We awoke under slightly overcast skies, and, using the guidebook, sketched out a thirteen-mile day that would take us to the Red's Meadow Resort near Mammoth Mountain and the Devil's Postpile National Monument. Red's is a public campground, with the attendant necessities of beer, showers, phones and the like. I should note that the planning of a thirteen mile day was somewhat at odds with our revised itinerary of ten miles a day, and resulted from our newfound confidence in Julian's knee.
After walking down along the long north side of Thousand Island Lake to reach the JMT, we began the day on a beautiful stretch of trail that wound in and out of some narrow canyons, passing pretty little Ruby Lake and then Garnet Lake. Garnet resembles Thousand Island Lake in that it too is dotted with small islands, and both lakes are still overwhelmed by Ritter 'n Banner to the west.
On the descent to Garnet Lake, we met two hikers who shared with us their experience with a bear the night before. It seemed that they were carrying a bear canister, but had too much food to fit inside. Given the lack of a suitable tree at their campsite from which to counterbalance their food (the previously-favored method of bear protection), they had put the food in a stuff bag, then hung the bag over the top of a small cliff near their campsite. This trick does not work on your average experienced bear; their intruder had simply gone up on the rock, pulled their rope up and then ripped open the food bag and devoured its contents. The people we met were awake all the while contemplating a breakfast of foraged berries and pine nuts (remember, those of us with bear canisters were sleeping soundly while this was happening).
To support the premise that the new age bears of the Sierras are able to defeat any storage system except a bear canister, we learned further on down the trail that every one of the ten or so groups around Garnet Lake that was not using a bear canister had had their food taken by the same bear or bears. The lone exception was a pair of hikers who had been abruptly relocated by a ranger as darkness fell for camping too close to the lake. They couldn't see to hand their food, so they simply kept it in their tent. Don't try this at home, folks.
After Garnet Lake, we climbed a gentle saddle, then began a long, interminable set of dusty switchbacks down into the canyon to the south. Descents like this were the worst thing for Julian's now mangled toes, and at the base of the downhill, we stopped by Shadow Creek to retape the blisters, soak the knee and contemplate our future.
On the way down, I had conceded that there was no way I could politely stay behind Julian while he painfully picked his way down the descents, and we at that point entered a pattern of hiking that had become common on all of our previous trips: I hiked much faster on the downhills, and he hiked much faster on the uphills - that was just the way it was. We'd wait for each other as needed, and do our talking on the flats.
Up to this point, we had covered about five miles, with an estimated eight miles to go over what the guidebook described as being a fairly uneventful part of the trail before reaching Red's Meadow. While Julian administered first aid to his feet, I pulled out the map, and to my horror discovered that our hike for the day was to be at least three miles longer than we had previously estimated. The problem lay in the guidebook author's description of the Devil's Postpile area. Because of some rerouting of the trail and the intense amount of use around the Monument, he wrote two separate descriptions of travel through this area (one to visit the Monument and the other to bypass it). In this section of the book, it was difficult to follow the mileage, and either we (or he) had erred in our calculation of our day's journey. The map, with its mileage indicators, had instantly revealed the problem.
We were faced with a dilemma. Do we try to hike the full sixteen miles? Do we hike less than sixteen and camp on the near side of Red's Meadow? Is there a Plan C? Hiking the full sixteen was out of the question, as the little toes were suffering badly at this point, and to plan to go this distance would have been torture for Julian. Going less than sixteen would throw us off a bit, as we were really looking forward to the hot spring and cold beer at Red's. But it seemed that we heard someone up the trail mention a shuttle bus . . .
To save shoe leather and give Julian a bit of a break from the boots, we elected to hike out Shadow Creek about five miles to Agnew Meadows, then catch the local courtesy shuttle over to Red's Meadow. We calculated that we should be able to get their in time for a hot meal and some cold brewskis before the store closed.
After a beautiful hike down along the tumbling cascades of Shadow Creek, we reached the roadhead, where we hopped a bus bound for Red's Meadow. Bear in mind as you read this that its hard for me to be honest about this; you know, two burly mountain men taking a bus instead of toughing it out. But, this confession is part of our overall policy of full disclosure, so here it is . . .
Upon getting to Red's Meadow and landing a spot in the backpackers campsite (the same as all the other campsites, except that four groups sleep in it instead of one), I was given the devastating news that the hot spring was closed for the summer. I guess this is something they do each year, for some strange bureaucratic reason, but it was bad news for us. The salvation was that the water from the springs is piped into some strange, prison celllike shower stalls.
We acquired some tall cold ones at the store, called our loved ones and enjoyed a hot meal of grilled sandwiches in the campy restaurant at the resort. While hanging out on the lawn in front of the store, we met our new friends Matt and Rich over a game of hacky sack (a real challenge in large dusty hiking boots). They were en route to Lake Edison from Tuolumne Meadows. Having learned that they were effectively homeless for the night (having placed cold beer higher on the priority list than booking a campsite), we invited them back to share our space, as the sign said we could have up to six people.
That night, we added another bear story to our collection - not about a bear per se, but about someone's way of dealing with them. Another fellow in our campsite - Scott the Internet millionaire - explained that his technique of using bear canisters was to bury them each night under a big pile of rocks. This, he told us, would prevent the bear from rolling said canister down a hill or throwing it into a creek. To each his own.
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