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| Just a small taste of the downed trees around Mammoth. |
June 15, Day 22. Lets see. I made it to
mile 938. About 4 miles outside of Tuolumne Meadows. Total day was
41.5 miles. I stopped at point 0298344E 4191761N. I stopped about 4
miles out because I didn't want to have to deal with trying to find
camping at like, a spot to camp in "civilization" at
somewhere around oohh 12am if I had kept going. I stopped about
10:40pm and found a nice little spot nestled in the big giant valley
in some trees. And yeah, it was a good night. I knew I could sleep in
because the store doesn't open until 8am, the post office isn't until
9am. So technically I may be able to get my package around 8am, but I
might have to wait until 9am. So I slept in until about 6:30am and
started walking at 7 to get there around 8am. Anyways, yesterday, I
started off right around, a little bit before the Duck Lake
Pass/Trail area. I plodded my way past mile 900 and made it down past
Reds Meadows. The blow downs there, they weren't kidding. WOW. It's
just like a bomb went off and trees just laid down. They've at least
have cleared ohh 95% of all the blow-
downs. So there are a few little
reroutes, places where a tree will fall more or less parallel to the
trail where you have to dodge it. There's actually one section for
about 100 yards, they just made a new trail because it's just not
worth trying to go through the masses of trees stacked on top of one
another. I passed two trail crews. The first trail crew was in the
wilderness area using the cross cut saw, they were SCA. Then passed
Reds Meadows, right around Devils Postpile, I passed
another...actually I passed 3 trail crews yesterday. The second one
was PCTA it looked like. They were making the trail into a highway,
versus just the rough-hewn path that some of it was. So like raking
and completely widening the trail to more than the couple feet that
they hacked through with the chainsaws. So I wandered around through
Agnew Meadows, which wasn't a problem. I had though there might be a
detour there because of {tree removal} equipment or whatever. No
problems whatsoever. I got rid of a bunch of trash there which was
awesome. Then headed up the hill across from
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| Descending Donohue Pass - HDR. |
the JMT up the valley.
Then uhh, right around that time the thunderstorms were growing
pretty well. I got into clouds which was great because I was on a
climb and they, the thunderstorms, lasted actually until the evening
about 6 or 7 o'clock or so, keeping the sky pretty cloudy. It started
sprinkling as I got up to about Thousand Island Lake, a little bit
before that, but it never really turned into anything major, which
I'm really happy about. I didn't have to get my rain gear out. The
climb just kinda kept going and going. It wasn't super steep, which
was awesome. Ya know a few parts make you get out of breath because
you are actually going up to 11,000ft. But made it to the top with
great sunlight, great shadows. The evening is the best time to hit a
pass, so I took a bunch of photos. Then I came down the back side,
into first little upper meadow. I met three other thru-hikers from
England. They're going to resupply tomorrow too, but they stopped way
back there. I just kept plodding along, I knew I had to get down to
the valley floor before it got dark to make my life much easier. I
barely made it. Right as it got pretty much dark, I hit the long like
6 or 7 miles of more or less
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| Climbing up to Donohue Pass. |
just flat walking through a big open
green valley next to a creek right at the tree line. So that's where
I kind of camped out. I'm actually walking to Tuolumne right now. I'm
going to make a few phone calls, I'm gonna get a bunch of stuff to
eat, because it's all I've been dreaming about really for the last 6
days. That's how long it took me to get through the Sierras. I went
basically 242 mile to Tuolumne, so I call it 242 divided by 6 I
believe, is what I just did, which would be an average of 40 miles a
day. The next few days, well actually up until Echo Lake, I think are
gonna be some of my least favorite {miles}. I don't know. I just
don't have a good..{memory of them}... I don't remember them as being
fun. Lets put it that way. There are a few places like Sonora Pass,
where I've been {before while not hiking} and like, there's a climb
there but otherwise I don't remember a whole lot and I don't remember
them being particularly good. I think in 2009 I didn't feel good one
of the days and so that just adds to the memory. But we'll see. I
feel like once I get to Echo Lake, life gets easier, you're not
nearly at as high of elevation and I don't know, it just feels like
home. {I'm grew up 1.5 hours from Donner Pass}.
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| Donohue Pass at sunset, looking north towards Tuolumne Meadowns. |
