Log: Day 112 - Mile 906.6

August 2, 2016

Getting lost and arriving at reds

We were up early enough to enjoy the sun rising over the rock ledges on the eastern side of the lake. The ladies' morning routine wasn't streamlined for efficiency and mileage so for the first time in a long while I took my time with breakfast and breaking camp. That was the whole point of waiting up and joining Katy and Sadie - to slow down and smell the roses.

Today was mostly downhill towards Red's Meadow Resort and the morning held a series of stepped lakes as beautiful as Ruby and Thousand Island the past evening. The morning sun and freshness of the day only added to the experience.

We ran into Bob, the whiskey man from Tuolumne Meadows, at the outlet of one of the lakes. From how quickly he threw has pack back on and kept going we got the impression that he wasn't about to let himself get outpaced by two girls. He left behind a pungent smell of herb. We took the opportunity to stop and fill up on water ourselves.

Hydrate or Diedrate

The trail seemed to follow the outlet down a small waterfall to a camp area with a number of crisscrossing paths. We thought we might have lost the trail amid the mess but picked it up on the other side and continued to drop roughly following the lake outlet. This section of trail was not messing around! I could not imagine taking stock up or down something so steep.

Before long, the stream we were following joined up with a larger creek and we turned to follow alongside. The trail got thinner and thinner over the next half mile and I began to get a little worried. I stopped to pull out my phone for a GPS check. We were 1.5 miles off the trail. Oops. Taking stock, we realized the trail we had begun following down along the lake outlet was not the JMT at all. Fortunately, there was a marked trail on the other side of the creek we were currently following that also lead to Red's Meadow. Unfortunately, it meant we would be putting up 1.5 times the planned mileage for the day. Based on the the rapidly thinning trail we currently stood on it seemed like a mistake made with some frequency by JMT'ers.

Unfortunately for us, the creek ran through a channel it had carved deep in the rock and we would have to climb down the sheer walls, cross the torrent, and then scramble back up the wall on the other side. This is the narrative depicted in this post's feature photo (at the top). In reality, the channel was only 5-6 feet deep and there were plenty of places to hop on rocks across.

View from the middle

Confident in our heading we continued south along the east side of the creek. This section of trail offered no cover from the sun and the heat began to get to us as we traveled further down in the valley. We stopped for a lunch break under the shade of a large tree. Short naps were taken before we rallied and continued on.

The valley leveled out and taller trees appeared beside the trail giving us some much appreciated shade. Time was a little tighter than planned but not tight enough that we couldn't stop for a dip to cool off and splash around a bit.

Caution: swimming holes in photo are deeper than they appear

We rejoined the JMT just before the junction with the Devil's Postpile side trail. Blisters and joints were beginning to complain about the long day but we decided to check out the rock formation anyway because the body would heal but we would probably not be back at Red's Meadow any time soon.

Red's Meadow was just past the Postpile and we arrived just in time to get a hot dinner at the grill before they closed up shop for the night. Next stop was the walk-in backpackers campground. This campground turned out to be two drive in pads reserved for backpackers. There were close to 50 of us camping there and it was a tight squeeze with more trickling in throughout the evening. This was definitely a night where I was happy to have brought ear plugs with me.