Saturday June 27 ——-

I failed to mention the Trail Angels we found just after we crossed the dam but hadn’t made it to VVR. They were awesome!  Thanks, guys! 

 

The first burger after 7 days! 

   

Our half day stay at VVR was wonderful, but we had to press on. It’s 30 miles to Mammoth and we plan to do at least one full Zero there. Turtle’s brother, Floyd will be there and the Professor has a box waiting. Mammoth is a fun, full town and we expect to enjoy the stay. 

The other reason is rain: a weather system is supposed to move in Monday. 

Vermillion Valley Resort (VVR) sits on the western end of Edison Lake; a 7 mile long lake. We needed to be at the eastern side to get back to the trail. There is a morning boat shuttle that leaves at 7:30am, so we camped in line for the van at 6:30 to be first in line. 

Turns out we didn’t need to. None of the kids who were up late partying could be bothered to get up that early. 😣 <insert old-man rant about kids partying here>

So we found ourselves on the eastern shore at 8am with an 8 mile, 3,200ft tough climb to Silver Pass. The day was partly cloudy and nice for hiking, except for the damned Mosquitos! We finally hit peak season for the little blood suckers. 😞

We finally summited the pass at 3:00pm only to find the the trail goes up another 0.5 mile and 200ft. Grumbling, we topped that section wondering what else is waiting. 

The thunder began and it started to rain. Peachy. 😓 We knew there were campsites about 2 miles down, so we put on the rain gear and stumbled down to Chief Lake. (One of the Indian lakes, including Warrier, Squaw and Papoose lakes)

Once the tents were up the storm lasted an hour and is now gone. We’re too tired to move on tonight, so here we’ll stay.  

     Sunday ——–

The cloudy morning was warmer than normal…almost 50deg. Not bad for camping at 10,500ft. 

Reds Meadow is where we can catch the shuttle to Mammoth and is 20 miles from our camp. We decided to just see how far we can get. The rain started to hound us at 10am with on and off sprinkles all day. Very annoying.  We barely reached the 15 mile point, Deer Creek when the skys opened up. We made camp in time, the storm is overhead with thunder and lightning and we are safe and dry.  However, No Reds today! 😢 

The rain lasted about 90 minutes, soaking everything well. The campsite had a fire ring and Turtle built a nice fire where we three huddled around the fire for a couple of hours drying off. It was the first fire I’ve had on the trail since I usually go to bed by 7:30-8:00pm. A nice ending to the day. 😄

One other good thing did happen: we can passed the 900 mile point!!!!   Woot! 

        Monday ——–

Started early and walked the 5 miles to Reds and had breakfast!  Wonderful. 😄

We plan on a full zero in Mammoth so won’t be back on trail till Wednesday. 

-HalfFast