Marie Lake to Muir Trail Ranch
Although we started the day only 300 feet from Selden Pass, it certainly felt like more than that! Still not a terribly difficult pass, but definitely a harsh wake-up call! Looking back at Marie Lake, it was as gorgeous as ever, and I took a moment to appreciate what was, to this point, my favorite campsite. On the other side of Selden Pass we had a decent amount of downhill to tackle, combined with a nice flat stretch. At one point during the flat stretch, I hadn’t realized it, but Omar pointed out that I was moving fairly slow. I think part of it was knowing that we had a short day, but when I stopped to think about why I was moving slower, I realized in the back of my mind, my feet still had a dull pain on the bottoms of them. Nothing that was screaming out to me, because I didn’t even realize it, but my body was already compensating by moving slower. Oh well, no big deal because like I said, it would be a short day today.
Our last downhill stint was through some pretty exposed and rocky switchbacks. One of the combinations that always slows me down. Now, as the map person, I knew that Muir Trail Ranch was actually about half a mile off trail. A couple of folks passing me, heading uphill, told me that I was about 20 minutes from the cutoff trail. Good! I was excited to get to MTR, pick up our last resupply, set up camp and figure out where the natural hot springs were! I finally made it to the cutoff for MTR, which is actually only marked by a sign pointing towards Florence Lake. The other sign points towards Kings Canyon National Park and Bishop Pass. But there was a problem. No Omar. Up until this point, when he got ahead of me he would always wait at either a trail junction, or the bottom or top of a hill/valley/pass. Of course one of the most important junctions, he was nowhere to be found. I took a moment to figure out what the best course of action would be. I had no way of knowing which way he had gone, but a big part of me assumed he’d gone the wrong way. I was the designated map person, I didn’t recall ever telling him anything about MTR being off the JMT, and to this point, during junctions, we generally were following signs for the next pass. Bishop wasn’t actually our next pass, but I could see him easily making that mistake. So now my question was three-fold. Do I go the ‘wrong way’ and hope that he was stopped further along and we could meet up? There was another cutoff to MTR, usually for people going North-Bound, and would add 3 miles to our day, assuming he was down that direction, or hadn’t also passed that junction. Option two was to just go to MTR and hope he was there, or that he would come back and find the right direction. The third option was to stay put. Knowing that when you get lost or separated, the best idea is to stay put, that’s what I did. I figured I could ask people coming from either direction if they had seen him, or if they passed me going the same direction I was, they could keep an eye open and pass along the message that I was waiting for him. I pulled out both my cell phones (I brought my personal and work because they had different carriers, doubling my slim chance of signal. As I expected, nothing. Omar had the GPS/Sat phone, which didn’t do me any good getting in touch with him!
So, I took off my backpack, and started to wait. I figured that whichever direction he had gone, when I didn’t show up after another 15-20 minutes, he’d get worried and head back to look for me. It was frustrating to know that I (we) were so close to being done for the day, but there was no way to get there! After about 15 minutes, a young man came down from the same direction I had come and stopped. He was part of a group of 3, and was the ‘Omar’ of his group – he always made it down or up the trail faster, and waited for everyone to catch up. I guess I looked annoyed or upset, because he asked if I was ok. So I was explaining the situation, that I wasn’t sure which way Omar had gone, and so decided to wait it out. He and his group were not stopping at MTR, and said that he would keep an eye open for Omar. We had seen this group below Silver Pass, and so when I described Omar, he remembered him. Success! He probably wouldn’t be heading down the trail for a while, but at least I had a scout for one direction! A while later, with still no sign of Omar, I was moving down the spectrum from worried about where he was, to flat out furious. Why hadn’t he come back? If nothing else, even if he didn’t think or realize he was lost, wherever he was, wasn’t he worried that I hadn’t shown up yet? Why hadn’t he come back to make sure I hadn’t fallen off a cliff, or gotten hurt?????? As I was in this mindset, another, older gentleman, made his way down to the junction. He was heading towards MTR. So I explained my story, and asked him to look and see if Omar was at the ranch. He had joked that if he was, he would tell him to head back up the hill to get me, WITH his full pack on as punishment. To which my response was “hell no! He needs to come up here WITHOUT his pack, get me, and then carry MY pack down to the ranch to make up for what he’s done!!!” The older man chuckled and promised to pass along the message if he saw Omar.
