PCT Day 85
July 24, 2021
Mile: 863.7 to 874.5 (plus 5 mi side trail & 2.5 mi road walk) (18.3 total miles)
Start: Sallie Keyes Lake
Finish: Mono Hot Springs campground via Bear Ridge trailhead
We woke up this morning excited to go resupply but also kind of bummed because we’ve been calculating how much food we needed to make it all the way to the town of Mammoth Lakes without stopping. We tried to ration our food supply but hiker hunger is really kicking in and we realized that we were eating too much food each day to keep going on our current supply of granola bars and ramen noodles.
Even though we were only picking up a couple days of food and had to go quite a ways off trail to get our resupply package, we were actually kind of excited to stop at the tiny Mono Hot Springs. Apparently it was supposed to be quite nice with clusters of natural thermal baths in the mountains along with a little grocery store and a restaurant. The only downside was that we had to hike not only a 5 mile side trail but potentially another 5 mile road walk if we couldn’t get a hitch on the pretty desolate backcountry road. So we hoped for the best and prayed to the trail gods that we were gonna get a hitch.
Shannon and I woke up early in the peaceful silent morning to get going up the trail. We left the beautiful Sallie Keyes Lake and hiked up yet another alpine mountain crossing to Selden Pass. The pass was a mere 10,913 feet tall and after the 12 mile slog up Muir Pass yesterday, Selden Pass was easy peasy lemon squeezy. On our way up the rocky pass, we saw a handful of baby ground squirrels playing and running around without a care in the world. They were pretty cute. There were also lots of beautiful pale pink, ivory and blue columbine flowers with bright yellow sparks of pollen shooting out of the flowers on silvery pistils. It was a gorgeous way to start out the morning.
Dozens of furry marmots were waddling their way industriously through the alpine meadows eating what seemed like their bodyweight in grasses and flowers. The trail traversed creeks filled with Ranger Button flowers, Indian Paintbrush and water hemlock. Selden Pass was a fairly easy mountain pass crossing and our legs were appreciative, especially after the long crazy switchbacks we went up at the end of the day where we’d seen the guy pass out on the side of the trail. At the top of Selden Pass, we admired the view and as we were standing around, an overly curious, and probably very well used to humans, ground squirrel came running around us, trying to beg for food. We scared it off and continued on down Seldon Pass to some beautiful lakes and more wildflowers.
We’ve got a little bit confused at so-called Rose Lake, which looked just like a dried up puddle of mud instead of a body of water. The meadow nearby was on rotation schedule which we didn’t really know what that meant so we moved on and continued our way down the trail. Later on we met an interesting guy who was very loud, opinionated and misogynistic but it was okay because he grew up with five other women. Mmhmm. We weren’t sure how his girlfriend (who was several decades younger than him) was putting up with him on a 2 week hiking trip but for us it was difficult to be around this jabroni for more than 5 minutes. So we hiked on as fast as we could!
Shannon and I collected water from a little creek and chowed down on a quick lunch as we repeatedly got bit by flies as we waited for our water to filter. We definitely need a new filter cartridge because ours is supposed to be filtering at a rate of 1.75 liters per minute. But even after back flushing and filtering clean water through it, we maybe get .25 liters a minute, which is a Dow rate like 7 times slower than what is supposed to be. It’s a little frustrating when you have to filter like 6 or 8 liters of water and it takes forever. We met a couple who were hiking a section of the PCT that they’d missed during a fire closure a couple years ago. The two hikers were pretty cool and when they filtered their water in under, you know, 30 seconds instead of 30 minutes, I became kind of agitated and had a strong desire to throw our stupid water filter off a cliff. It’s tough because we needed to use a water filter in the desert since so many of the water sources were questionably muddy and cloudy and sometimes had dead animals decomposing in them. Honestly I think that going forward we’re going to be just fine with using AquaMira which are essentially like bleach droplets. They take 5 minutes to mix and then 15 minutes to purify the water during which you can keep hiking. Our gravity filter weighs 12 ounces whereas Aquamira is 2 or 3 ounces tops. The filter is also kind of a pain in the a** especially when it’s so slow to work. Oh well, we’ll mail it home soon.
