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The Month of Muir Trail - Part 4

This section is from Vermillion Valley Resort to Bishop Pass.

Day 9 - Marie Lake to Muir Trail Ranch

The next day, Erin, Andrew and Cindy met up with English Nick to climb the short way up Selden Pass from the lake. The view down on the lake was as great as the scenery from the lakeshore. It seemed that each lake was more beautiful than the last; in reality, they were all breathtaking and we were enjoying them in near solitude. We had a group lunch with about six or eight other JMTers near one of the lakes, and laughed when we heard Nick squeal as he jumped in for his swim from behind some trees at the other end of the lake. We then tramped through the forest singing and talking about favorite books and movies. Somehow, Erin and Cindy got ahead of the boys during a lot of up and down hiking on a hot day.

At the junction of the trail down to Muir Trail Ranch (MTR) and another trail, Erin looked at the map and said she was sure we had to go to the right instead of straight. Cindy didn’t want to question her by asking to look at the map and stupidly followed against her better instinct. Three extra miles and a worried Andrew later, Cindy arrived miserable at MTR and explained the wrong turn they took. It didn’t help the situation that the woman running the hiker resupply at MTR was crabby and made no secret of the fact that MTR did not cater to hikers. She rushed us through looking at the hiker bins and took away the garbage pails before the 5pm closing time. Some people who got in at 4:45 were not allowed to get their bins because their policy is only to allow people to get their bins if they get in a half hour before closing (which I didn’t see anywhere on their website but I clearly remember happening). Their website may look friendly, but they are not. There are no bathrooms, chairs or tables for hikers to use to sort gear. They make all of their money off of groups that rent the entire ranch and go out for day trips; they chase the hikers out so the “paying guests” as they were called would not have to see or smell us.

Contrary to all signs during the day (getting lost and yelled at), this night ended up being one of the best nights of the trip. While we had decided not to stay at the campground about a half-mile down from MTR, we picked up an extra dinner from one of the hikers who packed too much food and decided to extend our trip one day so that we could relax at Blarney Hot Springs, across a cold, fast-moving, and above-knee-high river from the campground. We got to the hot springs with all of our gear to stay for a while and climbed into the natural hole of hot, murky water. For the first half hour or so, we chatted with the group of about ten in the springs. Slowly, all the other hikers drifted back to camp and we were left eating dinner, talking about life and watching for shooting stars from the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower in the dark. We saw a few eyes in the dark and got up to scare them away in case they were bears (they were deer). We saw awesome shooting starts from the main spring and a smaller side spring a little further away through a field. To cap off the wonderful evening, we took a dip in a bigger pool that was cool but not cold due to the springs (a rarity for water in the backcountry).

When we got back to camp, the crew had built a big campfire and stayed up to watch the stars. English Nick hooted and hollered as we saw huge colored shooting stars - it was like nothing any of us had seen before. MTR was basically the height of our sociability on the Muir Trail. We camped with English Nick, Erin (laundry girl), Pat and Sam (the new backpacker), Mark (heavy pack guy), Robert (Irish guy we laughed with at VVR), the guys who almost couldn’t get any food for dinner due to the nasty woman at MTR and maybe even a few more trail friends. It was quite a group!

Day 10 - MTR to McClure Meadows

The next morning, we started out late chatting in camp. Andrew gave some Leuko tape to Mark, who was having major issues with blisters. If walking 200 miles sounds hard, remember that it wasn’t just the walking; we were going up and down slopes with packs on our backs. As we left MTR, we met up with a group of two girls and one guy. One of the girls was also a new backpacker who thought it would be fun to do the Muir Trail with no experience; lucky for her, she was enjoying every moment of it with her positive attitude. Cindy was getting fatigued so it was great for her to hear. It didn’t help that she realized she left her raingear at the MTR campsite 10 miles after they left…

