PCT Day 86
July 25, 2021
Mile: 874.5 to 878.7 (+5 miles of side trail, 4 miles road walking)
Start: Mono Hot Springs campground
Finish: Tentsites next to the bridge crossing over Mono Creek
After a restless night of living in the warzone with the black bears, we woke up kind of late, sleeping in till about 8:30am when we rolled out of bed. I had wanted to wake up early and hike to Eden hot spring up in the hills to watch the sunrise which one of the guys last night had told us was super epic. When I woke up at 6am, Shannon didn’t really seem to want to come with me and I was a little nervous the black bears were lingering about so I just curled back up in bed after going pee. I walked up to the bathrooms and saw the trash cans that had been destroyed by the trash bears last night and all the mayhem they did to neighboring campsites. I’m just glad they didn’t come into our tent cabin!
Drawn in by the vortex of hot springs, adult beverages and food that wasn’t ramen or granola bars, we walked down to the general store to see if there was any availability for tonight to stay. It was probably a good thing that there wasn’t any space since it was a popular time for vacationers from the big cities. Some of the guys last night had told us that you have to reserve the glamping tents or cabins like 8 months in advance because they’re so popular. In the back of the general store, there was a collection of arrowheads, axe heads and spear points that have been collected in the area over the years. This had been a very important site to the Mono tribes of Native Americans so I’m not in the least surprised by how many artifacts have been found here. There was also a clay necklace and little sculpture that had been found in the area as well which had me pondering what it used to be like here all the way back up to our tent.
Dom and Vinny’s dad was awake and cooking breakfast for them while they packed up for their 5 or 6 hours drive back to L.A. We were going through our food resupply box that had luckily not been disturbed last night and it seemed like the steel chains locking down the metal bear box worked. We had heard a black bear going crazy next to our tent last night trying to get inside our bear box but luckily our food had survived. When Vinny’s dad Rocco Senior asked us if we wanted to have some breakfast, our mouths started watering immediately and we nodded yes please! Rocco Senior had cooked up some scrambled eggs with sautéed peppers, onions and sausage which we chowed down on and thanked him for the meal. The whole family was super sweet and we’d had such a great time getting to know them last night.
The guys had to drive six hours back to Los Angeles and asked us if we wanted any of their food. Instinctively I just blurted out, “Yes please!” not sure what exactly they had in mind for food for us hikers. All of a sudden, a bag of a dozen ears of local corn showed up along with what seemed like a metric ton of firewood, a plastic baggie of grilled hot dogs, a gallon bag of homemade turkey chili, fresh salad mixes and fruit. My eyes watered up and my stomach started rumbling (despite having just eaten breakfast 10 minutes ago) as all of this amazing food was placed in front of us. It was nuts. Instead of packing like we were supposed to be doing, Shannon and I sat our butts right back onto the picnic table and chowed down. I think I ate 4 or 5 clementines, a pack of lettuce and homemade cold cut sandwiches. We said goodbye to the guys when we checked out at 11am and thanked them again for their kindness and everything. You guys rock and we’ll definitely be stopping by Tony’s Subs in north L.A. whenever we come through there!!
Shannon and I threw our food and backpacks next to the bustling General Store, hoping that with all the people coming and going that the black bears wouldn’t make a go for our food. We headed across the campground, balancing carefully over the log bridge that spanned part of the river and hiked up to the hot springs to explore some of the ones that we’d missed last night. I dipped my legs in one hot spring aptly named “The Sludge Pocket” which oozed and squelched like quicksand when you stepped in it. Shannon and some of these random guys up for the day checking out the pools were pretty grossed out by the Sludge Pocket. Whatever – they’re just a bunch of babies!
Nearby was another much clearer thermal pool walled in concrete that was much deeper and clearer than my new favorite Sludge Pocket. It was so deep that the water went up to my neck when I tried to touch the bottom. Shannon and I just hung out and lived life, talking to some people who had showed up to visit for the day. When it got a little too hot, we cooked off by exploring the area and found a nice natural hot spring up in the cliffs. I dipped my feet in while Shannon sat right in the rocky pool. The water was bubbling right out of the ground and was super hot. While we soaked our nasty hiker feetsies, we watched two bright red dragonflies mate in midair and then the lady dragonfly dipped her butt down into the water to deposit her eggs. I had never seen anything like that before and I guess now that we were swimming with fertilized dragonfly eggs, it was maybe another good reason not to submerge your head underwater in the hot springs. I would think the incurable brain-eating amoeba found in warm water like natural hot springs out in the western USA would be the main reason not to dunk underwater. Who knows – maybe other people are out here trying to become the dragonfly version of Spider-Man by swimming in a natural vat of dragonfly eggs and hot volcanic water. I think that sitting in a dragonfly egg hot spring soup definitely has to be one of the secret recipes to become a B-list superhero these days.
