We woke to a beautiful bright sky and while our campground was still in shadow there was lovely light on the surrounding peaks. We had a chance to appreciate just what a beautiful (and large) campsite we had. Too bad we had not been able to fully enjoy it last evening. Sarah had made an amazing recovery overnight and seemed to be pretty much back to her old self.
It was a gorgeous start to the day.
We followed Shadow Creek for a bit.
And then left the JMT as we rounded the north shore of Shadow Lake.
Then came a significant downhill as we parallelled Shadow Creek on its mad dash to join the Middle Fork San Joaquin River.
Someone sure put in a lot of work to build these trails...........
Lots of pretty flowers today. Jane could tell you what they all are. I know them simply as pretty white flower, pretty yellow flower and pretty red flower.............
After descending most of the morning we followed the relatively flat valley floor for about a mile before our final little climb up to the bus at Agnew Meadows. The loss of elevation today was noticeable in the vegetation. In addition to an abundance of wildflowers we saw more deciduous trees (mostly aspen) as well as much larger trees.
Today's walk was about 4 hours, 5 miles, 460' up and about 1000' down. We caught the shuttle to the campground at about 12:30. The elevation at the campground is about 7600'. After the last two days, this almost qualifies as a rest day! We set up camp in a civilized, drive-in campground and had lunch there. The SYMG truck (& Sierra) was there to re-supply us and take back any discarded items for safekeeping.
At about 2:15 we left for a short walk (without backpacks!) to Devils Postpile National Monument. The Elizabeth Wenk book describes Devils Postpile thusly: "Devils Postpile formed less than 100,000 years ago, following an eruption of basaltic magma. Slow, even cooling conditions and magma with a consistent chemical composition throughout allowed the hexagonal columns to form. Because of the topography, an unusually deep flow of magma accumulated, such that the interior was well-insulated and cooled slowly and evenly. As magma cools, it contracts and hence must fracture. Physics dictates that fractures 120 degrees apart most efficiently release building stress, leading to hexagonal columns. Devils Postpile is one of the world's tallest and most nearly perfect examples of columnar basalt. Be sure to walk around the loop, which takes you both to the top of the formation, where glacially polished tops of columns are exposed, and to the base of the formation, where you can gaze up at the columns and gawk at the talus field of hexagonal-shaped rocks."
These rock formations were incredible!
And then back to camp and off (a short walk) to Reds Meadow Resort. Pretty rustic, but showers and laundry available as well as a general store. Most independent hikers will mail themselves a resupply bucket here. Outside the general store is a "hikers barrel" where hikers toss in anything (usually food) from their bucket that they don't want. There are treasures to be found! I found some gorp with M&Ms and shared that with the troops while we were sitting around waiting for laundry to be done. This was only day 3 and we couldn't get to the shower & laundry fast enough! There will be one more opportunity for both on day 6, and then nothing until we reach civilization again several weeks after that. We'll see how we hold up!
Comfy campground for the night. Flushies at our disposal. Burgers, chips and chocolate cake for dinner. Life is good!!
On a sadder note, we found out today that David & Sarah have decided to exit the trip here. It seems it is a bit more rugged that they were expecting. There are not many options to exit down the trail, so they're taking advantage of the relatively easy access to Mammoth Lakes here. They'll stay in the area for a while, though, and probably do some day-hiking before heading home.
No comments:
Post a Comment