Along the hike, Andrew stopped to pick swamp onions, a purple flower with an edible root that tastes like scallions. After days of dehydrated food, they were a welcome addition to any of our meals. We stuck them in our packs and walked around breathing in onion smell. While bending over to pull them out, he lost his sunglasses; two important items gone in one day! With his hat basically destroyed since Reds Meadows, we were worried about protecting his eyes from the strong sun at the high elevations. That night, we stopped a little earlier than planned at McClure Meadows. We usually camped higher than a meadow because of bugs, but Alan Castle would have been proud of our decision to stop and watch the sunset there, which was gorgeous. Castle of course would've loved that there were mossies everywhere! Andrew ran around through the shallow river finding good spots to set up his camera on rocks to try to take a picture.

We camped with Erin and a group of guys ending a four night trip. Luckily, one of them had an emergency poncho that he gave Andrew to give to Cindy who was panicking about not having any raingear. Erin also shared her now famous hot chocolate peanut butter recipe (one cup of hot chocolate plus 2tb of peanut butter). It’s the kind of thing you can only eat when doing serious physical activity, unless you want to pack on the pounds. It is delicious though!

Day 11 - McClure Meadows to Darwin’s Bench

The next morning was stressful because Cindy was hoping to skip the plan to go off the Muir Trail for a side hike. She was tired of hiking, cranky over losing her rain gear and sick of sleeping on the ground because our air mattresses had holes in them. We tried fixing the holes at VVR but couldn’t find them. Andrew tried his best to address the issues by getting the poncho and trying to fix the air mattresses, and Cindy pushed through to go on with the plans. Andrew provided some laughs by putting mud on his face to protect his eyes from the sun. He swears it worked!

We were worried about not being able to find the side trail up to Darwin’s Bench, but the ranger in the area wasn’t in his cabin. Luckily, he posted a sign at the junction so it was very clear which way to go. We hauled our packs up a steep area and got to Darwin’s Bench, a truly beautiful area. Andrew had a lot of energy, so he took off and hiked to Darwin’s Canyon while Cindy chilled out and worried about where he was.

The only other people in the entire area were a small group of some older women who camped further in towards the canyon. We rock hopped out to a cool campsite that was a little sheltered from the wind. For dinner, we cooked our food and climbed up to a perch where we could see sunset down into the valley. The alpenglow was gorgeous and the mountain game (that over there must be…) was fun to play.

Day 12 - Darwin’s Bench to Sapphire Lake

This day, we rock-hopped back to the spur trail and went down to pick up the Muir Trail again and climb up to Sapphire Lake. Evolution Basin, this part of the hike, is known as the most beautiful part of the Muir Trail. We stopped at Evolution Lake, which was full of beautiful greens and blues with picturesque islands in the middle. People fished and picnicked while Andrew climbed a dome off the trail for a better view of the area and Cindy waited for him to come down.

We did a short, three mile day to really enjoy the area, even though Cindy was not enjoying much of anything hiking related at this point. Andrew blames it on hormones while Cindy remembers hiking fatigue. It was Andrew’s turn to be peachy once we got to Sapphire Lake, as he had a tummy ache (read, hungry tummy) and we both started worrying about having enough food to continue two more nights after this one. We devoured a Snickers bar we had been trying to save and felt better, although we canned the idea of a side hike up Mount Spencer that we were planning to do. The whole area is granite, which made it really hard to dig a cat hole (bathroom); that was another comedy of errors. We went to sleep with dreams of a long day plus a side hike dancing in our heads.

Day 13 - Sapphire Lake over Muir Pass

We chilled at Sapphire Lake, taking pictures of the reflection of the mountains in the lake and swimming for a few hours in the morning. For those of you wondering about keeping clean, we swam in most of the lakes and rivers we passed, which was very refreshing but extremely cold. At Sapphire Lake, there was a perfect rock to lie on to dry out and relax. We were up Muir Pass a little after mid-day, after stopping by Wanda Lake, home of a large number of endangered frogs. It was pretty cold and windy at the top of Muir Pass, as we debated adding a hike up the Black Giant to the long day we already had planned. Andrew really wanted to go, and Cindy figured “how hard could a two mile, two thousand foot hike without my pack be.” Well, the answer was that it was so hard for her that she ended up crying in the fetal position stuck on a slope of rocks, not wanting to go up or down. Andrew was more comfortable with hiking on the talus, and ended up going all the way to the top to get awesome views. This was not a peaceful night on the Muir Trail, as we debated Cindy’s terror and the safety of our actions that day.

