Duck Creek to Unnamed river 3 miles below Silver Pass
Today would be a little bit of elevation gain, and a heck of a lot of descending. Moving on from Duck Creek, we passed by Purple Lake, and then Lake Virginia. Lake Virginia was easily my favorite of the two. The water was such a beautiful color blue, and had a lot of different types of scenery. One direction had several large boulders, another direction led to a meadow, yet another let to a more forested area, and then there were still sheer rock faces along several parts of the lake. And it was huge! We took our 30 minute morning break along the lake, and just enjoyed how quiet it was.
After another short climb, we reached a sandy area, just before dropping down into Cascade Valley and Tully Hole. Now the more majestic, landscape scenery began. We dropped down a very tight, steep set of switchbacks that, more than once, I was thankful I didn’t have to go up instead! Especially after running into a handful of people making their way up the side of the mountain. Evening out for a bit, we reached Tully Hole, a small meadow and then forested area where Fish Creek runs through before continuing to drop further into the valley. According to my book, there are several great swimming spots here, but we were starting to see more and more dark clouds on the horizon, so swimming wasn’t high on the list! We did, however, see the guy that we camped next to at Rosalie Lake – he was fishing, and just happened to catch something as we walked by. Omar shouted to show off his catch, and it was only about a 4-5 inch trout, but still, something is better than nothing, especially if you’re supplementing your calorie intake with fish! It’s more than I had caught. Before leaving, I had visions of hot weather, where I would look forward to soaking my feet at every opportunity. And lots of fish everywhere we looked. I had planned on becoming one with nature, and hand catching a fish. I’d seen folks do it on a couple of youtube videos on the JMT – so why couldn’t I? Of course we didn’t see all that many fish, and the water was so cold I didn’t have the patience to sit there and soak my feet long enough to let any fish get comfortable! Oh well, not a huge deal! I used to go fishing with my dad occasionally when I was little, so the idea amused me, but wasn’t a priority. Perhaps some other, shorter backpacking trip I’ll bring a fishing pole and try my luck!
We moved on, and crossed Fish Creek on a wooden bridge. Moving forward a little more, we found a large campsite near the junction to Cascade Valley, our intended stoping point for the day. The only problem, it seemed to be pretty dry. The water I had counted on, Fish Creek, I didn’t realize dropped down pretty quickly towards Cascade Valley, making it difficult to access. So, with the weather clearly starting to turn on us, but it also being fairly early in the day (only a little after noon!), we decided to push on, starting to head up Silver Pass. Anything we did now would be bonus mileage anyways, and that much less we had to get up the following day.
As it started to rain, of course Omar moved ahead. On our way, we came across two horse pack groups. The first, carrying all the gear, led by only one person in the front, one in the back of the group. The second group, I came across at a river crossing. All horses with passengers. Turns out they were a Sierra pack trip, doing a 5-day trip through the Sierras, mostly on the JMT. Seems like a pretty nice way to see the sights to me! I made a mental note – my friend Amy adores horses (I like them too, but haven’t done a lot of riding and don’t feel totally at home on them) – perhaps a future adventure I can convince her she needs to partake in!
Shortly after the river crossing, I climbed to another bridge crossing, where Omar was waiting. It was still raining, and we were hearing intermittent thunder. We could keep going, or call it a day. We called it a day. While it was only lightly sprinkling, we found a spot to set up camp before it started up again. Our chosen campsite even had an established fire ring! Double bonus! Since we still hadn’t eaten lunch, I got going on that. Looking at the choices, I noticed the hot breakfasts we hadn’t eaten yet. We just ended up wanting to hit the trail in the mornings, so taking the time to cook didn’t ever happen. So we had breakfast for lunch! Some grits, which Omar had never had before, ham, peas and goldfish (the ‘cheese’ for the dish). In the middle of a drizzly day, it was nice to have a hot lunch, and know we still had a hot dinner to look forward to!
