From JMT mile 54.3 to 58.0 Total: 7.2 miles hiked 8/05
On the seventh day of my John Muir Trail trek I took a NERO Day, by hiking only a few miles to Reds Meadow Resort, and staying in a comfy cabin, with showers, laundry, and hot food from the grill.
Bob, Keith and I woke up at about 4am, in the dark, and started getting ready to hike. They ate some breakfast, but I didn’t have any left. Luckily I had some extra snack, which I happily ate. That would be enough to get me to the Reds Meadow Grill before 10am, when breakfast ended and they closed it until noon. It was going to be a mostly-downhill kind of day, and we happily put on our backpacks. We stopped by Johnston Lake to watch some ducklings at dawn, and then hiked onward down Minaret Creek.
The trail crossed the creek at a spot where the old log footbridge got destroyed a few years back. Luckily, in early August the water level was low and we hopped across on rocks. Keith stopped to catch a small trout in a slow pool, and then we hiked on.
Shortly after that, the trail left the creek and began descending in several switchbacks, down into the valley. The sun was out, but it was still quite low, and we didn’t get sweaty at all.
We arrived at the border of the Devils Postpile National Monument. This is close to the junction with the Pacific Crest Trail, which spent the previous twenty miles, since Thousand Island Lake, far across the valley from us. The PCT and JMT would be contiguous for the next 142 miles, until JMT mile 198, when the JMT headed east to its southern terminus on the summit of Mount Whitney. It would take us two weeks or so to make it there, but for today we only cared about getting that breakfast burrito. Priorities.
We decided to stay on the proper trail rather than take the shortcut to the Postpile itself. We would be on the western shore of the Middle Fork San Joaquin River, and only get a distant view of the hexagonal basalt columns that formed the Postpile.
We still had a couple miles to go, so we headed south, still descending, and eventually reached the lovely arched wooden footbridge over the river. Keith wanted to go fishing in it in the worst way, because I told him that it was known to contain Brown Trout. He hadn’t caught one of those yet, only Rainbows and Brookies so far. I promised that we would get one later on. After the burrito. A short hike later and we reached the side trail to Reds Meadow Resort. It was uphill, but we didn’t care. And it was well before 10am!
We showed up at the resort and headed directly for the grill. On the way, we met up with Chris yet again. I camped with him the first day on the trail, and we kept bumping into each other ever since. He was already ahead of us, and was temporarily leaving the JMT for the Iva Bell Hot Springs, along the Fish Creek Trail. We wished him well and hustled over to the line at the grill.
Once I ordered my breakfast burrito, I crossed the way to the general store. I bought a can of soda and asked the folks behind the counter if there was a cabin available to rent that day. There was! I didn’t bother with that when I was solo, but now that we had three people it would only cost us $100 each. Not bad for a soft bed and all the hot shower water we could use. I called Bob over and mentioned it to him. He went directly to the office and booked it. Of course, we couldn’t move in until 3pm, but that was OK. I also asked at the counter for my resupply box. I paid for the storage ($30) and got my five days of food. But the most important thing of all was that the burritos were ready! We sat down at a picnic table and pigged out. Those things were huge.
There was cell signal at the resort, so Bob wanted to use the phone for a while. We left him in charge of watching our backpacks, which we stood outside the cabin. Then Keith and I decided to head down to the river with our Tenkara Fly Rods. It was time to catch a Brown Trout! We took the Rainbow Falls Trail to the river. Keith caught a good sized Rainbow up above the falls, but not a brown. We hiked on, and I told him we would come back here later if he didn’t get a brown below the falls.
Then it was time to visit Rainbow Falls, one of the main attractions here at Devils Postpile. We were a tiny bit early to see a rainbow when we arrived, as it usually works best in the afternoon. To solve that problem, we took the steep stairs down to the river below the falls. We could hang out down there and do some more fishing.
I let Keith go first, as I caught a brown when I was here two weeks ago while dropping off my resupply box. Keith prepared his rod and line, then snuck up behind a big boulder. He flipped the line over the top and waited as it drifted down the current. Bang! He hooked one almost immediately! It turned out to be a small Brown. He posed for a photo as proof. All he had left, trout-wise, was to catch a Golden Trout, the state fish of California, the Golden State. I assured him that there would be plenty of “golden opportunities” later on, as they lived in some of the highest Sierra lakes and streams.
Then he kept on fishing, slowly working his way downstream. Soon, he went all the way around the corner and out of sight.
I didn’t want to get my shoes wet, so I caught my own baby brown right there near the falls. Then I just hung out and read my book for a while, with the sound of the water booming nearby. Eventually, Keith came back and found me. He said he caught many more trout, but they were mostly Rainbows. We climbed back up the stairs and checked out the falls again. This time there was a proper rainbow, so we took a few more photos.
By the time we got back to Reds Meadow, Bob had already moved our gear into the cabin. It was pretty nice! Downstairs was a bedroom with a double bed, and upstairs were two wings, each containing two twin beds. Keith and I volunteered to take the upstairs zone, and Bob got the big bed. Then it was time to take a shower. Bob offered to do a load of laundry, so we handed him our stinkiest clothing. After Keith was clean, I finally took a seriously long shower. It felt great. Those two guys already dunked themselves in the Tuolumne River a few days ago, so I really needed it.
We spent time hanging out. We called our wives and texted our friends. We also traded our contact info so we could send texts via our satellite devices when we were out in the middle of nowhere. Then it was dinner time, so we got ourselves some food. I opted for a grilled cheese sandwich, because I knew the burgers were too big for me. I even saved half my sandwich to eat at breakfast tomorrow, and mostly ate potato salad for dinner. Good stuff, and all of us had happy tummies after that.
We sat at the kitchen table and got out the maps. We wanted to make sure that our food and itineraries matched, so that we could keep on hiking together. The only issue we found was that Keith’s permit didn’t have a Whitney exit, so he needed extra food to reach Cottonwood Pass to the south of Whitney. I told him not to worry, because I had a car at Whitney Portal, and we would figure something out one way or another by the time we got there. We also enjoyed this cabin, and wondered if we could get another one at VVR (Vermilion Valley Resort) when we got there three days from now. And then we went to our soft beds and slept like civilized human beings.
For a topographic map of the hike see my CalTopo Page
For LOTS more photos of the trek see my Flickr Page
<< Back to Day 6 Onward to Day 8 >> 
hikingtales.com 