We hiked through the dark until complete exhaustion at about 11pm. Some headlamps off the trail freaked us out, but it turned out to be another couple looking for a campsite. We were hoping to get out the next day and they said they were also going to try to make it out and could give us a ride if we waited for them. We knew how long of a hike out it was (about 20 miles from where they were and the beastly Bishop Pass to climb) and wondered if they would be able to do it. Our campsite was obscure but flat, functional and even pretty (on a ledge near a waterfall), and thankfully Andrew was able to find it with the GPS. There were not a lot of options to camp in the area.

Day 14 - The Monster Hike of the Trip, from below Muir Pass to Bishop

We got up the next morning and moved past our differences over the Black Giant after a lot of talking and tears on Cindy’s part. We agreed to disagree over the difficulty and danger, while taking better precautions in the first place with taking individual emergency gear and sharing our destination when going off trail. Nothing great is ever achieved without effort, and completing this month-long adventure together definitely took some energy in the relationship department!

There is not much to say about this day except we hiked, hiked, hiked, hiked, and hiked some more until we could barely feel our feet. We went down through LeConte Canyon, up through Dusy Basin in the heat of the day, over Bishop Pass and through the ups and downs to the trailhead. We knew the trail well, as we already endured this area once on the hike with Alicia.

The hike up to Bishop Pass is 3000’ from LeConte Canyon. Our plan was to stop about every 1000’ up. We were in massive need of a break when all of a sudden, we heard “Hey! There’s Beyonce and P-Diddy.” It was none other than Erika and Melissa, the extra-food girls, camped about five feet off of the trail. They were making lunch and wondered if we wanted any soup. We sure did! We pulled out bowls and had a hot meal less than five minutes after stopping. The best part was that it was not the same as anything else we had eaten in the past five days, a true treat! They also shared gourmet Belgium chocolate that Melissa had brought back from Belgium and carried for days - other backpackers know exactly how generous that was to share, and hopefully everyone else can imagine.

While having lunch with the ladies, Ranger Rick (his real name) stopped by to chat. He knew Melissa’s dad, a former ranger, and shared about his recent wedding in Little Pete Meadow. When he heard how the girls had stored their extra food at the beginning of the trip (digging a hole under their tent for it), he chastised her with a “you should know better.” He explained what happened to us at Charlotte Lake with the ranger saying we couldn’t use the bear box. Apparently, there is conflict in the ranger community about bear boxes. They require a lot of maintenance because irresponsible people leave food in them. Some rangers like the old-timers at Charlotte Lake want to get rid of them, but others like Ranger Rick think that carrying a bear canister puts undue burden on beginning hikers and limits the outdoors to them. The conversation then turned to Black Giant. He also agreed with Andrew (after Cindy’s complaints) that the Black Giant depended on personal comfort level, adding another page in the side-hike saga. We talked with Melissa about her recent dog’s death followed by her engagement, all in the week before she started the Muir Trail. All-in-all, it was an fun and informative lunch.

We waited for Erika and Melissa to break camp so they could hike with us, but left them soon after as we were trying to get out that day. On the way up to Dusy Basin, another highlight of the day was stopping at one of the rare areas of water and dunking our heads in the water to beat the heat. While hiking through the basin, we passed the headlamp couple from the night before. At this point of the hike, we could consistently do a 20-minute mile pace, which is really fast for backpacking. We thought we would get out ahead of them, but were still hoping they could drive us down. Once we were in Dusy Basin, we saw Ranger Rick’s new wife, who hoped to be a ranger and was volunteering with the park service. She shared some more info about their romantic, intimate wedding in the middle of the wilderness. She had backpacked in food for their guests and said they had a great time. Somehow, we got separated after meeting Mrs. Ranger Rick, and Cindy struggled to keep going in the heat without any water left.

