PCT Day 94
August 2, 2021
Mile: 906.6 to 915.9 (9.3 miles)
Start: Hotel in Mammoth Lakes via Red’s Meadow
Finish: Cliffside campsite above Agnew Meadows
This morning Shannon’s foot felt great and the swelling had gone down significantly over the past few days so it was time to get our butts back on the PCT. We checked out of the hotel and walked downtown to catch one of the many connecting buses that go up to Mammoth Mountain. Dozens of mountain bikers loaded their bikes up on the enormous mountain bike trailer in the back of the bus and we headed up to the mountain. The bus driver was cool and waved away our money I’m guessing since we were the only backpackers on the bus. We used that money to pay for a ride up to Red’s Meadows where we raided the hiker box again. There were probably 5 or 6 John Muir Trail hikers who were sorting through their 5 gallon buckets of resupply food and gear and dumping so much food into the hiker box! It was glorious and we picked up fancy almond butter packets, tuna and salmon packs, mountain house meals, dehydrated hummus, bougie granola bars – you name it!
Shannon and I stashed our backpacks next to a big tree and some JMT hikers we’d been talking to said they’d keep an eye on it while we went on a side quest to go see the busy Rainbow Falls. The 101-foot-tall waterfall was so busy with so many dang day hikers out there and they seemed to all be complaining about how steep the trail was. The day hikers kept asking us how far they were from the bus and warning us not to take the trail. Most of the hikers were tourists who were out of shape, unprepared for the heat and kind of whiny. We just looked at them like what are you talking about. One girl tried to warn us about not going down the .5 mile trail because of how steep it was and we told her, “Well, we’ve hiked 900 miles to get here so what’s another half mile?” That stunned her a bit.
Rainbow Falls was a little overwhelming with the amount of people crowded and taking selfies so we didn’t stay long and rushed back to Red’s Meadows. We journaled, hung out for a bit and around mid-afternoon, I got hungry since we didn’t eat lunch. The veggie burger had gluten in it so I just ordered a regular meat burger and one of their famous milkshakes. Shannon decided after I ordered the food that he was also hungry and ate some of the beef burger and sugary milkshake. Well, this would turn out to be not so good for his gout since sugar and red meat is really bad for flare ups.
Around 3:30pm we hiked out to the Devil’s Postpile National Monument, which is a pretty cool rock formation of natural basalt columns standing straight up into the air. After the postpile we saw a mama deer with a radio collar sleeping next to her baby. We were so happy that the trails were emptying out because it was getting late in the day. Our PCT hike this afternoon was an easy 10 miles and we followed a trout-filled stream as the sun set and headed into the dramatic Ansel Adams Wilderness. The trail crossed the absolutely packed Agnew Meadows parking lot, where we found some hilarious Woodsy the Owl posters which I didn’t know was a real thing and thought it was just a South Park episode.
As the sun descended and we threw away some trash in the Agnew Meadows dumpster, we met a nice PCT hiker named Rambler, who was enjoying taking his time and the slow pace which allowed him to explore all of the areas that the trail crossed. Rambler admitted that he was definitely going to have to take a couple years to finish the PCT but he didn’t care. He kindly pointed us to a water faucet that we didn’t see earlier and were able to top off our water bladders with some iron tasting water before heading up the dusty switchbacks to the campsite on the cliff that we were trying to spend the night at.
There are tons of horse trailers in the parking lot and you could hear the mules hee hawing and horses neighing. I hoped that we wouldn’t hear any crazy calls from the mules during the night because their cries are unearthly. We spent the night at the mountain top tentsite, watching the tail end of sunset and the red taillights on the forest road of a car traveling through the wilderness. The car lights were little pinpricks that were far away in the otherwise empty wilderness. It was a beautiful sight to return to the woods and it felt good to be back on the trail again.
