Mile 840.8 — 857.7 (+1 mile on the side trail, total 17.9 miles)

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Rose: swimming midday in McClure Meadow Thorn: trying to decide to ditch my friends for the night for a better hike or to join them Bud: food tomorrow, maybe hot springs

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We camped in the alpine above treeline. I’m the only one who’s gotten up for sunrise. Of course, I’ve been naturally waking up at 5:30 anyways, so 5:15 wasn’t that much earlier. It hasn’t been a glorious sunrise yet. There’s mountain ridges to the east. Not like sunset which was glorious or the stars which were inky and stark.

This is one of the quietest places. No tall vegetation to rustle. Just the occasional bird or airplane.

The sun finally crested the mountains at 6:00 even though dawn had been at 5:34. It may not have been the orange hues I was hoping for, but the sun is directly in front of me curled up in my sleeping bag. It’s warmth cuts across the chill of the alpine (although it felt like a warmer night—probably due to not camping next to a humid river for once.)

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Down down we go. Only down all day. Something like 4500’. My knees, ankles, and feet will be sore from the impact.

The high alpine lakes are stunning amongst the granite. No trees. No shelter. So cold. I joke about a polar plunge but no, they’re too cold.

Around noon we descended to McClure Meadow, a long lush meadow with a meandering river and Ranger Station. It had gotten warmer and stuffier as we descended. Not hot, but a swim was in the cards. It’d been on the agenda for days. The river, though, was still so cold. Beans and I could only manage dunking under. If there had been a proper, deep swimming hole, I could have played much more. But wading or alligatoring wasn’t tolerable. Gibbs walked up the meadow with his inflatable air mattress and floated the lazy river, concluding with the small rapids next to our muddy dunking eddy.

The sun was only out briefly as we dried off and raided our dwindling food stores. We really do need to resupply. I have no snacks left. The JMTers tell us to go to MTR, that JMTers dump all kinds of food from their resupply boxes there. It’s only three miles off trail round trip and a day before VVR. Our hopes are relying on MTR now to shore us over until VVR and hopefully to fill our stores enough that we won’t have to spend so much money at VVR.

After the meadow, we crossed Evolution Creek. This is a notorious PCT Sierra river crossing. In a normal snow year, this would be raging. We would be doing I-formations to maintain our footing. This year, it’s calf deep. Relieving in the short term but scary in the long term.

Then switchbacks down and down. I collapsed at the bottom of the switchbacks and took a short, fitful, not entirely voluntary nap on the grass. No one came across me. While the High Sierra were littered with people, Evolution Valley seems to have much fewer visitors.

I took my time in the hours walking through Evolution Valley for many reasons: to soak up the scenery, to admire the raging river, to daydream of fly fishing the eddies, to take breaks for my weary feet, to sustain my activity on minimal calorie stores, to switch music playlists.

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I’m probably a little antisocial. I chose not to camp where the people I’ve been with for the last few days (Gibb and Magic Beans) picked. Mostly because we plan to go into Muir Trail Ranch (MTR) in the morning, and I wanted to take the first trail in and the second trail out (no elevation then +600’). They picked a campsite that would take the second trail in and out (ie +600’ to the campsite, -600’ down to MTR, +600’ back to the PCT). I probably should have communicated that I was on the fence about the campsite, but here I am on the side trail instead. It also feels nice to do some true dispersed camping for once; no designated “tentsite” on the Far Out app (the campsites almost never follow LNT distance-from-trail guidelines). I hope they’re not worried about me.

The mosquitos are bad on this section of trail. I don’t have my tent inner with me. All I have is a headset. Consequently, I chose a breezy campsite on a granite outcropping to keep the mosquitos at bay ?. It seems to be working for dinner. I’m going to cowboy camp tonight. Look at the stars when I wake up to turn over. There were some nice impacted sites near the river, but I didn’t want to deal with the condensation or impact so close to the river. That, and I am solo again, only my second time on this trail. I didn’t want the river to mask any sounds around me.

I’ll have to be leisurely about getting to the ranch in the morning. I don’t know what time they open. I’m only half a mile away. I guess I can bide my time at the public hot springs while I wait for them to open and for me to scrounge any food dumped by JMTers resupplying. It’s about one day from VVR and I am almost completely out of snacks. I need food just to get to VVR without eating the bare bones. It would also be nice to gather enough that I don’t have to spend so much at VVR.

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OMG. I should have joined my friends simply so I could have slept in Bean’s tent. So many mosquitos while I was eating dinner. The breeze which had kept them off this shoulder completely died. It’s far too warm for all these layers but I’m just trying to keep them off of me. I’m waiting until the last minute to crawl into bed so that I remain a moving target. I suppose if it gets really bad, I can lay my tent’s outer tarp on top of me. Good thing I’m not clostraphobic.