Day 6 September 3rd

Start - Rosemarie Meadows
End – Evolution Meadows                                
Mile – 18.9

And what a day it will turned out to be!

After leaving my campsite at Rosemarie Meadows at 6:30 AM, I’ve got this great big grin on my face and I start to stroll.  Hey that’s right stroll.  I’ve got my special notes to give away tucked away in a special pocket in my hiking shorts.

I notice the reflections of the surrounding mountains on the glass smooth Marie Lakes as I again stroll by them in the early morning.  I tiptoe past a few tents dotting the trail leading up to Selden Pass and reach the pass by 8:00 AM.

Once at the top of Selden Pass I gaze around and see the Seven Gables, Mt Senger and Mt Hooper in the distance.  I also notice the 2 Salie Keys Lakes about 3 miles away which should have been my original campsite.  Oh well too bad.  I’m in no rush now.

A few miles later while hiking thought the Salie Keys Lakes, I start to worry that I may never meet that right person who would be able to relay the message to my wife.  I meet a couple of people who just arrived and don’t plan to leave within the next few day. So I continue to stroll with this constantly on my mind.

I plan to re-supply at the Muir Ranch.  I didn’t research the Muir Ranch well enough and didn’t know what the ranch had to offer.  I though that I may have read on the internet somewhere that the Muir Ranch was just some remote ranch with no phones and very little electricity.  No way was I going to be able to contact my wife through the ranch unless I give my note to some guy on a horse riding out into the sunset.

As I continue to stroll, I look up and can not believe my eyes!

In the middle of the Sierras, ON the JMT hiking towards me is my good friend Gary Doyle!  Our eyes met at the same time.  I was stunned.  I thought it was a apparition. Like seeing water in the dessert.

We give each other a big manly hug and Gary tells me he is part of a Sierra Club 7 day backpack currently hiking toward the area of Italy Lakes.  And it was day 5 of 7.

That’s not all.  Crossing the stream and hiking toward Gary and I are 4 other good friends I know and hiked with before!  I must be dreaming.  What are the odds of this happening?  Especially someone in my current situation.

I give Gary one of the special notes and he promises to call my wife in 2 days.  What a relief! The feeling is similar to a doctor telling you that it’s not serious, you will live.

We must a chatted together for about 30 minutes before hiking off in different directions.  I’ve got this big grin on my face as I hike effortlessly.  

The 2440’ drop in 4.5miles from Little Senger Creek to the Muir Ranch cut off was a killer.  Hot and dry.  I just glad that I’m going downhill.  I pity the ones that have to climb this hill in the 100 degree temperatures.

Finally, I arrive at the Muir Ranch.

I was met by a woman named Pat as she drove up in a little electric cart.  She gave me the lay of the land and pointed out the backpacker’s picnic table, shaded by a old oak tree and the spring water tap mounted on the side of one building.

I followed Pat to a small stone building and was amazed when she opened it up.  Inside were shelves filled with all types of 5 gallon pain buckets. Pat thanked me for first asking her permission to take her picture with the rows of buckets. She says, most people don’t ask first. Even though it seemed like a lot of buckets to me, Pat said that it was only a ¼ full.

Pat has a very good system to log and separate the buckets by date and who has prepaid and not. I saw my bucket right away along with the buckets on the shelf all with big stickers with the same date Sep 3.

After retrieving my bucket and taking to the empty picnic table, Pat points out a row of 10 buckets and says to help yourself to anything those buckets. It’s all the stuff other backpackers are leaving behind.  Pat also points out the 2 different trash buckets.  One for burnable and the other for non burnable trash.  Great, they will take my trash.

As I spread out my food supply on the picnic table, I was amazed at the amount of food I barely touched. Like the granola and powdered milk, 2 bags of Chex carmel mix and 20 bags of different teas.

I only send my self 5 dinners along with a lot of breakfast, lunch snack foods. Now that I am extending my trip by 2 days, it was off to the backpackers spare food bucket. In those buckets was enough food to feed a small army.  No kidding.  Except for real dinner meals, there were tons of granola, bags of mixed nuts and trail mix, whole bottles of olive oil, jars of honey, bags of dried fruit and countless and nameless other things.

Too bad there were no dinner foods so I will have to split up what I have to make up the difference.  The big scores was, brand new lip balm, bag of dried fruit, bag of mixed nuts and a brand new bag of freeze dried mixed vegetables!
There isn’t much to the Muir Ranch. I saw the stables, the stone building with buckets, a little building that they use to sell miscellaneous stuff like batteries, film and some other items I can’t remember and a larger building I didn’t look inside.  The point I’m trying to make, is that it’s a very rustic ranch.  Probably operating with some type of diesel electric generator.

Just for the sake of asking, I ask Pat “Pat is there any way I can contact my wife from the ranch?”  I sort of expected her to tell me that all the pigeons they use send notes into town haven’t return to the roost. Or, that “Chuck” plans to ride the old mare into town to pick up some flour and sugar in a day or two.

Anyway to my amazement, Pat says “You can use my laptop to send email”  While still in a daze, I follow Pat to the small building where they sell stuff and she pulls out her Apple laptop and sets it on the table. I forgot to mention that Pat is a older women probably in her eighties.  She boots it up and says, “it cost 10 dollars for 10 minutes”.  “No problem, Pat, but aren’t you going to plug in the cable to the modem?”  Pat says, “It’s wireless WIFI”

To my total amazement, I’m logging on to my Yahoo email and was sending a email to my wife explaining my that I want to slow my pace down and take 2 extra days.  The internet connection is a bit slow so it took practically 10 minutes to log on, compose my email and send it out.  I’m not going to complain why they don’t have DSL or Cable or even a dedicated T1 line. I’m just glad that I now know that my wife know what going on with me.

After spending 2 hours resting at the ranch, Pat gave me some special directions to hot springs.  She say, put your back to the river and to the right is a stone wall, follow that wall around the property line and you will find the hot springs. 
Pat says, “There ain’t no signs” After thanking her for her hospitality, it took off back on the trail.  It’s 105 degrees outside and I wasn’t about to boil my body in the hot springs.  It didn’t make sense at the moment. I was looking for a cold river or stream to cool me down.

The 1.5 mile spur trail from the ranch back to the JMT and the 1.8 mile section to the bridge at Piute Creek is hot and dry. Not a drop of water in sight. I was glad to see the all that rushing water and started to “camel up”.  I never carry more than 32 ounces of water a one time, so to ‘camel up’ is to drink as much water as possible and then top off my water bottle and do the same thing at every water source.

The hike south following gorge with the San Jaoquin river is spectacular.  In some spots you are hiking right on the edge of the trail with a big drop next to you.  The  river on your right side is crashing, spilling and flowing over and over again.  It’s a sight to see with your own eyes.

Before I know it, 6:00 PM and its getting a little dark and have climbed 400’ to Evolution Meadow. It’s been a real long day and I am really tired.  Physically tired, not so much emotionally tired if you know what I mean.

I lay in my tent I calculate and re-calculate the mileage I did today and it comes to the same total????? 18.9 miles!  How can this be? I’m supposed to slow my pace, not increase it?

I guess that ever since I met my friend Gary at Salie Keys Lakes and after sending email to my wife from the Muir Ranch my worries were over. I was enjoying the hike at the same time making decent mileage.  Who would think this?

I made only 4 time entries in my log today out of a possible 12.