PCT Day 60/61: Mammoths and hot springs
- Date: 2023-07-05
- Pct day: 61
- Start: Mile 904
- End: Mile 904
- Distance: 5 miles
- Ascent: 854 feet
- Descent: 1916 feet
- Start name: horshoe Meadows
- End name: red meadows campground
- Wake up: 07:30
- Start hiking: 18:00
- At camp: 21:10
- In bed: 23:30
- Where I slept: tent
- Shower: hot spring
- Best thing: hot spring
- Worst thing: feeling nervous about the trail
Key moments
- Honestly, I’m really bloody tied so I’m just going to bed soon.
- The short-ish version is that I’ve skipped from Kearsage pass to Mammoth, skipped about 125 miles of the PCT as my mate Alex from Australia is here on the pct and I wanted to with a nice group I kind of know.
- So I’ll come back and do that other section from Kearsage to Mammoth.
- The permit is pretty straightforward to go that way - just an Inyo county permit, which isn’t limited, unlike the JMT permit.
- The day getting out to Mammoth was a bit hectic - the group was dispersed and we all separately arrived.
- Alex, Spliffy, and I managed two hitches up to mammoth. We stopped at one of them to drink a beer by the side of the road. Pretty fun that you can buy a tall can of Sierra Nevada pale for not much from just like a gas station.
- We linked up with Snooze, and who had been spending time with a close friend of hers.
- She also had a random act of kindness from an elderly man at a bar who saw she was hiking the PCT and offered to buy her a bunch of food and gear. So she was full of stoke, but also had an incredibly full bag. It was probably like 25-30kg, probably over 50% of her body weight.
- Alex and Spliffy and Snooze and I started hiking together, and Alex started to zoom ahead, which was a bit tricky since there wasn’t great tracks in the snow
- I felt like I was being left behind again
- We got to a lake that had warnings about camping there due to carbon dioxide (!?) levels.
- Spliffy decided to camp there, which was a worry, and we kept going on
- It was getting dark and Alex wanted to jump ahead of us to meet the rest of group at red meadows, where there was a hot spring.
- It was just snooze and I then, and I started to have flash backs to the chaos of last stretch of the sierras. I had assumed we’d all be trying to stick together, but Alex seemed super keen to go on ahead by himself.
- I kept slipping over on the wet snow and snooze said she might change my trail name from “friend” to “Timber” if I kept doing that.
- We saw a bear footprint in the snow. It wasn’t very old. That was cool. Sort of
- Snooze and I made it into camp, a spot that normally would be part of a resort but was shut, and had a bunch of natural hot springs.
- We set up camp, and all lounged in a hot spring under the stars.
- It was magic, and I got to see the others in the party again: Bear, a German doctor, Guardian, A Czech gentle giant.
Plan from here
- Continue into the Sierras
Animals sighted
- Bear footprint?
Gear thoughts
- Microspikes are worth it.
Physical condition
- very tired
Quotes of the day
- make a decision based on what you can see
#pct #pct2023 #pctclassof2023
