Day 48: More of Mammoth Lakes

Airless Night

What a creative title… But my night couldn’t be better described. On the first night here, my sleeping pad was pretty airless in the morning. This already led to a bad feeling, but there wasn’t much I could do without a bathtub do check if there is a leak, even though I have the repair Kit with me.

But this night it got worse, I woke up every 2 hours and had to reinflate the pad… Strange is, this sounds worse than it was, I still slept good and it maybe took 15 seconds to reinflate the pad each time. I’m a bit afraid how it will be this night, hopefully it stays at a 2 hour rhythm and doesn’t get worse.

Hiking

Our rough plan for the day was to drive to Agnew Meadows and then hike from there, probably a bit on the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail, which goes all the way from Mexico to Canada), because it passed through there. What we didn’t realize was, that only a shuttle is allowed to go to Agnew Meadows (Same as for Devils Post Pile & Red Meadows). This led to a quick change of plan and we went to Minarets Vista, which was next to the “Shuttle only Gate”.

From there we found a nice hike which led all the way to Jaquino Mountain. So we decided this is it and off we went.

The trail was on a AWD road, which sometimes led pretty steep up the hill. Soon we left the forest and less and less trees remained. It was 10:30 but the sun was already burning.

The road had some really steep parts and we asked us who is driving up here? But soon we got one possible answer, Motocross drivers.

Shortly after a second one followed, looked like a lot of fun! Only a few steps later, we reached the end of the AWD road and got an amazing view of the surrounding mountains.

From there the trail changed, and we first had to descent a steep part on loose ground. After that it would go up again, this was clearly visible from the top.

As Nicole was still not 100% fit, we decided to try and go as far as reasonable, but turn around if necessary. From the ridge we got again some good views of the mountains.

But we had do accept that it doesn’t make sense to go further. The climb was steeper than it looked from the other side. And as it was an out and back trail, we would have to come back this way as well. So we went back and called it a day, this still led to close to 10 km with some elevation gain.

And the rest

Back in Town we first went to Starbucks. There is no WiFi on the Campground and the reception with our T-Mobile SIM isn’t bad, but the data speed is unusable… (Something like 15kb/s, Hello Year 2000). So Starbucks it was to publish the Blog entry from yesterday and do the planning of the final 4 nights. So from San Francisco we go to Klamath Falls, stay there for one night. Then we go from there to Washougal (what? “Close” to Seattle) via Crater Lake. In Washougal we stay for 3 nights, it’s a pretty remote destination and hiking should be doable :)

Then it was Mango Cart Time (Amazing Mango & Wheat Beer) and we played some Fluxx. Nicole then went to hunt the chipmunks on our campground. Thankfully not to kill them, just to capture them with the camera.

Tonight will be our last night in the tent for this holidays, hopefully with enough air to somehow make it through the night :)

Pictures

Activities

Hike: Around Minaret Vista