We woke in good moods due to sleeping on soft, level terrain, and having water close to us. Plus, even at water’s edge the mosquitoes weren’t bad. Perhaps, our perfectly safe poison, Permethrin, that we sprayed on our clothing, did, in fact, keep mosquitoes at bay.
We greeted some PCT hikers passing by our camp at hardy paces. Each one had a bright smile, a golden tan, and killer legs. We became salmon swimming upstream. Surely this direction only created an illusion that we were that slow. We chatted with the friendliest, mostly about my Garmin inReach Explorer Plus. The dang thing hadn’t worked yet. I scanned the northbound hikers to see who was wearing this product. Unfortunately, they all claimed they didn’t know much about them, yet they poked around with my unit and declared that it was at least on. I had this notion that Terry would worry if he didn’t get a signal from my device. What I found at the end of the hike was even though he hadn’t received any signals, he didn’t worry or care. He had total confidence in us.
I could chock this up to one of the things I worried about unnecessarily. Both Robin and I were eager to check off dangers that lurked. Such as Evolution Creek. This can soak you and everything in your pack, so people were giving us advice as we approached it. You can enter somewhere else. You can remove your shoes. You can hoist your pack over your head.
It is a wide creek and you do need to wade through the spring run-off. And that’s just what we did, easily. Shoes on. Comfortable temperatures. Not slippery. Ankle deep. No worries. Other then we were in a drought.
A 67-year-old MN guy, put us on to free food at the McClure Meadow Ranger Station. I mention the guy’s age because he was proud of doing so well at this age. I was proud that he was from MN.
We watched for the McClure Meadow Ranger Station sign. Basically, it was right on the trail, but I walked past it. “It’s right here” Robin said. As we could have guessed, PCT hikers were foraging through the box while encircling it. Who was getting what? What were the choices? It was hard not to feel guilty taking anything away from this group. Robin got a tin of oysters and asked Ranger Victor, a new pal of ours, if he had TP. He gave her a roll. Perfect. Perhaps the oysters might prompt the need for more TP. It turned out of all our food choices we both liked the little bag of olives, and Robin liked the oysters too.
There was a group of six men assembled behind the food box asking about the choice of food but remaining shy about checking for themselves. They were a disparate group. One guy was in his thirties, and one was fifty, the others were approaching my age. Two presented as over-weight broken down guys. They appeared to be unlikely hikers. They left shortly before we did. About 1/8 of a mile later, we ran into them sitting on the side of the trail. We stopped to visit. Pete, the oldest with a brace on his knee, told us they were hiking to a carefully guarded secret destination. It was the deepest canyon in the US. He said they had planned this trip 25 years ago. And finally, they had time to do it. This meant traveling on a mostly cross-country route to Tehipite Dome and down deep into King’s Canyon. Pete was good at piquing my interest. I couldn’t wait to learn more. According to my feeble research on the internet from Spanish Peak to the confluence of the middle and south fork of the Kings River the distance of 8200 feet made it the deepest canyon.
We headed off to the switchbacks before Evolution Lake. We stopped for a rest and the guys passed us slowly except for Pete. He came later. He looked slow but steady and robust. As we move forward, we’d catch the guys who had gone ahead to wait for Pete. They always said, “He’ll catch up.” But we never saw him again and after Evolution Lake, we left them all behind.
At a creekside, we met one of the most flamboyant characters, Vince Connolly, or “Sugar Bon, Bon”. He was a ragging liberal. He said Michelle Obama had it wrong. It’s not, “when they go low, we go high”. It’s, “when they go low, we put our knee on their necks”. He had every anecdote, saying, and slogan modified, polished, and memorized to incite. He was nonstop anti-Trump. It was 15 minutes of major Trump bashing.
Good thing we were on our way to some to the most peaceful and beautiful tarns on the trail. We were headed for Wanda Lake but mistook the small lake in front as a corner of Wanda Lake. It all worked out fine
Mountain Peace 