Some days, you simply don't have it and today was one of those days. My legs called in sick to work and that makes the going pretty tough when you hike for a living. Fortunately, only one final pass and 17 miles separated us from Tuolumne Meadows and Yosemite National Park.
John Muir Trail
The 7:15am bus from the village in Mammoth Lakes whisked us directly back up the mountain to Red's Meadow where we sat enjoying a cup of coffee in the warmth of the morning sun before starting down the trail just after 9:00. Not five minutes later, a sign displayed a dizzying amount of information...
Zero #7
Whenever I'm cramming in the usual town chores that invariably consume a surprisingly large amount of a day off, it's a brief opportunity that grants just enough physical and mental distance from the trail itself to reflect on this journey as it unfolds. Beneath the beauty that lives on the surface of nearly every footstep, my mind sometimes stumbles upon even more fulfilling ways of seeing into the prism of the trail experience.
Mammoth Lakes
Fifteen miles feels considerably shorter when visions of hamburgers dance in your head. Sleeping next to an alpine lake at over 10,000 feet, no one was surprised that a blanket of cold had settled in to replace the comfortably warm evening of the night before.
Childhood
The ride back across the lake was a 15-minute flood of memory. Between the smell of the two-stroke motor and the mirror flat water, it was impossible for my mind not to drift back through a kaleidoscope of childhood memories on our boat. Staring off into the mountains that began to grow larger at the far end of the lake, I felt the pull of gravity on my eyelids…
Boat Ride
Today was a short story of a near-o to the shore of Lake Edison, where we caught a "ferry" in a small fishing boat to Vermilion Valley "Resort" across the lake.
Right This Way, Ms. Mosquito
The peaceful morning stroll alongside the roar of Evolution Creek was quickly replaced by an unrelenting tide of tiny intruders out for blood. The southbounders passing us with headnets yesterday were our first clue that it had come time for every hiker's favorite part of summer: bug season. At a break before the initial ascent up to Selden Pass, the mosquitoes were voracious…