Leaving Mammoth and heading back on trail, it didn’t quite feel like leaving civilization, with continued cell service and a number of intersecting day hiking trails indicating that we had officially left the super remote high Sierras. Still, in the afternoon I got to one of the loveliest places I’d seen on the trail, Thousand Island Lake. As the name implies, this is a large alpine lake dotted with islands, some just a few rocks – I’m not sure if there are literally a thousand. The lake is nestled amongst towering, snow-covered mountains and generally feels like something out of a fairy tale. It was tempting to stay there for the night, but I wanted to go a bit further for the day. I kept climbing, to the base of Donahue Pass, which turned out to be the last real alpine pass we climbed, so I was glad to spend one last night in that otherworldly landscape.

Donahue Pass marked the trail’s entry into Yosemite National Park. The trail does not go into Yosemite Valley, though some hikers detour into it. I did not – I haven’t been before and would love to see it, but the week of Fourth of July didn’t seem like the ideal time. The trail descends instead into a slightly less grand and famous valley and winds through a meadow, on basically flat terrain, for almost fifteen miles. It’s like the nice version of the aqueduct. The trail crossed the first paved road since Kennedy Meadows, almost 250 miles back, so day hikers and weekend backpackers were even more abundant. It was here that I encountered the most inspiring, to me, group of weekend backpackers – a group of older women, one of whom was carrying a 5 foot plastic skeleton, its head sticking out of the top of her pack. The same skeleton was, when I left home, sitting at our dining room table wearing my Boston Marathon shirt.  The women told me that the skeleton’s name was “Boner” and happily acquiesced to my photo request. 

After leaving Yosemite, the trail suddenly climbed onto a totally barren ridge line, unlike pretty much anything else we’d seen so far. It was like being on the moon, with steep traverses and deep craters filled with lakes of snow melt. It was also the last 8 miles before going into town, so the vibe amongst the many hikers traversing the ridge was a mix of wonder and impatience to get to the road. Coming down off the ridge, I managed to catch the shuttle to my next resupply point, Kennedy Meadows North.  Yes, it is confusing that both accepted end points of the Sierras section are called Kennedy Meadows, and yes, hikers do send their packages to the wrong one with some regularity. I picked up my own box (sent by Ben to the correct Kennedy Meadows) with food for the next few days and a brand new pair of shoes (my third pair for the trail). This Kennedy Meadows also featured the largest group of hikers I had seen since the last Kennedy Meadows, including one man whose trail name was “Slippy” because the first time he wore his micro spikes, he managed to put them on inside out, with the spikes facing his shoes instead of the snow. I was so baffled by this, I resolved to try doing it myself when I got home, just to see if there was any realm in which this could possibly seem reasonable. 

After KMN was a relatively short section to South Lake Tahoe, which continued to be characterized by open ridges and jagged, rocky peaks, though none as stark as the ridge on the way in. I had been considering skipping South Lake Tahoe and making it all the way to Truckee, given that it was still Fourth of July weekend. While this meant basically nothing to hikers on the trail, it meant quite a lot to tourism in Lake Tahoe. Lucky for me though, a few of the thousands of tourists invading the lake for the weekend were my best friends. Phoebe, Teasha, and Nora came to pick me up in South Lake Tahoe and we spent the afternoon obtaining the essentials – groceries (for me), tacos, coffee. We then went out in search of a beach. This was not an easy feat given 1) the fifty thousand extra people around for the weekend, 2) the fact that late season snow melt had made the lake water level quite high and put many beaches under water, and 3) many remaining beaches were private (bad).  We instead observed the many insane parking strategies of other beach goers and ended up going to the “beach” that they had been to a couple times already over the weekend. Beach here is in quotes because this was one of the many underwater beaches, so the stairs from the road simply led directly into the lake and there was no real beach to be seen. This did not deter anyone, ourselves included, and the strategy seemed to be simply to swim around and then lay on one of the many half submerged rocks near the shore. The goal of swimming in the lake achieved, we went to consume an insane amount of carbs at a restaurant that someone in the group described as “what if a dive bar was an Italian restaurant.” All in all, an ideal half day break from the trail, and after so long on my own, it was wonderful to get to see my friends. 

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