I continued to wait. Jake (the first guy who had come down the hill and was waiting for his group) was waiting with me, so at least I had someone to talk to! He was also from the Bay Area, so we were talking about trails to hike around there, and places to go backpacking. Looking down at my phone, I realized I’d been waiting for nearly an hour and a half. Enough was enough. I was going down to MTR, would leave a note on the sign post for Omar (a practice frowned upon, but I didn’t really see an alternative). If he wasn’t at MTR, I would backtrack and walk down the JMT to the other junction, leave a note there, and circle back again to MTR. Still no Omar….well…I would deal with that if it came to it. I didn’t really want to think about that option because then it would come dangerously close to reporting a missing backpacker. I waved goodbye to the group of guys, and headed downhill to MTR. The terrain changed drastically from forest to almost desert in appearance. Dusty, rocky and dry. Then I could see the buildings for the ranch. I started to head down the last stretch of hill, and saw Omar casually leaned up against the fence. At first, I felt pure, unadulterated RAGE. Then, absolute relief. I was so glad he was there and that he wasn’t lost after all. I wasn’t sure which emotion to settle on, so I went to my default mode. Tears. And as he opened the gate for me I mustered a whispered ‘I could punch you in the face’ as I walked back. He laughed, asked why, and I didn’t respond. He tried to usher me over to the benches where he had already picked up one of the two resupply buckets, I went over, dropped my pack, and walked away. Before I did, I noticed the older man that had promised to look for Omar. He saw me and said “I found him, and told him where you were, but he didn’t want to walk back uphill in the heat!”. Yes, I needed a minute. I was still, overall, just happy to see him. Since my ‘what ifs’ for the last hour and a half had run rampant in my mind wondering just what I would do if Omar wasn’t at MTR….but I was also genuinely upset, and it upset me more that I didn’t think he understood that. Although it worked out fine, that could have been a terrible situation. What if I’d decided to look for him further down the trail? It was a reasonable assumption that he had gone towards a pass instead of Florence Lake. Florence Lake was even further off trail than MTR, so why would he think to go that direction? And even before the older man told Omar that he’d seen me…why hadn’t he gotten worried enough to come back and look for me? But, mostly, I was still relieved to see him. So after a moment to myself, getting some fresh water out of the water station (I’d run out a while ago waiting for him at the junction), and stopping the tears, I walked back to where he was set up. I went over and got the 2nd bucket from the resupply area, and handed it over. I pulled out my bear canister, and let him go through and sort all the food. I was in no mood to help organize everything. He could damn well do it on his own! So I sat there and changed the batteries in my water filter about 10 times for no reason while he went through and organized, packed and re-packed our bear canisters.
As we were finishing up, Joey came into the ranch! I was happy to see him, but still not really in the mood to talk, so Omar chatted with him for a minute, explaining the direction we were going to look for a campsite tonight. So Omar and I moved on, looking for a campsite. We finally found one a little ways off the trail, right by the river. We weren’t really visible from the trail, so I took my trusty pink shirt and draped it over a big log we had to cross next to the trail to get to the campsite. This thing had worked to signal to Joey where we were before, so hopefully it would again!