Our check-in at Dusy Basin led to the decision to try to make it out for dinner in Bishop instead of camping another night with our meager food supply. We pounded over Big Pain (i.e. Bishop Pass) and met a family camping on our way down. Andrew stuck with Cindy although she was dragging a bit towards the end of the day. We got some comic relief from a guy wearing a crookedly-packed pack that extended at least three feet over his head. I hope Andrew posted the picture of him.

When we finally arrived at the parking area for recreation area, it was about 8pm and dusk. There were almost no cars in the parking lot. We walked around looking for people but saw no one. It was at least nice to have a pit toilet to sit on! We were pretty serious about getting to civilization that evening, so we walked about a quarter mile down the road to another parking area. There were some fisherman with kids who we talked to but it didn’t look like they had room. It was now almost 8:30pm, and we thought the restaurants might close at 9pm. Desperate, Cindy walked into the street to flag down a passing truck. The two Asian-American guys in the truck heard less than a minute of Cindy’s sob story about hiking almost twenty miles and wanting to get to town combined with offers to pay them, and moved their gear out of the backseat to make room for us.

We enjoyed talking to them about our hike, their catches and our collective travels around America. They also loved Glacier and had been to Alaska. When they have guests travelling from Asia, they take them to Montana to show them how beautiful the U.S. is. They told us about their families, children, and attempts to hike Long’s Peak in Colorado. They even dropped us off at Whiskey Creek Restaurant, refusing to take even a penny from us. Whiskey Creek kindly sat us outside and let us leave our smelly gear by our table. Shortly after we sat down, they asked to move us and comped us a desert to make up for it. We ate our hearts out and our pounds back on. Cindy called El Rancho, since we missed our reservation there, and confirmed they had a room for us. After our monster hike, the meal and promise of a bed left us floating on air.

Cindy also had eight messages from Armando, who made her a custom wedding band for Andrew based on the phone call she made with bad reception at Reds Meadows. She was supposed to pick it up two days before, so she called and explained the situation. Everything was set for her to pick it up the next day, unbeknownst to Andrew. They carried their gear back to El Rancho after a dinner of bread, appetizers, entrees and a huge brownie sundae for dessert. The shower, bed and Salvation Army clothes they left themselves felt absolutely luxurious.

Day 15 - Rest Day in Bishop

This wasn’t exactly a “zero day” as Andrew and Cindy walked all over Bishop. We had big breakfast at Jack’s, followed by a laundry extravaganza. Somehow, Cindy dropped the old-fashioned metal hotel room key behind the washing machine and became determined to retrieve it because of how nice the managers at El Rancho had been. Of course, there were no employees available to help at the laundry place. Many attempts to reach it with a bent hanger failed before she took apart the countertop and was able to stick her arm back there. Andrew and the other hiker we chatted with in the laundromat were quite amused. It was nice to catch up with family and friends like Nicole and Sahtiya. I still remember talking with Sahtiya about Nick (her new boyfriend at the time). Andrew went to the library to check email while Cindy went to a local gear store. She decided to stay with the poncho as rain gear, but got Andrew a new hat and a new Jet Boil because ours had been acting funny.

She also went to pick up the ring. Between the bad cell phone reception and Armando’s accent, he had made a white gold ring when Cindy wanted yellow (to match her engagement ring) and messed up the engraving, which was supposed to say “Eternal Love and Partners” after Andrew’s engagement engraving on our stick that said “Eternal Love and Friends.” Being the ever-helpful jeweler, he made a new ring before closing time that day and did not charge any extra! Cindy verified with her friend Kristen that the price was reasonable. We rested the rest of the day and got ourselves ready for the next morning.

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