PCT Day 87
July 26, 2021
Mile: 878.7 to 901.1 (22.4 miles)
Start: Mono Creek campsite
Finish: Deer Creek stealth campsite
To our surprise, Shannon and I were one of the first hikers to leave camp in the morning. We thought that by 8:30am the whole campsite would be cleared out early as a couple dozen JMT hikers eagerly awaited the sunrise so they could hike down to Vermillion Valley Resort. We were very surprised when there were still almost 15 or 20 hikers still at camp when we left around 8:30. There were still a ton of people sleeping or just barely waking up which was lazier than we usually are! We joked that the John Muir Trail hikers are kind of 9 to 5 hikers. You rarely see the JMTers on trail before 9am and then they always are setting up their tents around 4 or 5pm and you don’t see them hiking at all after that. Must be nice to be on vacation and not having to worry about making it to Canada before the winter snowstorms.
Well, we left the hiker bubble to slog our way up to another high mountain crossing called Silver Pass. At only 10,779 feet in elevation, it was definitely not the toughest pass we’ve had so far which was nice on our legs. We were also overjoyed to see that the pass was just as pretty on the north side as it was on the hike up the southern flanks. I was a little nervous that having left the national parks that the landscapes would be less dramatic but we definitely didn’t have to worry.
We enjoyed the morning, seeing a bunch of southbound JMT hikers coming up from Silver Pass. The trail was pretty calm today with fewer crowds than we’d seen in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Around lunchtime the temperature was rising to uncomfortable levels so we tried to find a shaded campsite near some water to wait out the heat and humidity. We had another large uphill climb in the afternoon and needed to have a little “pick me up” lunch before more leg day.
Shannon picked out a campsite on a slanted cliff that plunged 30 feet down to a fast moving river and had no shade. Some guy who looked kind of like he hated his life had his two bratty kids throwing stuff and running around all over the other side of the trail. The guy was kind of hiding down by the water taking his time refilling his water bottles while his kids went nutso. Their backpacking gear was taking up several flat spots where we had been hoping to have lunch but Shannon didn’t want to budge and go back .1 miles on the trail to a flat tent site because it was backtracking. No matter the tactic I used to convince Shannon to move back to a shaded spot where our gear wouldn’t get washed away down a mountain river, he refused. So, I sucked it up and sat on the side of the cliff with our gear rolling down and almost falling into the ravine multiple times.
Finding a flat spot to cook on was pretty difficult which didn’t matter to Shannon because he was just eating granola bars. I think I was a little irritated at the stupid annoying brats across the bridge and constantly worrying about my gear rolling into the ravine that when the overcast clouds cleared and the sun started baking us, I got even more frustrated. I was also feeling pretty nauseous and my skin was ashen and kept asking Shannon if we could move our stuff into the shade. I don’t do well in the hot weather and full sun but Shannon argued that our stuff was already unpacked and that he didn’t want to move. So I ended up just leaving him by his stubborn self because I started getting nauseous in the hot mountain sun and really didn’t want to barf up the spam and mac-n-cheese I just ate. I walked over to a shaded spot less than 2 minutes back up the trail and sat in the shade for a while, sipping on water until my body cooled off a bit and I stopped feeling like I was going to barf everywhere. Sometimes being together 24/7 is fun and sometimes you disagree with each other. I can tell you that the afternoon was spent with not talking for a while so we could each cool off and not get angrier at one another. Things happen.
This afternoon was another day of lakes and hanging out on the side of the trail waiting for lots of slow southbound John Muir Trail hikers to pass by. We hiked around Lake Virginia which was pretty and I really wanted to take out my drone, but it’s supposedly illegal here in the wilderness. All of these regulations about where you can or can’t fly in the wilderness is just kind of bullshit because of how inconsistent and conflicting the information is on drones. National Parks, military bases and areas surrounding commercial airports are clearly defined as no fly zones with stiff fines or penalties. Unfortunately, it’s not as clear for the wilderness areas, national forests or Bureau of Land Management areas what the rules are. At some points I’ve asked myself what was even the point of having the drone with all the people and Park Rangers around. Most of the time the wind is too strong to fly and combine that with the unclear restrictions, sometimes I don’t know why I even packed out a drone. I was hoping to fly today but just didn’t want to risk it at this point since there were too many people around. Shannon also wanted to make good mileage today so we just had to keep going.
