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...