As the morning drew on, the sky became kind of cloudy as we relaxed in some of the hot springs. It looked like it was maybe going to rain and we were also getting hungry so we swung back up to the general store where we’d stashed our packs. Like two little chubby black bears raiding a picnic, we dug into the gallon bag of turkey chili and the sack of grilled hot dogs gifted to us by Rocco Sr. Lunch was so delicious and the looks of horror from the passing “normies” (aka normal people) as we scooped out hot dogs with our grubby paws and tossed em down the hatch one after another in true Joey Chestnut fashion was sooo priceless! As I chowed down on my 4th hot dog that I’d pulled out of a random ziploc bag, my face and hands covered in mystery meat grease, I started to reconsider my confidence that I had in one day becoming a force to be reckoned with on the competitive eating circuit. To be completely honest, I didn’t have sh*t on Joey Chestnut, let alone some of these people out here camping in Mono Hot Springs. Mr. Chestnut this year broke his own world record by eating 76 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes. I had some serious training to do if I was ever going to fall back on competitive eating as my side hustle. Sigh…
As we sat outside the General Store being complete hiker trash, the sky turned dark gray and it started to rain. We washed off our grubby hot dog and chili hands in the cold raindrops before stuffing our backpacks under one of the pine trees to stay dry. We had managed to actually pawn off the dozen ears of corn to one of the guys and his son who we’d met last night in the hot springs because as there was absolutely no way that we’d be able to pack them out. Together the corn ears weighed more than our pack weighed fully loaded with food and water! We hid the bag of corn under the nice guy’s car for them to pick up when they were done swimming in the hot springs this morning. It was nice because we didn’t want the corn to go to waste, but there’s no way in heck we could carry out 12 years of corn in our backpack. It was a very nice gesture though.
After lunch, it started pouring down big fat drops and eventually most of the “normies” left as the rain didn’t let up. We crowded under the large pine tree to stay somewhat dry, our body heat keeping us warm and the thick overhanging evergreen boughs keeping us somewhat rainfree. Finally some of the normal people left in their cars and we were able to grab one of the picnic tables with an umbrella. Under our new and improved shelter, we washed our hot dogs and chili down with some hot tea, cold soda, potato chips and Reese’s peanut butter cups. We felt kind of like bougie hikers because we didn’t want to start hiking until the cold rain subsided. The rain and thunder let up around 3pm and reluctantly we started our road walk back up to the PCT.
The five miles back to the dried-up mud patch that used to be Lake Edison were of course all uphill and we thumbed our way the whole time, but no one seemed to be biting. Several hikers with clearly lots of room in their cars drove by and, not being able to shut their windows in time, yelled out excuses to us like, “Oh, the car’s full!” or “Sorry there’s too much stuff in here!” even though there was plenty of room with just one or two people in their empty cars that could fit five easily. I guess we must’ve looked sketchy but honestly on this backcountry road there was nowhere for us to go except the trailhead. In retrospect, I probably should’ve made a sign that said, “We promise that we’re not gonna rob you!”
Eventually, a super sweet couple whose kids were hiking out in the area for a few days picked us up at mile 4 out of 5 on the road walk. They were staying at Vermillion Valley Resort for a few days while waiting for their kids to finish their backpacking adventure. They picked us up and drove us the last mile of the road walk in a very nice rental caravan. It was great. We then busted our way up the uphill 5 miles on the super not-so-exciting Bear Ridge Trail, where we ran into a bunch of hikers including a couple of our friends who we had met a couple days prior. They were some of the few stragglers who were also hiking the PCT and were planning on going down to VVR.
We finally got back to the PCT where my stomach wasn’t feeling very good, probably from all the chili and hot dogs and crap that we’d been eating. I was feeling kinda lethargic, so I was hoping we wouldn’t hike too far today, especially since we’d already done close to 10 miles. Back on the PCT, we did about another 4 miles trekking through groves of tall aspen trees with dark and light green quaking leaves and beautiful white smooth bark. Lots of people had carved their names into the trees and we saw carvings from all the way back to the 1970s and 80s. It was pretty cool to see markings from 50 years ago on the old aspens but it was also kind of sad too that people would vandalize the trees.
Late in the evening, we arrived at Mono Creek where there were so many freaking hikers camped that it looked like some sort of hippie festival. This whole afternoon we hadn’t seen any hikers on the PCT, until we got to Mono Creek, which made sense because a trailhead to the resupply point of Vermillion Valley Resort was just north of this campsite. When we showed up there were maybe 20 or 25 tents set up all around the area. It was a little overwhelming. Luckily a kind camper saw our subdued faces and pointed to some hiker free tent sites and also told us the best place to collect water. A ways away from all the other hikers we found a nice flat campsite in an open sandy spot. The night was pretty uneventful and we spent a lot of time filtering water. I was still not feeling super well, ate a light dinner and hopped into bed. It felt a little overwhelming to be around all these John Muir Trail hikers and so we kind of distanced ourselves from them up. I hoped that in the morning that we’d have the area to ourselves and keep on hiking without so many crowds.