We passed Lake Virginia where we saw an eccentric guy hiking with a heavy looking lawn chair strapped precariously on his backpack. He said the lawn chairs from the 1990s that they don’t make anymore are the best to pack out because they have aluminum or plastic places to rest your arm instead of wooden ones. Lawnchair Man claimed that in the 2020s that all the lawn chairs are made with more robust and heavier materials. I don’t know, it was weird. He said the 90s lawn chairs are less weight than some of the fancy camp chairs that are manufactured from lightweight materials like Dyneema fabric and carbon fiber poles that they make nowadays. Who knows – to each their own. Hike your own hike as the saying goes.
Lake Virginia had some gorgeous varieties of Indian paintbrush flowers around its lakeshore. The striking landscape looked like a Christmas explosion with the sprays of vibrant red tufts contrasting starkly with the dark evergreen shades of wild grasses. The lakes were absolutely gorgeous today and I was able to get some really cool pictures of flowers and stuff like that. We stopped for a bit at Purple Lake to rest Shannon’s foot which kept hurting after descending some steep switchbacks. The lake is a popular camping site for hikers which is easy to see why as it is absolutely stunning and the clear water was warm enough for swimming. We sat on some rocks on the side of the lakeshore to provide some relief for Shannon’s injured foot and clean off my nasty hobbit feet. We’re not really sure what’s going on with Shannon’s foot if he has a stress fracture or something, but we’ll be to Red’s Meadow tomorrow to take the bus into the town of Mammoth Lakes and hopefully get it checked out there.
We were hoping to do 26 miles today but since Shannon’s foot was hurting him to the point where he was limping we didn’t want to push it. We weren’t sure what was going on with his foot and didn’t want to make it worse so we stopped a little bit earlier than we had anticipated. The other day Shannon had broken his hiking pole in some rocks, lost a pair of his shorts that were the same color green as the pine tree he hung them on to dry after swimming and now was limping on rocky terrain with only one pole. I offered him one of my hiking poles for the rough trail but he refused. It was a really dry stretch of trail that we hiked down with Shannon limping the whole time and he only had one hiking pole to really put his weight on which probably wasn’t helping much either.
At one point on the side of the trail we saw a chipmunk laying like he was dead who was having a rough go of it. We weren’t sure what was going on and after some debate, left him there to have nature take its course. Maybe ole chippy had eaten too much or fallen out of a tree or had rabies, but it was better let nature take its course. The whole day we had been hiking past mountains of red volcanic rock, towers of pumice and interestingly shaped volcanic formations. We had to pass something called Crater Lake which was supposedly a collapsed volcano. The whole area just felt very volcanic with vibrantly colored volcanic rocks everywhere. An intrepid hiker had found rainbow colored rocks and had been setting them up as fun little markers on the side of the trail which was cool. Volcanic rainbows!
Finally after the long waterless stretch of trail and listening to some good ole “Lord of the Rings” audiobook to get me down off the mountain, we came across water. The trail was absolutely empty because there were so few PCT hikers left and tons of 9-to-5 JMT hikers who already had given up hiking so didn’t have to waste time pulling over on the side of the trail every ten minutes to let people by. Around 7:30pm, Shannon’s foot was hurting so badly that we decided that we would stop tonight and just hike the remaining 5 or 6 miles to Red’s Meadow tomorrow morning and get in early.
Down at Deer Creek tentsite, there were already a few young section hikers or JMTers who were either not aware of the fire danger or didn’t care and had started a campfire. I wanted to say something to them but also didn’t want to get murdered in my sleep by my backcountry neighbors. Thankfully the young campers put out the fire when it got dark with a bunch of water from the creek and we kind of ignored each other and left each other alone. Shannon and I chowed down on a quick dinner since the sun was setting soon, placed our food canisters away from our tent and jumped into our mosquito netted tent. The campfire hikers waited to make dinner and ended up slapping hordes of mosquitoes while attempting to cook food in the dark. Shannon and I went into bed as soon as it got dark. We were so excited to get into town tomorrow and do some laundry, shower, and get a real meal with fresh fruit and veggies. Hopefully, Shannon’s foot is okay and we can hike fast tomorrow and get into Mammoth Lakes.
