GETTING BACK TO ALTITUDE

DAY 5 - August 12, 2010: a whole day of uphill

The good thing about being at Vermillion this morning was that we didn’t have to move, move, move, get out in a hurry. The bad thing about being at Vermillion that morning was that we didn’t move, move, move, get out in a hurry.

This is a resupply point for Anniell. Her group had 4 resupplies: Red’s Meadow, Vermillion, Muir Trail Ranch, and Charlotte Lake. Couldn’t imagine why they needed that many, I only had one, at Muir Trail Ranch, 2 days down the line. But if we were to continue hiking together I’d have to wait for her to finish sorting through her stuff and sending things back to the friend who had opted out at Red’s. This didn’t bother me much at the time, since we didn’t have to scramble like everyone else to make the 9AM ferry back to the JMT cutoff trail at Mono Creek—we’d just march quickly up the Bear Creek Trail and cut off all that useless up and down on the JMT, which didn’t look very scenic anyway. Had a big breakfast, got organized and relaxed.

There were a couple of middle-aged guys there, brothers, who were also planning to take another route. The previous day the younger one had fallen flat on his face in a pond while hiking and torn his forehead and cheek all up. “Can’t take him anywhere,” said the older one. They were planning to compensate by having an easy day, going in through Florence Lake and playing around in lower country for a day or two before hiking up to beautiful Evolution Valley. So they’d hired a guy with a van to take them to the Florence Lake ferry. The Bear Creek trail was on the way, so we tagged along that far, and gave the driver another 20 for the favor.

What I hadn’t counted on, or thought out, was that he would be letting us out on a 4-wheel-drive-only road a couple of miles from the trailhead, and 600 feet lower than Vermillion, and only about a mile from Mono Hot Springs. This, of course, became clear as the van went down, down, down, and the high mountains started looking further and further away. He dropped us off maybe a quarter of a mile up the gravel road, and we cheerfully started walking up, and up, and up. It was hot, and none of the bubbling streams we were used to were anywhere to be seen. The mountains seemed very, very far. I realized I was missing being at and above 10,000 feet, where the air was so fresh and the breeze so cool.

In fact, I then realized, taking this trail was more of a disadvantage than otherwise. Here we were going to have to climb about 2800 feet to get to the JMT trail junction, as opposed to only about 1000-1200 on the other trail, plus we’d be hiking several extra miles, and still end up 2 miles short of my original goal for the day. And, far from the usual start time of 8AM or so, we didn’t get on the trail till 11. Was this lack of foresight? Perhaps.

For awhile, the steak (apologies, vegetarian friends, ut was a guilty enjoyment) and the big breakfast were carrying me through just fine. I didn’t have to stop and rest until we got to the trailhead at Bear Creek Diversion Dam, and we had enough water to get there—barely.

But from there, I figured, piece of cake. Just walk gently upstream till we reached the JMT. But NOT! for awhile it was like that, yes. And Bear Creek was the prettiest stream we’d seen on the trip so far, but . . . after a couple of miles the trail started going up at a steeper rate than I thought I’d ever seen, and besides, it wasn’t maintained well. There were sharp rocks, and twists and turns, muddy fords with no easy way to cross, and giant rock steps, which stressed the knees. The path then went away from the stream and what seemed to be practically straight up the sides of the cliffs and domes. I started moving slower and slower, and after we’d been going 4 or 5 hours, I was beginning to feel exhausted. Actually, almost defeated, as if my body finally was deciding it wasn’t really up to all this abuse. I honestly wanted to stop, but told myself to just suck it up, we had to make it, or the next day would be worse.

Fortunately, we’d met a bunch of guys hiking out who’d told us what to expect and where the best places to camp were. “Steep?” I asked, “Ohhh, yeeaah,” one replied. But the one who seemed to be the leader said “When the trail finally moves back towards the stream, the trail makes a narrow passage between two rock faces. When you come out of that, you’ll come into a lush green area, there are lots of beautiful spots to camp right by the creek, and you’ll be only about 15 minutes from the JMT.” Music to my ears, but the music was still somewhere far off in the distance.

Finally, after more than 8 hours of slogging, and about 10 hard, hard miles, about 7:30 PM, with not much light left in the day, we did in fact find the place he was talking about, and gratefully pitched camp at what was one of the prettiest spots we’d seen. There was a new moon that night, and it was nice to look at, for about five minutes before fatigue overcame me and I finally crashed out into what felt to be a dreamless sleep.

Next entry: the ridiculous and the sublime