As the day drew on, we were just really excited to get off of the trail as my legs were pretty tired and Shannon’s toes were hurting. I was also hoping that we could take a shower somewhere since it’d been a few days since we had one and the trail is really dusty up this way. Finally at the Bear Ridge trail intersection, we cut down a steep 5 mile trail to make our way towards Mono Hot Springs and our resupply package. The side trail wasn’t very exciting but it helped us get to lower elevations as it started to thunder.
There was also the decision of whether we would stay at Vermillion Valley Resort across the other side of Lake Edison. Normally when there’s not a drought the lake is full to the point where there’s a boat ferry that will come pick you up and bring you to the resort. However, since the lake is at such low levels due to all of the ongoing droughts here, there was no ferry anymore and you’d have to walk another 2 or 3 additional miles to get to VVR. We decided it wasn’t worth it since we already have a package at Mono Hot Springs and would walk about the same amount of miles down the potholed and damaged road all the way to campgrounds. We were hopeful that we would catch a hitch on the way out and didn’t give up thumbing it even as we were passed up by several tourists.
As we were trying to catch a ride, essentially just down the street so we didn’t have to walk another 5 miles, a group of 20-somethings in a Jeep pulled up and let us in to grab a ride. The group was super cool and just decided to come up for the weekend on a spur of the moment. They were going to ride horses to some secret hot springs up in the mountains which sounded really awesome. I sat on Shannon’s lap as we made the long trek down the road riddled full of potholes. You really couldn’t drive up this road unless you had four wheel drive or a lift kit on your car because the road quality was so bad. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t just repave over the road and fill in some of the potholes, but maybe they don’t want a ton of people out this way. Who knows.
Anyway, we finally arrived at Mono Hot Springs where the super nice kids from Sacramento area dropped us off. As they backed out, the Jeep went right into a tree branch and luckily it broke off into the overhead car rack instead of through the back windshield’s glass. We waved goodbye and wished them good luck with their weekend adventures.
Down in Mono Hot Springs we had a blast. Someone had canceled one of the reservations for a glamping tent so we were able to snag it and get a shower. It was really nice and we were really lucky since we found out that these cabins book up 7 or 8 months earlier. We hung out and surfed some internet which you could only access if you sat outside the general store in one particular corner. New wildfire warnings and trail closures had popped up all over the Pacific Crest Trail while we’d been in the woods and it looked like we were going to need to do some serious replanning of our hike.
We showered in the mineral springs water that’s pumped up to the campground bath house and then grabbed some dinner as soon as the restaurant opened at 5pm. I chowed down on a ribeye with corn and rice and Shannon ate a burger washed down with some local beer. After dinner we talked to a couple of twin guys from L.A. who had been coming here with their family for weeklong vacations for forever. The twins Vincent and Dominic were super fun and told us about the hot springs and gave us the lowdown on the area. They even let us borrow one of their towels to use for the hot springs which was super nice of them since all we had were dirty handkerchiefs and tshirts.
As the sun got low in the sky, we hiked up some beer and White Claws across a makeshift log bridge over a river and then up some rocks to the hot springs on the other side of the campground.
There were dozens of hot springs with some built up into deep concrete pools and others more natural with rocks stacked around them to form basins. It sounded like the Native Americans used to come to the area as the area was very sacred to them. In the General Store they had a collection of about 40 or 50 arrowheads and spear points found in the area. We started off our hot springs excursion by sitting in an old livestock trough filled with hot water pumped out of the ground which was fun. Another hotspring was pretty muddy and natural looking so we didn’t really get into that one because it was kinda gross.
