Day 72: Mammoth Lakes - ⛺@ mile 920

Day: 18.06.2018 Miles hiked today: 13.5 miles Total Mileage: mile 906.7

After the successful Älplermagrone (mac and cheese) evening yesterday we slept in. Luckily our Hostel room was not too busy and everyone else but Peter and me has left the room when I get up. We take it easy, shower, pack and eat breakfast before we had out at 10am. I have to go to the post office to pick up my new arcteryx sleeping pants, ultra warm! These are the ones I was looking forward to in Kennedy Meadows but the wrong ones arrived. I've ordered them again to Lone Pine but they ended up in June Lake by mistake! So I'm waiting for these pants since a long time already, but am actually not sure if I still need them! I wanted them for the cold nights in the Sierras but it turned out that most nights I was warm enough with the ones I have. And see there, they finally made it to me! While I'm in the lost office Poptart walks in. He wants to send home his ice axe as most of the snow is gone by now. Brilliant, I was just thinking of what to do with mine too. If we send it together we can split up the costs. Finally I got rid of it, haven't used it once! Back out of the post office Peter and I go to the German backery on the other side of the street and have our second breakfast consisting of donuts :) now it's really about time to get back on the trail. Apparently there are free trolley busses (4 times an hour) from the town up to the so called "village" from where we have to take another bus to red's meadow. But no bus is in sight for already more then 20 minutes. We tried hitch hiking while waiting for a bus but just gave up a minute ago. No car is stopping, especially as we are standing at a bus stopp I guess. Just as we resign a car pulled over offering us a ride to the village. Oh yes please! The bus from the village back to Red's Meadow where we will rejoin the PCT is packed with day hikers (tourists) and kids. It feels like a bus full of exotic birds, all excited and noisy. Too much for me! Happy to soon be back on the trail. But the first like 6 miles of the trail are really boring. Only the devil's postpile are cool, but we see them from a distance and are sadly not that close to them. Devil's postpile is a rock formation of hexagonal columns of basalt. The formation is now thought to have been formed less than 100'000 years ago from slowly cooling lava through a process called "jointing". Glaciation excavated the formation and polished the top. After 6 miles we leave the boring trail (It's also the James Muir trail and day hikers trail so many people hike through there, even with a baby stroller!) And start to gain in elevation. Much better now. And just as I hike around a corner a deer stands right on the trail, only about 3 meters away from me. I think we were both amazed and it takes a while until the deer runs off. But my camera just didn't want to work in that moment and I only got a shot of one deer when he was back in the forest. The trail starts to climb and Peter and me decided to hike on till the next camp site. However, it's already 6pm and still like 3 miles to hike. We decide to hike on and if we pass by a nice camp spot before that we shall call it a day. But not cool spot appeared and time was flying as we reached the camp site. Wow we did hike 12.5 miles and only started to hike at 1:45 pm. That's pretty good! The camp site looked pretty busy. I can spot 2 tents already. And see there, there is Joanne and Giggles too! I would have thought they are much further ahead as they left already last night, missing out my dinner! I found a beautiful spot to pitch my tent, a little away from the other tents with an epic view - I think that's my most favourite spot so far! As it's already pretty late we cook dinner and get ready for bed. I have service up here and take this chance to contact friends, write and upload blogs till 11pm. Oh oh now its really time for bed, alarm clock is set for 5am!! Good night!

Mammoth lake village. The ski season ended yesterday. Now you can rent bikes go hiking or else using the chairlift. I wished I'd known before. How cool to downhill with the bike here! Reminded me of whistler in Canada.