Still raining, we retired to our tents for a while for a nap. I was a happy camper. I’m a huge fan of naps, and that followed me on the trail too. We got up a couple of hours later, and the rain had stopped, although we still had questionable looking clouds coming our way. We decided it would be time for a fire. But Omar wanted to try something different. He had purchased and never tried, an emergency fire starter. He decided he wanted to give it a shot, so he had some experience if he ever needed to use it in the wild. I should also mention that he is, by self-proclimation, the world’s worst fire starter. He can keep them going, but has real trouble getting them started. So I sat back to watch. This would be interesting. He spent several minutes gathering what he deemed the perfect fire starting materials – some pine needles and brown, dead grass. That should work, right? Well remember, it was raining all afternoon, so everything was wet. He could get sparks, but nothing would take. After about 20 minutes, and several different tinder options, I said that I wanted to try when he was tired. We gave each other a look. Yup. It’s on. This was officially a fight to the death to see who was the better wilderness survival expert.
We both enjoy watching survival shows. My preference for a long time was Bear Grylls. So I tried to think back to all the ways he had started fires, and how I could get something DRY to light. A-ha! I pulled out my pocket knife, and found a small log/branch sitting on the ground. I turned it over to expose the drier part, and started shaving small tinder-sized pieces off the log. Surely this would put him in his place. This would catch no problem! I saw a sideways glare come from Omar, and he handed me the firestarter. Hmm…well I’d never actually used one either. It definitely hurt my hand to use over and over because….I couldn’t get it to light either.
In the middle of all this, we looked up to the trail, and happened to see Nina and Grace walk by! We stopped, talked for a bit, they laughed at our determination to each be the first to light a fire, and we finally got a picture together. The next day they would go to VVR (Vermillion Valley Resort) for resupply and a rest day, while we would keep going. So this would likely be (and, as it turned out, really was), the last time we would see them. They were still going another 2-3 miles since they had to be at Lake Edison to catch the ferry to VVR by a certain time the next day. They tended to sleep in, and needed to make sure they got there on time, or face several additional miles walking along the edge of the lake to reach VVR.
Back to our battle royale. Omar found some different stuff, and took his 2nd turn. I walked away to find my own secondary tinder option. I wanted moss, but couldn’t find anything other than paper-thin lichen on some soaking wet rocks. Then I saw them. My answer to my prayers! Some of the cotton-like flowers. You know, the kind you pick up with your little and blow all the little pieces all over the place? It would be just like a cotton ball, this would SURELY do the trick! I walked back to camp, completely triumphant with a huge, knowing smirk on my face. I told Omar to step aside, and I revealed my secret weapon. He got a very indignant look and said ‘that’s cheating!’ Yes – I’d gotten to him. This was half a mental game and I just got the upper hand. It was a natural resource, something we could find around us, that was the only rule, so I was fine. I went to work, and smelled the stuff burning! I was getting smoke! But….I couldn’t get an ember to stick around. It was still too wet. I was defeated again. Omar took my idea and ran with it, getting lint out of my socks to try that. He had the same problem, unable to get an ember to stick around long enough to light everything else. Even if he had gotten it going….that was lint from MY wool socks, so it would have been partially my victory anyways.
We each admitted defeat and used a lighter. But that didn’t work either, so no fire that night. At least the fact we couldn’t get it going with a constant flame made us each feel a little better. After over an hour working at this, we decided it would be a competition best saved for another, sunnier day.
It had been a good day. We made decent time, and got a little extra mileage under us, making it about 1/3 of the way up Silver Pass. Any less uphill I had to do the next day was fine by me! I could tell my lungs were getting stronger. I still had an occasional cough left over from the cold, but I was making it a bit further between breaks, and my breaks were getting shorter to catch my breath. Tomorrow we would reach another landmark – the junction to VVR. Even though we wouldn’t be taking the detour to get there, it was still one of those ‘landmark’ moments. According to the traditional JMT mileage table, we’d now gone over 75 miles (probably close to 100 by Omar’s GPS), so we were over 1/3 of the way to the end!