We got set up in relative silence, and then went into the river to rinse off. He asked if I was still mad with his STUPID infectious grin on his face. Damnit. It’s like a freakin puppy – you want to be mad and scream and yell, but you just can’t. So I decided it was time to get over it. It was fine, and it had worked out, but I still felt like he needed to know why I was so upset. So I explained that at first, I was just worried he had taken the wrong trail, and didn’t know how far he might go before realizing it. He has a tendency to get ‘in the zone’ and if that had happened, he might be half way up Muir Pass before realizing what was going on! So I’d been angry, yes, but mostly worried about what would happen if we couldn’t find each other that day. And why it was so important to wait at all the junctions like we had so far. Apparently, one of the hikers going the opposite direction (I’m sure one of the same ones I talked to that day as well), had told him he was almost to the cutoff, and to take the Florence Lake junction. Apparently the sign also had a small, carved ‘MTR’ on that post, so he knew where to go. He would have stayed there if he hadn’t known where to go. And actually had hung out on the trail a bit lower after taking the Florence Lake cutoff to wait for me, before moving on. So I brought up the point that that was wonderful he figured that out, how was I supposed to know that? One point to Ally. And explained my decision to stay right there, and then my mounting frustration that he hadn’t come looking for me to see if I was hurt. And then the final frustration that someone found him, told him I was upset/worried/waiting for him, planning not to go anywhere, and he still didn’t come back just because he didn’t want to go back uphill in the heat. I got my point across, and he apologized for the situation we found ourselves in that afternoon, and we moved on. Done. He had his bad day, and now I had had mine.
Time to move onto bigger and better things! We crossed the wide South Fork of the San Joaquin River, determined to find these natural hot springs. Some off trail wandering and boulder climbing later, we found a big meadow with some people in it. We asked one of the gentlemen there and he pointed right behind us, telling us there was one there, another where a family was already occupying, and a third one on the other side of the meadow. We looked behind us. Not marked at all, we hadn’t seen it coming the other direction. Had we decided to walk a couple feet to the left, we would have stepped right into it! It looked muddy, murky, and frankly, not all that appealing. So we walked over to the other side of the meadow. This one was at least a bit bigger, and the grass was trampled down, a clear sign it was more heavily used than the other spring. But we were both still hesitant. Neither one of us are big fans of water we can’t see into, although for different reasons. So we sat down and put our feet in. It felt great! It really was like a hot tub it was so warm. Another gentleman walked up, coming from the small lake apparently close by, and talked with us. We asked him if he’d been in the spring, how deep it was. I had put my hiking pole in, and hit the bottom where it would be about neck high on me. But that was one spot. Who knew if there were deeper areas, and, if there were, I was sure to find them with my luck! But he assured us it was fine, and we both went in. Yes, glorious. Felt great on sore muscles, even if it was a little murky and there was a large dead dragonfly floating next to me! After a while we noticed the family further away get out, and we went to that spring – it was clearly the nicest, with the clearest water! We stayed there for a good 20 minutes, before deciding to head back to camp.
Upon our return to camp, I was exhausted, I think from the anxiety and tears of the day, so wanted to take a short nap. At some point, Joey found us and started setting up his camp. I then discovered my first gear failure! At some point, my sleeping pad had acquired a pin prick hole, and was now flat. I just thought Omar hadn’t blown it up enough, so puffed some more air into it, but it soon went flat again. Even though I know how to dunk it in water and find the hole, Omar offered to help, so I let him take care of it. He found the hole, and thankfully I had brought my patch kit. Good as new! We spent the afternoon and evening just hanging out by our little fire. It would definitely be the last night we would see Joey. He had an extra 2 days on the trail, so he wasn’t planning on keeping up with our daily mileage. A bittersweet night, but still a lot of fun. I was thankful that we had met him. Although Omar and I were fine on our own, it was great to have other people to bond with, and share our experiences. The best moment was when he asked Omar out of the blue “So, you got lost today?” Omar looked confused – how had he known I thought he got lost earlier in the day?! Then I remembered the note I had left! Where I said I thought he had gone the wrong way and if he came back, to take the Florence Lake junction down to MTR. My failsafe in case he came back for me after I decided to leave. Well, at least the note had been read! Although now I felt a little bad that it would be sitting there, no longer necessary. Well, breaking the rules of Leave No Trace in one possible emergency instance…I could live with that. We were all able to laugh about it that night, so a good way to end what had been a very mixed day. The hot springs definitely helped soothe my feet, as did my Sketchers camp shoes with memory foam insoles. Tomorrow we would make our way back out of this valley, starting to make our way towards Muir Pass. It would take us 2 days to get up and over the pass, our largest one to date, and the home of the famous stone Muir hut! Now the end was in sight. Our last resupply complete, heavy, 50 pound backpacks, and only 9 days left to go.
