Brad's Adventure

“Ah, I love nature.” – Me, sarcastically

Days 64 – 68

Miles 880 – 934

The evening before VVR (Vermillion Valley Resort, mi 880) I hiked an extra 5ish miles and slept on the bluff. Since Seth and I merged with the group of 4 I had developed a ritual of hiking ahead the night before we got into town and going full throttle in the morning so I could get into town for coffee. I made it to VVR in time for breakfast and got a burrito and some nice coffee. VVR was a small campground with a shop, restaurant, Landry and showers. The vibe was good, but the prices were utterly outrageous. I could (and have) rant about this for hours but I’m too far behind on the blog to go on a tangent about ethics, capitalism, and rising food prices.

Anyways, I showered, did laundry, got a day’s worth of food, and watched the world cup games on the tv. The trail has kind of gotten me interested in the world cup, many of the pubs, hostels, etc have been playing the games and I’ve been enjoying watching them. The rest of the gang trickled in throughout the afternoon and got their chores done. That evening we had a few beers and hung out. There were a few JMT (John Muir Trail) hikers we chatted with, and when it got darker we started a campfire and showed all the Europeans how to make s’mores.

The next morning we had breakfast and set out for Mammoth. It was only 30ish miles away so it was a very short carry. Keeping with my tradition above, I split off after the group stopped for lunch and sped off so I could camp close to town. By the time I reached the group’s planned campsite at 7:30, I decided I was too exhausted to push extra miles so I plopped my tent down and fell asleep quickly.

The next morning I woke up early and started walking. Like I said earlier, I get very excited about both getting into town, and getting into town early enough for coffee. I was 11 miles out so I needed to walk fast. I ended up smashing it out in 3 hours, which I’m pretty proud of. There wasn’t too much climbing, but it was still around 10,000ft up with a pack on my back. It felt a little silly going so fast only to have to wait an hour for the first bus at 9:30am, but I kind of wanted to see how fast I could go.

Mammoth is a cool little town. VERY touristy but it did have charm, and more importantly an extensive bus system that was entirely free. I hopped on the bus at the trailhead with a few other hikers and we went into town. A fellow PCT hiker had his friend from the area with him. He gave all the hikers beta for the best places for coffee, food, beer, etc. The poor guy was being bombarded with questions from hungry hikers the entire 10 minutes. Turns out I’m not the only hiker that dreams about food all morning while hiking into town.

I got chores done and checked out the gear shop while I waited for the others to show up. We ended up getting an Airbnb condo for the night and Sandy made lasagna for the group while we watched team USA lose to Türkiye, which is apparently the new name for Turkey. We stuffed our faces and sat in the hot tub for a while, then went to bed.

As per usual, the next morning was spent dilly dallying. We checked out at the last moment, and went to get lunch at Mammoth Brewing Co. We had met up with a familiar face, High Tide, and she told us the weather was looking pretty bad for the next 2 days. After a few beers it was 4 and nobody looked excited to go. Eventually we stopped kidding ourselves and got another night at a different Airbnb. The millennials of the group headed over to check it out while the two brits, the young guys, ordered a pitcher and would meet up later. This room was also a Condo, but much nicer. The host was there finishing up cleaning, gave us the key and explained something about the door key for a few minutes, and how people sometimes got locked out. I don’t think any of us paid too close of attention, how hard could it be to punch in a key code. Sure enough, when we got back from the hot tubs we were locked out of the room, despite having a physical key and a key code. The key didn’t fit the top lock, it was a failsafe for the bottom lock, the electric one. I don’t get angry often, but I was pissed about this. What is the reasoning for not giving an Airbnb guest both keys for the door? Especially if this was a semi-regular problem… We had to call the host, who was already 30 minutes out of town, who had to physically come back and use his key to get us back in.

While we all sat shirtless in the hallway waiting for the host to come back with the key, a Hispanic lady came out to see what was going on and after discovering we were PCT hikers she got excited and gave us a tub of spaghetti. Yes, a whole tub. Sometimes, especially in the touristy towns, people treat PCT hikers like celebrities. She was super excited about it and told us if we needed anything to let her know!

The Brits showed up shortly after. They had gotten 3 more pitchers and were pretty drunk.  They brought along Elvis, another PCT hiker we knew who they’d run into. We passed around the spaghetti tub and feasted. Finally the host showed up and we got back into our room. We played another few games of President, and made some pizzas.

Because we had taken an Unintentional 0 day, Seth and I sadly would have to skip the next 30 miles because we needed to be in Yosemite the next day to meet his mom, who had reserved us a site in the Valley for a little side quest. We split off from the group and began the process of hitching from Mammoth to Lee vining. We took a ride to Bishop, even though it was backtracking a little bit, because we figured we’d have better odds on the 395. The bishop hitch was harder than we thought. Around 7pm we were pretty defeated. We had a backup plan of Seth’s mom picking us up, though it’d be pretty late. I told Seth if we didn’t get a ride by 8 I wanted to go to the casino. Mostly because I’d never been to a casino and I thought it’d be an interesting way to pass the time. Right before we were going to give up, a guy offered us a ride. I was mildly disappointed I wouldn’t get to check going to a casino off my bucket list today. The guy who gave us a ride was the most interesting (and sane) person we’d gotten a ride from all trail. His job was beaver dam restoration, and had just gotten done with his 8 day hitch in the sierras. He was heading to a San Francisco pride event. Really cool guy. We mostly talked about his job and some other nerdy stuff like dnd podcasts that he and Seth were into. He dropped us at Lee Vining campground. Seth’s mom showed up a little bit later. It was windy as hell and cold. We were very glad to be down at 3000ft instead of up in the mountains.

The next day was Yosemite day! We swung by the famous Tioga gas station and got breakfast at Woah Nellie Deli, a small restaurant inside the gas station. We went straight to the valley and did a nice little 4 mi hike. I felt like a fish in a bowl with how many people there were. After our short hike, I decided I wanted to rent bikes because to be honest I was tired of walking and biking would let me see more of Yosemite than wading through tourists on foot.

I biked around the 12 mile loop with seth and his mom. We stopped for an art gallery, and later some pictures. I got to see pretty much everything! Although I’m still not sure which face was El Capitan….

We ended the day with pizza at the pizza deck. The line was 30 min long, but apparently that was short compared to normal. One of the pizzas, called the half dome, had fennel pollen and honey on it. It sounded a little too weird for a suspected “theme park” tier of pizza so I got a normal pizza. Seth got the half dome and it actually ended up being amazing, better than mine. He made sure I didn’t forget that for the next few days. To be fair he had to listen to my skepticism for most of the 30 min queue.

The next morning we quickly hiked up some waterfall trail and back down. We got to Tuolumne meadows by noon, met up with the group, and got back on the trail! These last few days were a nice break after the brutal high Sierras section, but it was time to knock out another 160 miles and finish up the Sierras.

Final thoughts:

• There were loads of people in Yosemite. I have gotten accustomed to the peacefulness of trail life and the sheer amount of bodies and crowds was jarring. The trip was still totally worth it, the Valley was very cool.
• It was super fun to hang out with Seth and Lynn. If you’re reading this Lynn, you’re awesome! I’m grateful to have Seth and his family in my life! There are very, very few people I could stand to walk with and camp with every day for several months. Seth is one of those people