Sunday September 27, 11.0mi/17.7km
Red’s Meadow Trail Jct (906.7/7654ft) to Duck Pass Trail Jct (895.7/10174ft) (CA)
We spent most of the day in town shopping for food and gear. The first challenge of the day was buying 7 days worth of food, in 30 minutes or less, so we could get back to the hotel before the 11am checkout time. Fortunately, I’ve been doing this for months, and am very familiar the the Vons store layout. We made it back to the hotel for checkout, then walked across the street to the Outdoor gear stores, so I could replace my lost spoon. We met an older couple on the way, and the woman was very insistent that they give us something (they were PCT veterans and very nice), and so I was gifted a metal spoon with a hole drilled in the handle to “save weight”.
We ate lunch at Schat’s Bakery, and then I went to the outdoor store to buy a proper plastic spoon. They had merino wool shirts on sale, which Bonus Miles was in desperate need of, given the quantity of holes in her current one, haha!
We took a taxi back up to Red’s Meadow and the trailhead, and it was already mid-afternoon. It was a pretty flat and easy 11 miles, but we ended up night-hiking the last hour of it because of our late start.
The hiking should have been uneventful, but *someone* had the clever idea to turn “summit pushups” into “bridge pushups”. This proved much more difficult, since bridges are narrower, and our packs were laden with 7 days’ worth of heavy food. Needless to say, this resulted in hilarity. Cheshire Cat actually managed to complete his 5 pushups, and I almost fell into the creek in my attempt.
Eventually CC pulled me up back onto the bridge. After those shenanigans, we all were laughing so hard I started crying. This will be a fun week with this group!
We hiked on for another hour until sunset, and we passed the “900” mile marker, so we are 900 miles from the Mexican border!
The sunset was very orange tonight, and it stayed light for awhile after the glowing sphere disappeared.
We arrived to camp around 8pm and setup quickly, as it was already getting cold. There was a lunar eclipse tonight, but it was partly cloudy so we only saw it briefly, and my attempts at photos failed as well.