another half hour brought us past the Rainbow Falls Trailhead and into Red’s Meadow just after 4 pm. We had arrived with an hour to spare!
We shrugged off our packs in front of the store, nodding to the JMTrs and PCTrs already relaxing on the picnic tables. We went into the very nice store and shopped around for some snacks. We were pretty much all out. We got some ice cream and a few candy bars, before realizing there was the Mule House Cafe across the little picnic area. Though it looked closed I could see people coming out of it so went over and ordered a burger to share with Amanda and a beer. That combo is usually a winner but, under the circumstances, it was ecstasy. Shortly after getting our food, the shuttle showed up and our driver, who introduced himself as Keith, jumped out and said hello before indicating that he was also going to get some food at Mule House Cafe. Evidently, today was the last day it was open for the season and it was one of his favorite burgers in the area.
After Keith got his food he told us we could load up. A girl from Grand Rapids, Michigan asked if she could ride along and, given the size of the shuttle, Keith told her to jump in. We talked to her while we cruised down the long road back to Mammoth as well as Keith who recounted the absolutely epic snow season they had had that winter. I remembered then that Butter and Push-pop had gone skiing in Mammoth in early July when they jumped out after us, so it had indeed been an epic winter season.The bus wound north on the backside of the ridge that sits between Red’s Meadow and Mammoth, passing near Agnew Meadows where we had passed through earlier that day, crossing a small pass and dropping down into ski resort town.
Keith dropped the Michigan Girl off in the middle of town and then took us to the resort where we would be staying. I had splurged a bit on this stay and was very excited to relax and take a shower. We got off the bus, Keith saying to just give him a call when we wanted to go back into town. We thanked him, checked in and then headed to our room through the expanse of a pretty desolate resort. It definitely wasn’t high season anymore.We got up to our room and dropped our stuff before cleaning 9 days of grime off ourselves and getting down to the nitty gritty details of the most important decision of the evening - where to eat.
We decided on an old staple - Pizza. Nothing packs the carbs quite like it. Coincidentally, I called Keith for a ride down to Giovanni’s Pizza to pick-up an order I placed before leaving. It was coincidental, because, in 2018 Amanda and I had roadtripped with my youngest sister, Claire, to her internship with NASA in San Francisco. We had gone via Las Vegas and crossed over the Sierra on the Tioga Road, taking a quick stop in Mammoth where we had eaten at this same pizza place. It was at Giovanni’s Pizza that we had seen a number of PCTrs coming through Mammoth, so it felt a bit like divine providence that we were back here, getting pizzas at the same place that had contributed some small amount of inspiration for this trek so many years ago.
In the same strip mall area as the pizza place, there was also a Von’s where I ran in to get some Lucky Charms and whipping cream. I carried them over to the pizza place and waited for my number to be called. As I grabbed my pizza, stacked my lucky charms on top of it and exited, a guy in the lobby eyed my haul and said - “looks like you’ve got a good night in front of you.” “Oh yea,” was all I said with a smile, heading out to the parking lot where Keith was waiting.
Back at the hotel room, Amanda and I gorged ourselves on pizza, spent some time in the pool and finally, at the nice and early time of around 9 pm passed out. It was one of the more difficult stages but our sprint from South Lake Tahoe to Mammoth was over and we were one stage away from finishing California. We were going to thoroughly enjoy sleeping in and a day off in Mammoth tomorrow.
Tryin’ to cool down those feet!