We met up with twins Vin and Dom at Old Pedro hot spring which was one of the nicest and hottest pools in the area. we join the guys with it. As we were sitting talking to the twins and their friends who were super kind camping near us. We all relaxed in the hot water, laughing, drinking and sharing stories. As the sun started to set, one of the guys asked, “Hey did that flower just open?” We looked around us and almost magically the plain-looking evening primroses started unfolding their pale yellow blooms, living up to their “evening” name. Right before our eyes, the hillsides that were filled with unassuming stems with tightly closed buds slowly opened up into gauzy huge blossoms. It was really magical and none of us sitting around the hot spring had ever seen anything like this. As the evening grew darker, you could literally watch the primrose flowers unfold like origami in front of your eyes.
The son of one of the guys who was camping out was like 7-years-old or something like that, and was doing his school work remotely from the campground which was pretty cool. The father and son had been out camping at Mono Hot Springs for a month or so and the little guy had just finished school while he was out here. Anyways, the 7-year-old had tons of energy and couldn’t sit for long in the hot springs. He turned to me asking if I wanted to jump in the cold river below the springs. Shannon wasn’t feeling it but I was overheating so I followed the kid and we jumped off some rocks into the cold clear river. I had asked the little kid before we jumped if it was deep enough and he was like, “Oh yeah it’s fine!” before plunging in feet first into the river. Well, it turns out that the kid is like three feet tall, and I’m just a little bit taller than that (but not much lol) at 5’4”. He told me to jump out into the river and went first to show me it was safe. I also jumped out as far as I could and “banana-ed” out of instinct from years of cliff and bridge jumping into water. It was good that I curved my body into a banana shape while landing because my feet definitely touched the bottom of the river. I was a little bit more careful after that being just a bit taller than my 7-year-old companion. I jumped again in the river yelling, “Woohoooo I’m alive!” and then ran back to the hot springs.
We had a great night, all of strangers turned friends over some beverages in natural hot springs under the setting sun. We made new friends from Los Angeles and the surrounding areas which was so fun. I felt so grateful to be out in such a beautiful area, watching the bright yellow blossoms of the evening primrose open in front of our eyes and then these huge hummingbird-sized moths feeding on the nectar of the primroses while pollinating them. It was so crazy and cool to be sitting in natural hot springs used by humans for thousands of years while watching magical flowers bloom and large bird-sized moths flapping from blossom to blossom. Definitely this was one of the most awe inspiring moments of our trip.
Shannon and I ended up going back to our tent around maybe 10pm which was about an hour after sunset back to our campsite. It turns out our tent cabin was directly across from the two twins we had met earlier Vincent and Dominic, and we hung out with them and their brother Rocco Jr. and their dad Rocco Sr. Their dad owned a sub shop in East L.A. and loved feeding people so when we stopped by their camp, Rocco Senior was cooking food and offered some to us. We were so surprised and were like, “Heck yeah we’ll eat!”
So we went across the dirt road to “Camp Awesomesauce” and hung out with the guys and their friends for the rest of the night. We thanked Vin and Dom for letting us borrow their towel for the hot springs and listened to stories about how crazy the resident black bears are in the campground. As we were talking and drinking, the campground staff was going around in their ATV making sure that all of the trashcan lids were secured and tightened, and that any trash found was put in the back of their ATV to be locked up in the giant metal bear proof dumpsters down below. The staff went around reminding all of us campers to put anything that smells into the metal bear boxes and secure the box with the heavy steel chains provided next to the tents. Vin and Rocco Jr. told us that sometimes the black bears are such a nuisance here that the campground staff sometimes has to shoot the bears with rubber bullets when they won’t leave. It was so nutso! I gulped and just kept drinking so I wouldn’t have to think too much about the bear scenario later as we slept in our thin-walled tent.
