Date: 6/23/16
Miles: 15.2
Total Miles: 906.6
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. What none of us anticipated was that 50 yards later in the morning chill, we’d each be fording through the shallows of the lake staring down at a trail submerged beneath more than two feet of water as we trickled out of camp one by one. Who doesn’t like starting the day with icicles attached to their legs where feet once were?
Fortunately, the morning foot bath was the last of the day and the miles slid by as Beardoh, Sweet Pea and I trucked along in anticipation of a meal at Red’s Meadow followed by a rest day in the resort town of Mammoth Lakes. As we contemplated what to order at the cafe, we set to work on finding a place for us to stay only to find that the entire town was booked for a professional motocross event being held here this week. After hitting dead end after dead end, we finally landed a ski condo rental thanks to Proton’s connections. What looked like an increasingly grim situation had quickly transformed into the very definition of serendipity.
Once we arrived in town via a series of buses from Red’s Meadow, it was time to start the music on the usual list of town chores, topped by eating and showering.
The prospect of more than 24 hours surrounded by the luxuries of the “artificial world” is enough to make you hug anybody or anything within arm’s reach…
Hey man. Per normal, I just binge-read your last 7 entries. This is a hell of a trip and and a hell of a read. For the first six years I lived in Seattle I drive down each summer to LA to hang with my aunt and uncle. That time would always include a long weekend hiking in the Sierras with my uncle and his friends. They became my friends through those hikes. We would stay the first night in places like Bishop, Independence, or some other town on 395 then take a feeder trail up to the PCT the next morning. We hit passes like Kearsarge, New Army, Cottonwood, Baxter (we nicknamed it “Bastard”). These trips were great and only occasionally strenuous and much wine was consumed each day. Thus, our little group was named “Camp Zero” both as an homage to the Himalayan mountaineering camp numbering system and more obviously a nod to the fact we are a bunch of “zeroes”. After I and another guy became dads we did a one more of those trips. A few years ago three of us met up at the Ancient Bristlecone Forest in the White Mountains for some day hikes and car camping. It was Camp Zero once again. However, this year the band is getting back together for a hike to the Champion Sparkplug Mine near Bishop. The mining camp is abandoned but the structures have been kept up in a usable state by the locals. We go in September. Can’t wait. I need my fellow zeroes to remind what it’s all about!
Love it Ken! I knew you had a long history of hikes with your buddies down this way–I can’t imagine a better place to spend some time outdoors with close friends.
“Fernsehturm” is Ken LeBlond! 🙂