Day 63 – Leaving Mammoth Lakes

Miles: 903.3 to 923.1

Trail Miles: 19.8

Miles Hiked: 24.8

After four nights and three zeros in Mammoth Lakes we needed to get back on the trail – regardless of whether we wanted to or not.

I’d taken Smokebeard to the trailhead the previous day. He and the AT Boys avoided the ‘zero flu.’ Even so, HH had to make two runs to get all seven of us to the trailhead with our packs.

I got on the trail with Scooch and Carebear at 0730. The three of us were hoping to make it Tuolumne Meadows in two days. Painter was also, but he’d taken the first lift to the trail and had a half hour head start. I never saw him the rest of the Day.

We caught up to Fireball, Cherry Bomb and King Arthur near Reds Meadow. The road accessing Reds had opened the day before, unknown to us. There were a lot of day hikers out. The area near Reds has trails to Rainbow Falls and Devils Postpile National Monument. We all took the side trail to Devils Postpile to check it out.

We stopped for lunch at Soda Springs CG, Mile 911.

From there I took off on my own, hoping to reach Thousand Island Lake, Mile 923 for the night. I remembered the Lake from the years ago as very picturesque and a nice place to camp.

The trail was again beautiful today. It followed the middle Fork of the San Joaquin River. It passed through green meadows and as it climbed I had gorgeous views of The Minarets and Mounts Ritter and Banner. I even had views of Mammoth Mountain, my ‘home’ ski resort. I’d hoped to ski a half day while we were in Mammoth, but I chickened out. The conditions were tricky with little coverage – I didn’t want to ruin my skis or worse, injure myself and not be able to hike.

.

Aside from Cherry Bomb, the rest of us were feeling the after affects of so many zeroes. I’d heard that it takes a third to half as long as the time off trail to get your trail legs and mindset back. It held true for me. Three zeroes meant at least one to one and a half day’s recovering. Physically my body felt uncoordinated and slow. My knees ached and I was even slower than usual on any descents. I felt low on energy all day and wanted a nap. Mentally, I felt apathetic. It occurred to me that right now, here in Mammoth, was the easiest and most tempting place to quit.

Mammoth is my home away from home. Over the last five years, not to mention back in the 90s, I’ve spent the majority of my vacations here. Heck, HH was still at the condo. He could pick me up. There was always list of projects that needed to be done there. (HH was installing new toilets that very day.) Besides I’d hiked over 900 miles, through the desert and mountains. Wasn’t that enough? What was I trying to prove? I could return to the land of hot running water, heat and conditioning, comfy beds and flushing toilets for good. So what was stopping me?

Regret. Or rather the fear of regret. I knew if I quit for any reason other than serious injury I would regret it the rest of my life. I knew (hoped) these post-zero blues would pass. I wasn’t even to the halfway point of the trail. There’s still a long way to go. As much as HH and Mammoth are home for me, quitting, though tempting at that moment, was never an option.

I put my head down and hiked, hoping the scenery would wash away my bout of homesickness. It did for the most part. The trail climbed out of Agnew Meadows gaining views of waterfalls and Shadow Lake. At one point I was on a high ridge line and meadow. It reminded me of that scene from “The Sound of Music”, when Julie Andrews is twirling around singing “the hills are alive with the sound of music.”

I eventually made it to Thousand Island Lake around 7pm. It was as beautiful as I remembered but it was windy. There were white caps on the water. After some searching I found a flat spot to camp not far from other hikers. The windchill was enough to discourage me from cooking dinner. I ate the rice noodles I’d been soaking since lunch cold inside my tent. I snuggled down into my sleeping bag by 8:30pm, listening to the wind buffeting my tent. It’d be a cold night, but for the first time in a long time I wasn’t setting an alarm. I’d heard the snow on Donahue Pass, the last of the major Sierra passes, was limited and safe even late in the day. My destination for tomorrow was Tuolumne Meadows, in Yosemite NP. It was also my last rendezvous with HH. He’d return home to NC a few days later, and I wouldn’t see him again until I reached the finish line, the Canadian border.