Last night’s campsite was unanimously chosen as the most beautiful spot we have had the entire trip, so far. Nestled in a few trees in a meadow at the base of a snow melt that has grown into a nice pond. The melting snow is strong enough to keep several streams flowing through the basin. The only competition we had for our spots were from a couple of marmots that call this area “home.”
It’s just 1.6 miles and 900’ up to the southern boundary of Yosemite. Bunny and I took off a few minutes ahead of Bear and Sassy, but they passed us before we’d even gone 0.7 miles. I was surprised at the number of people that had camped even higher than we had last night. There were some strong winds, on and off, through the early night. I had considered dropping my tent into storm mode, but didn’t have the energy to get up to do it.
It was up and over Donahue Pass that we made a disturbing discovery. This is on the scale of having Jeffrey Dahmer as a next door neighbor—“I had no idea he liked to eat young men. He was so quiet.” There were marmots everywhere in the rocks around the pass. We wondered what they ate to survive. Now we know, and they are not nearly as cute as they once were.
Horses and mule trains regularly go up and over the pass. Don’t forget, the reason the PCT trail grades aren’t bad is because this is supposed to be a “horse friendly” trail. We came around a switchback to see a marmot with a mouthful of fresh horse poop scrambling off the trail. No doubt, he was building a poop-store to entertain desperate marmot women come winter time. Around October, the male marmots get out their bling and try to convince desperate women hanging around dried up horse poop in the trail, “hey baby, I’ve got a huge stash of fresh horse poop in my cave. I’ve got a pinch here in my mouth to prove it. Come on over and we’ll roll in it for a while and then eat your fill.” She’ll get over there just as the snow falls. It’s all very diabolical and predictable. “Baby it’s cold outside.” “I really should go” “Baby I’ve got horse poop” You know the rest.
At Donahue Pass, we leave Yosemite and enter Ansel Adams Wilderness, but it feels more like Escher Wilderness. We just keep walking down rocks that seem to go round and round. We never make any progress. After 4 turns, we’re right back to where we started.
By the time we made it over the pass and down to a small patch of shade, we were already beat. All 4 of us said our packs felt heavier. What a difference a 1000 calorie burrito makes for breakfast. We sat in the shade and nibbled on our snacks while the marmots did the same with all the horse poop in the trail. (They almost make me like cats.)
We ended up going over 2 passes (Donahue and Island) today. Not because we want to make miles, but we want showers. It’s will be 11 days since our last showers by the time we make it to Mammoth Lake. We can’t afford even one more day before we start getting confused with mountain goats coming down the trail. (I’m meaning the Royal “We.” In reality, Bunny, Bear, and Sassy are quite gamey. I smell more like like roses. Granted, the roses might have died a few weeks ago and been left to soak in the vase, but, a rose is a rose.)
Bunny and I have been dragging all afternoon. Since we had a moderate climb after a water break, we asked a nobo JMT hiker to have a long conversation with Bear and Sassy to slow them down. That way, we might actually make it to the top of a climb first for a change. (Yes, it’s not a race, but I hate coming in last all the time.) They caught us right at the top. The deadbeat didn’t engage them. No wonder we consider every hiker who passes as “dead to us.” They can’t even do us a simple little favor.
Thousand Island Lake was really good looking, but most of the “islands” were just rocks sticking out above the water. Whatever happened to truth in advertising. I suppose “6 Decent and 72 Little Islands with a bunch of Rocks Lake” doesn’t have the same romantic appeal. It also wouldn’t make a good salad dressing name. We got water out of the lake overflow. It was a good thing we did because that was the last water we saw for a while.
After passing the lake, we met very enthusiastic female ranger, and her dog who was ambivalent, who asked about our permits. By permit, we are actually only on our 15th day. If she were to do the math, we would have to be averaging almost 20 miles/day to actually be here. The rangers that stopped us in Yosemite hadn’t looked too closely at our permits, or bodies, to realize that wasn’t even a remote possibility to be true. Rather than go into our “factionalized” account of the trail, I said, “We just showed them to a couple rangers coming out of Tuolumne. They’re buried in my pack. I’ll get them if you really want me to.” That satisfied her needs enough to let us go. She was busy moving the “Marmot Buffet” off the trail, i.e. shoveling horse shit and didn’t want to sanitize her hands to check our credentials.
Now, the race was on. We had a long roller coaster section of trail on the side of a mountain and a storm was trying to catch us. It took us over 3 miles of fast hiking where the rain started spitting on us, but we managed to outrun the it. Looking back, we could see Thousand Island Lake was getting the full force of the rain and storm, but we had dropped down in elevation and rounded the mountain to the point that we were free of it.
We found a camp that was just large enough to hold our tents and adrenaline drained bodies. The water source was a little over a tenth of a mile ahead. Bear and I got water while the ladies nest built. The flies in camp were bad enough that we decided to eat in our tents. Bunny heard pecking outside of our tent. Bears don’t generally knock, so I wasn’t too concerned. Looking around, we saw a woodpecker in the tree next to us. It was a fairly peaceful night punctuated with lots of groans and moans coming from both tents. This had been one of our longest days of hiking.
EFG