As we were hanging out, drinking and eating hot dogs and buckets of chili and stuff with the guys, some of the 20- or 30-year-old guys came by concerned and were like, “Hey, have you seen our dads?” Shannon and I said that we thought we last saw them up in the hot springs a bit before we left , maybe around 9pm. It was now 11:30 or midnight and it turns out that their parents have been M.I.A. since we were the last ones to see them at sunset. We offered to grab our headlamps and go look for them across the river in the hot springs as part of the search party but the guys said it was okay. It made us a little nervous because they said that their parents did not have any flashlights or headlamps with them to navigate the rocky 20 minute walk back to the tent cabins in the dark. The group of guys insisted that they were going to find their parents and we told them to let us know if they still couldn’t find their parents and we’d help them with the search. The guys took off and we stayed up drinking till about 12:30am before we got exhausted and went back to our tent cabin.
Dom and Rocco Jr. had a bunch of energy still and went back to the hot springs to hang out while the group of 20- and 30-year-olds from the campsites down the road from us went to look for their missing parents amongst the dozens of hot springs hidden in the hills. Well, in a complete turn of events, it turns out that the missing 50- and 60-year-old parents had eaten some magic mushrooms given to them by some random young partiers in the hot springs. The adults started tripping out and wandered to a thermal pool pretty far away from camp in the hinterlands. As the sun set and it got dark, the parents who were now partying with some random kids they met in the hot springs decided that they’d just wait for the bright moon to rise so they could navigate back to their tent with some natural light as they didn’t have any light, not even their phones. Supposedly these parents don’t even really drink and all of a sudden they were letting loose, drinking and partying with these random hot springs people and eating hallucinogenic mushrooms. It was kind of funny in an ironic way because the kids had taken over the parents’ position and were up all night worrying about them and trying to make sure that they were okay. You would think it would be the 20-year-olds being irresponsible partiers but in this case it was their flower child parents chowing down on Magic mushrooms with random people in the hot springs.
Shannon and I went into our tent to make sure that all of our food and smelly soaps and stuff were secured in the bear box and locked up with the chains. We went to bed but around 3:30am we heard a bit of noise as the mushroom trip was winding down and the parents had come back to their adult children. Everyone seemed exhausted and went to bed with minimal noise. 30 minutes later, all hell broke loose.
At 0400, the black bear invasion started. We could hear one of the black bears outside our tent snuffling around the perimeter of the thin canvas. The bear started jumping on the metal food box next to our tent, yanking on and biting on the security chains that had secured our food in place. More bears came in the darkness and were ravaging the trash cans, twisting the tops off and trying to get in. Stuff was getting knocked over on all sides as the bears attacked, jumping around and trying their best to get at the sleeping campers’ food. Well, that’s when the boys from Los Angeles showed up and threw down, north L.A. style.
It sounded like war out there and the L.A. boys took no prisoners. They had these firecracker snappers, but they were like the diesel version that I’ve never seen these before and were enormous. The guys whipped the firecrackers at the rocks next to the marauding 300lb black bears making huge explosion noises in the dark. We didn’t know what the hell was going on as we jumped up out of bed as the sound of the first explosions. To us it sounded like freaking gunshots and mortars in the background as people yelled and the bears ran into shit, knocking things over. I mean, it was absolute f***ing chaos. It sounded like an absolute war zone. I’m pretty sure Shannon’s PTSD from being deployed in an actual war got triggered from Bearmaggedon. We were legitimately asking ourselves, “Are we gonna survive tonight?” I wasn’t sure because outside in the pitch dark it sounded like gunshots right next to our heads, and I think at one point a bear accidentally ran into the canvas wall of our tent. The guys across the way had told us earlier that sometimes the black bears get so bad around here that campground security has to shoot them with rubber bullets. We thought maybe security was here to get the bears and were hoping there weren’t going to be any casualties. Anyways, we didn’t sleep a whole lot to say the least. The war zone finally quieted down around 5am just as the sun was starting to come up. Woohoo. It was a crazy night at Mono Hot Springs but we were sure glad and lucky to meet so many fun people out there who could throw down during a black bear attack!!