Day 69: VVR - Silver Pass Lake

Date: 15.06.2018Miles hiked today: 12.7 miles Total Mileage: mile 884.4 I didn't get out of my sleepingbag till shortly before 8am. And I only did so because I had to run to the toilet! That's the beer from last night! While being in the toilet I also washed my hair in the sink. It's 7 USD to shower for 7 minutes (I'm getting nowhere in only 7 minutes!!!) and 7 USD to wash your clothes. I shall be in Mammoth tomorrow so I don't really see the point in paying that much money for stinking just a day longer! Welcome to hiker life!!! :) but I definitely wanted to wash my hair. It's been 6 days now I think without shower! Feeling clean and fresh again I'm ready for breakfast! Food is quite expensive here, which is understandable as VVR is very remote. I go for an English muffin with egg, cheese and bacon for 9 USD and as it arrives I've eaten it in 2 seconds. But as I'm quite late for breakfast already that's fine. I shall have lunch in about 2 hours. In the meantime Joanne, Peter and I are considering how to move on. The ferry at 4pm seems quite late. We would like to hike again as close as possible to Silver Pass. Silver Pass is the last pass before Mammoth Lakes. That would allow us to hike the pass early in the morning and hike into Mammoth Lakes on the same day. It then would be a 22 miles day, so quite a big one but doable. But that means that we would have to hike 1.5 miles back from the ferry station to the PCT trail and from there about 6 miles and 3000 feet up to Heart Lake. That seems quite a lot for hiking after 4.30pm. The alternative would be to hike around the Lake and not take the ferry. Then we could leave right after lunch, but as per the phone App it adds about 7 miles to the hike as mentioned before.

We decided to hike out around 2pm and do the additional 7 non PCT miles. Point 12 o'clock we order food. Some chicken strings as a starter to share and a double meat burger! After all that food I need some time to rest and to digest! I've eaten so much here it's about time to get back on trail and burn these calories again! We managed to be back on trail around 2:30 -pm and it took us little less than 2 hrs for the 7 miles. But we kinda arrived at the same time at the ferry station as the ferry arrived (well about 39 minutes earlier but then we do have phone servicr here, which we didn't had at VVR and checking the messages took about 30 minutes! It's always nice to hear from friends and family). Now it's a 5-6 miles uphill hike gaining about 3000 feet in elevation. The trail started gently but after about 2 miles suddendly got very steep. The scenery was beautiful on that uphill hike. We crossed an epic waterfall. The last 2 miles I regained a lot of energy. I don't know where it came from but I take it. I passed Peter (Joanne was behind us since the start of the uphill but I don't know how far behind she is) and literally run up the last mile. And look who's there too. Noodles and tank! But they are already in their tent ready to sleep. It's about 7:30pm. I did the 12.3 miles and the 3000 feet gain in elevation in 4 hrs and 50 minutes! Wow! A couple of minutes later Peter hikes in. I start to pitch my tent and filter water for dinner when Joanne finally arrived, about half an hour later. It started to get very cold, and it was also a little windy. I cooked ramen noodles and hided in my tent. My feet seem to be frozen, so I put on all my clothes and hurried to get into my sleeping bag. Hopefully I warm up soon to be able to sleep!