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Aug 12: Testing footgear -- car shuttle setup -- First camp From Jamestown, I drive down the road a mile to a place recommended by a local person where all the cars parked outside are big 4WD trucks. I order a Denver omelet. I forgot that when they say cheese on many small town menus, they mean American cheese. For someone who values breakfasts highly, and is having the last civilized breakfast for awhile, this breakfast's pretty good. Coming into Yosemite first thing on a Saturday morning, there was no wait to pay the $20 entry fee. The morning light on familiar landscapes is delightful. As I drove up to Tenaya Lake, I saw hundreds of people already fiddling with their specialized gear alongside the road. I stopped at Tenaya Lake and walked around the lakeshore and shot a couple panoramas that include the beautiful Quarter Dome. While I'm shooting one, a German speaking guy wades into the lake wearing a tiny swim suit. Fortunately he doesn't show up in the panoramas.
A little bit further along the lakeshore:
I decide to do an additional hike closer to Tuolumne Meadows since there's still plenty of time until I have to meet up with everyone. I park at the Tuolumne store/cafe and hike up the trail to Elizabeth Lake in running shoes to make sure my backup footwear strategy is OK. Wearing running shoes instead of heavy boots on the trail is a strategy that Ray Jardine outlines in his book "The Pacific Crest Trail Hiker's Handbook." I get lost for a moment in the huge campground filled with people barbecuing their brunches, and finally find the trail. It is a pleasant hike which gains 1000 feet up to the lake. And I hardly see any people. I enjoyed this lake, only wishing I had more time to relax and soak in the scenery. As I don't have a watch, I head back as it feels like after 12.
On the way down, I run into all the people I expected to see on the way up. About half way down I trip over a root and stub my left big toe. This is one of the downsides of wearing running shoes. I pause for awhile on a fallen log and practice a few steps. It seems to improve with time, so I gingerly walk down the rest of the trail. Back in the campground, the big thing is aluminum skatecarts; the kids are racing them down the small paved roads. When I get to the store I'm very thirsty so I pick up six drinks for the many hours of driving to come and clean out the trash out of my car. It's so crowded here that when I leave, there were a dozen cars hovering for my parking spot. Over at the Tuolumne visitor center I expect to see the gang. But they're not here yet, so I ask the rangers about bears. No, they don't relocate problem bears to Lyell Canyon as I heard somewhere. Yes, there's a good population of bears there. The woman ranger seems amused at my questions. Waiting at my car, I assemble my gear and wait in the shade as the temperature climbs. It's a perfect cloudless summer day. David pulls in and then Susan & Zach. I meet Zach. The four of us decide on a plan of action -- lunch, permit, bear cans, then the car shuttle, set up camp and dinner. Lunch at the cafe is a big crowd of people from all over the world milling about in a tiny building. Zach orders the veggie burger and the rest of us get regular burgers. I soon wish I had ordered the veggie burger. The burger meat seems to be mostly charcoal so I ditch mine and eat the rest as a bacon sandwich. While we are sitting outside, some wise guy at the next table "borrows" Susan to play a trick on his or his friend's wife. It doesn't pan out and we tire of waiting for her to return, so we leave. It's crowded in the backpack permit station parking lot and we drop Zach off with the packs so as to have room in the car on the way back from Tom's Place. Zach is sitting there reading a book as I drive off and across Tioga Pass. The signs of urban hustle and bustle are still present--a SUV starts tailgating people going down the steep grade. They get to the stop sign at bottom of the grade one car ahead of me. I can't wait to get off the road and onto the trail but that's still 16 hours away. We stop for gas at Lee Vining and then truck down 395 and there's a Highway Patrol car at the Mammoth turnoff, as usual. At this point I notice how the mountains have little snow left on them. Going up from Tom's Place I saw fishermen parked alongside the road. You get to 10,000 feet real fast here and I get out of breath just stopping to take a restroom break from all the liquids I've been drinking. At the Mosquito Flat trailhead parking lot we luck out and find two spaces for our two cars we are leaving there. We head down in David's car and have a quick drive back to Tuolumne. Zach is still reading when we return. We confer and decide to establish our campsite for the night before dinner, so we walk over to the campground. There are still a few spaces left so we find one, #17, which is pretty nice. The bear locker is very spacious and even is prestocked with a few cans of beans. Zach introduces himself to the neighboring three women and they promise to keep an eye on our place as long as none of us are LOUD snorers. It seems the people before us snored like chainsaws. We walk back to the lodge for dinner. It seems amazingly far between the campground, the parking lot, and the lodge when you are not in your car. We get seated in the big tent which is the main dining hall after a medium wait and find that we are having a "family style" seating with some random guy we've never met before. The napkins at the lodge are actually maps -- I save one for a memento. Dinner is not bad, and we find enough topics to fill the conversational void with a total stranger. No one asks anyone else what they do, which seems unusual but welcome. The bathroom is way out back and up a small hill, quite a distance from the dinner table. We leave the restaurant and walk back to get our packs. I can barely make out the road in the total darkness. The occasional car comes by and blinds us with what seems like a zillion candlepower halogen brights. So we get to David's car and our gear is still there in plain view. I'm amazed and relieved after hearing about how many cars get broken into at trailheads. We put our packs on and walk towards the campground. While I had tested my pack at home, this is the first time I had to actually walk any distance with it, and the 57 pounds is profoundly uncomfortable. I didn't put my headlamp on an outside pocket so I have no illumination, and we're walking down a rocky stretch of path in the dark. For quite a ways I am feeling my way with my hiking sticks alone. I slip on some rocks into a rut and resolve to catch up to the rest of the group who have their flashlights out. It seems an incredibly long way in the night. Finally we get into the campground and without getting lost too badly find the backpacking area. All the spots are filled. We were lucky the three women guarded our spot. Now to set up in the dark. It takes me about ten minutes to find my headlamp. I think my normal preparedness was disrupted by a mental shift that happens when I was not responsible for planning & orchestrating everything. I set up my tent and find it to be quite a good shelter, and I was glad I had checked it out the night before. Everyone else is tentless and just lays out their sleeping bag on the ground. Finally I get settled and drift off into an intermittent sleep. Somebody is snoring but I can't tell which camp it's coming from. It better not be ours!
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base topo map copyright by Wildflower Productions
View the overall trip map Select (non-pano) Views from this trip View other panoramas in this Park Go forward to JMT2
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